How Stereotypes are Born

Living abroad will generally expand people’s horizons and make them more flexible, open-minded and empathetic – or, at least, soften the rough edges of the stereotypes they hold dear. Sometimes, however, one instead bumps into the living, breathing, all-too-real stereotypes themselves…

Right Reihe, Wrong Platz

The kids and I went to several movies last week to “celebrate” the end of Winter Break. Several recent releases were playing in “original version,” which means in English. The Germans sell movie tickets with seat and row numbers – you are asked when you buy your tickets whether you prefer front, middle or back seats. Because the transaction is most often in German and I’ve never been in an even close to full theater, I didn’t fully understand that a specific seat was being assigned until last week.

As it was a week day and the movie was in English, we initially found ourselves in a movie theater with one other person sitting five rows in front of us. We found a seat in the middle of the theater and sat down to wait for the previews. About 10 minutes before the movie was to begin, a German dad and son came in – audience members 4 and 5. Turns out, of the 200 seats in the theater, Audrey and I happened to be sitting in the seat numbers printed on their tickets. Now, bear in mind that there are at least 197 other seats in the theater to choose from…. Do this father and son simply chose a seat and sit down? No. The father has to tell me that we are in their seats and stand waiting for us to move. Before I could react, the other person in the theater - an American college student – pipes up that “probably the seat assignments don’t really matter.” The father apparently thought better of making a scene and sat right next to us instead with big sighs. Can you say rigid? Rule-bound?

Once the previews started – they realized they were actually in the wrong theater all together and got up and left with even more huffing and garumping.

A 12-Step Program to Losing Tax Revenue
Today, I went to the special post office location set up for collecting VAT taxes on anything of any value mailed to Germany. First let me say that I ordered something from eBay, shipped from the US that even with the exchange rate, shipping and the 19% tax the Germans slap on everything, was still cheaper than buying here.

So, here’s how the experience went:

1. Deutsche Post receives a package addressed to me from the USA with an estimated value of more than 40 Euro; diverts it to a special facility and mails a letter to me.

2. Mail man delivers a letter to me two days later, informing me I have 11 days from the day the package was received to pick up my package and includes one full page of related instructions.

3. I drive to another town to this special post office.

4. I present  myself, my ID (to verify I was the person it was addressed to) and the required e-Bay receipt printed from my e-mail.

5. The box is retrieved from the storage room and I am required to unwrap and open it for the clerk.

6. Upon verification that it was in fact what I ordered – after careful comparison of the contents with the receipt, the clerk goes to her desk and spends FULLY five minutes typing away at her keyboard.

7. Clerk presents me with SIX pieces of paper, stamps two of them with a rubber stamp and requests I sign one of them. She then instructs me to proceed to the cashier to pay the required 10.65 Euro tax.

8. The clerk tells her colleague (sitting next to her) to go over to the cashier window.

9. I take no more than THREE steps over to the security-glass cashier window and wait for the “cashier” to make her way from her desk, unlock the cashier office door and come to the window.

10. I slip my money through the small opening in the window and the cashier proceeds to write up – by hand—a receipt in triplicate, she stamps the original with a rubber stamp (just for good measure…)

11. I give the cashier one of my six sheets of paper, she gives me the original of the receipt.

12. Twenty minutes later, I get in my car with my package. The German government would now be richer by about 10 euro except for the fact that it has cost them no less than 20 euro in personnel time to collect it from me!

This could be chalked up to a guaranteed revenue stream if it weren’t so patently obvious that it costs at least twice as much to implement as it takes in.  Perhaps it is a full-employment scheme? Or, just flat-out love of rules, regulations and bureaucracy?

Just to Keep Us Off-Balance

I went to the regular post office today as well. In a move directed at keeping us completely off-balance, the German post office had a surprise up its sleeve: postage for a letter to the USA went down by 55% on January 1st. So, now it costs just 97 cents to mail a letter rather than the equivalent of $2.22! Perhaps they actually DO have a revenue stream coming from that “special tax office of the Post Office.” What do I know anyway?!

Planes, Trains, Automobiles and Ferries

Well, we didn’t spend the holiday week between Christmas and New Year’s with George Clooney, but if he was at his villa, we did spend it with the same beautiful view as he did. It is easy to see what drew him to Lake Como in the foothills of the Italian Alps! We found that visiting Bellagio in the “off” season was perfect. The weather was mild, the skies clear and blue and we truly felt as though we were in a private villa, staying at a new apartment suite hotel rebuilt on a property with a spectacular view and had the town virtually to ourselves. We could really imagine we were living the high life in a villa: we've never gone to sleep or woken up to more beautiful views. One wall of our bedroom was entirely glass.

Echoing what is becoming a dominant travel theme of Geipel trips, we had several transportation adventures – some annoying, some harrowing and some spectacular. If there is any travel advice we offer frequently it is to avoid RyanAir at all costs. But, we hesitated one too many times to take our own advice – yep, we flew RyanAir to Milan! No more. These flights are truly like Ground Hog Day: first, pay as much for your suitcase to travel as you did for your own ticket, scramble to get a seat, sit for 90 minutes flight in a seat that won’t recline while listening to flight attendants alternatively hawk lottery tickets for sale and growl and grumble at passengers, after a bumpy approach, join in applause with the rest of the passengers on a safe landing. That’s it; it never varies.

Rare shot of all five of us - on the deck of our "villa!"

We have become accustom here to some harrowing driving (see previous posts: autobahn, Ireland roads, Town Car in Banff), but hadn’t seen it all until driving the roads around Lake Como. It’s one thing to have your doors blown off on the autobahn by a car passing you at 110 mph – in the snow – but, it’s quite another thing to be passed at 60 mph around a blind curve on a 1 ½ lane-wide road! Yikes. The curvy roads around the lake were spectacularly beautiful though Gary missed most of the scenery because the roads, with no shoulders, wrapping around cliffs and rock walls required every ounce of his vigilance. The locals – some in their Maseratis and some in their 20-year old Fiats – thought nothing of passing us at twice the legal (and sane) speed limit. I imagine in high-season, this may happen less often as the traffic must slow to a crawl with all the tourists.

We braved the roads nonetheless to see some of the nearby towns. To save time and stress, we found the car ferries very convenient to quickly get to the towns across the lake without driving the long way around. And, they offered unique views of the lakeside Villas and towns. While there were only a handful of shops and restaurants open this time of year, each restaurant we stumbled into was excellent. There is nothing like Italian food in Italy – especially in towns that cater to the rich and famous! 

Mid-week, we got up very early and drove further into a valley in the Alps to board the Bernina Express – the highest rail crossing of the Alps – which took us to St. Moritz, Switzerland in time for lunch. This is the way to see the snowy Alps. The train cars are outfitted with special panoramic windows and the views are incomparable. The most surprising thing of all to me was that the trains along this route are electric! We glided over viaducts and through tunnels on tracks that are a century old but in the most modern of trains.

Along the way, we climbed over 6,000 feet in altitude, witnessed a sport we hadn’t heard of before -  kite skiing, and were treated to views from palm trees where we began to snow 3 feet deep at the highest point. The kids managed to multi-task - playing Farkle while taking in the scenery (interesting to kids for only so long...).

St. Moritz is exactly what one would expect of a town known as much for being a playground and shopping mall for the upper, upper crust as it is for the nearby skiing! Lunch was good but cost us dearly. Shopping was limited to window-gazing except for the now-obligatory tacky souvenir: a Swiss playing an Alpine horn seemed exactly appropriate. Diamonds or designer clothing would have been more representative but fits neither the definition nor the budget of “tacky souvenir!”

Milan -- Haute Couture, Haute Disordine e Degrado, Haute Chiesa Campanili!

Well, I've totally abused the languages of both France and Italy. Similarly, the conflict and contrast in Milan left me feeling a bit abused! We spent a day there before flying home and learned that while it is the city of the fashion world, it along with most of the cities and towns we drove through in northern Italy, it has vast areas of great disrepair  - dirty, buildings (not the ancient ruins) in falling down, unpainted condition and clutter and rubbish sitting out in yards and on sidewalks.  Yet, among this unpicturesque cityscape rises one of the great cathedrals of Europe - for me, it surpasses Notre Dame in its beauty and majesty.

The Duomo di Milano is nothing short of spectacular. After a leisurely look around the inside, Gary and the kids climbed to the top for the bird's eye view while Molly and I did some quick shopping on the main shopping piazza. On the piazza was the largest Tiffany's box under the largest Christmas tree we've every seen! One of those "pop-up shops" that are currently "the rage."

Sophisticated Vending Machines

What happens when that ubiquitous American icon that plagues our children’s eating habits is exported to oh-so-sophisticated Europe? I know you’ve been wondering this for some time. I have the answer! In Italy, it is installed in airports to dispense – you guessed it – PIZZA! I wouldn’t have believed this if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes at the Milan airport. The pizza is made to order and dispensed within minutes.

And  here in Germany, in Berlin, vending machines have been installed in the most fashionable shopping district to dispense bars of gold bullion. Yes, that’s right. If you are shopping and have the sudden recollection that you need some bars of gold to-go, you can saunter up to the conveniently located vending machines to satisfy your shopping or financial investment needs 24/7!  Even better than an ATM, no?

The Top Sure-Fire Ways You Know it is December in Germany

The Germans do know how to do Advent and Christmas. December arrives with great fanfare here.

Among the most telling signs of Advent are the ubiquitous Christmas Markets. While there are a wide variety of market options – from our small town, 2-day affairs to month-long crowded and famous markets – any uniqueness that may have existed decades ago appears to be lost. One can universally find gluhwein stands intermixed with candy and warmed nut stalls and vendors selling woodworking goods such as nutcrackers, nativity sets and the traditional German candle “pyramids.”

We have been to half a dozen markets over the past two seasons and find that these three variations of vendors comprise 99% of the market. Literally, you can walk from one “gluhwein” vendor to the next in less than 15 paces – and, they are all busy! This mystifies me – in my mind, all that needs to be said about the appeal of gluhwein is in the first sentence of the recipe: “start with an inexpensive, full-bodied red wine.” Add to that serving this German version of mulled wine in a small ceramic cup to be drunk while standing in the cold among 50 other people drinking from their cups before standing in a long line again to return the cup to the vendor for the return of your 1 Euro deposit. It’s a good thing there are so many vendors as this drink appears to be enormously popular with the Germans, judging by the crowds at each and every booth!

We did have a nice experience in Mainz in mid-December as the weather was beautiful, the crowds sparse, there was fresh snow and we were in tremendous 

 Christmas spirit after listening to an all-French Horn concert of traditional Christmas Carols featuring Audrey, our budding French Horn musician. Her teacher provided the entrée to this annual performance. French Horn players ages 6 – 80 gather each year to practice for about 90 minutes and then perform in the city concert hall in downtown Mainz. It was truly a treat. And, just steps away was the Christmas Market which featured a gigantic “pyramid” at the entrance. If you look closely at the bottom tier of the pyramid you see, inexplicably, a character who looks like a character from "South Park" mixed in with the St. Nickolaus, angels and nutcrackers!

We naively enjoyed the light snowfall and brisk weather during the day, not realizing what it would lead to that evening. Molly was due home from Minnesota for her Christmas break the next morning. Her flight to Amsterdam that night was on time but, we learned her flight from Amsterdam to Frankfurt was cancelled and after over an hour on hold with the airlines, found that there was no other available flight for three days because of the weather-related havoc wreaked upon the airports of Europe!

So, Gary jumped in the car at 9:00 that night and drove to Amsterdam so he could meet her plane at 7:00 the next morning. What should have been an easy 4 hour drive each way turned into an 18-hour ordeal of snowy driving with a brief 4-hour stop-over in a hotel along the way. They arrived home exhausted but safe by mid-afternoon, just 3 hours after Molly’s flight would have arrived if it weren’t cancelled. Audrey and Ethan had the snow shovelled just in time.

Last year, I didn’t recognize this as a December ritual but, when it happened like clock-work again this year, I now realize it is a predictable routine – the Apfel Frau selling her fruit door-to-door. She parks her truck at the top of the street – the snow plow doesn’t clear the whole width of the street so the truck would get stuck if she drove onto our street – and, wearing a green apron over her winter parka, she knocks on each door in turn. When I declined her offer of apples (which store for weeks in the cellar, I was assured), she had clementines and pears to offer as well. With near-daily grocery trips a requirement here, I am not sure who finds the once-a-year need for fruit delivered to the door! I wonder how she makes a living?

Her arrival at the door reminded me of the visit last year by the knife and scissor sharpening vendor. Thankfully he arrived last year while my German tutor was here so she could explain to me what he wanted. A young boy of about 12 years old, also clad in an apron, rang the bell and offered to sharpen our knives and scissors. For some reason, this struck me as a quaint but outdated custom of the distant past. I told this story to the kids and no more than a day later, who should appear at the front door? Yep, the scissors and knife sharpening boy! I guess December is as good a month for the annual visit as any – with scissors put to frequent use in gift wrapping and art projects and knives put to the test with all the holiday dinner preparations, right?

My Christmas shopping in recent years has gravitated to as much online shopping as possible but, over here, it has become almost exclusively online for simplicity. The nearby mall this year guaranteed my reliance on my computer as they are in the midst of a parking garage construction project that has nearly halved the parking capacity. This mall is already known for parking conditions rivaling a busy Christmas season even mid-day on a weekday during the non-holiday season (a recent trip after school to buy Audrey new basketball shoes included 20 minutes looking for a parking spot and 15 minutes in the store!).

All of this online shopping means the postman and I have become buddies. He is patient with my German and I am grateful for his memory of his grade-school English! Because our mailbox is quite small and the Germans frequently require a signature at delivery, I see more of my neighbor than usual as she brings the packages left at her house when I’m not home. She must think we’re nuts (mail order shopping is still not so common here).

Just when you think you’ve mastered certain processes though, something new comes along. The combination of needing European Region DVD/xBox discs (PAL rather than NTSC – I’m just showing off my hard-earned ‘tech-savvy’) and preferring movies and video games in English sent me to the British Amazon site for several orders. This led to some new mail order adventures. I received a package notice that immediately had me second-guessing my primitive German reading skills. A quick check with Google Translate however, confirmed I’d read it right – my package was to be picked up at the “Tierriech” in the center of Konigstein. “Tierriech” translates as “Pet Kingdom.” Hmmm. Turns out, this was absolutely correct. The local pet store, called “Pet Kingdom” doubles as a local outpost for the common British package delivery company – not so common here in Germany. Thankfully, when I walked into the pet store with my delivery slip in hand and a confused look on my face, the non-English speaking clerk knew immediately why I was there – even if I wasn’t so sure!

My next stop that day was the regular post office to pick up a package that could not be left at the neighbor’s. A video game ordered for Ethan, which had a “teen” rating in the US is clearly considered much more dangerous over here. It required delivery to a person over 18 years old. I brought my passport with me but after standing in line for 15 minutes, discovered that because it was ordered under Gary’s Amazon account, he was required to pick up the package. Of course, the post office hours are only during a normal work day. The clerk, a young man, must have taken pity on me and offered that if I could bring Gary’s passport and return to his line, he would give me the package.

I returned an hour later and he scanned Gary’s passport number telling me he wouldn’t look at the picture so that he wouldn’t know it wasn’t mine! Good thing those regulations are in place to control delivery, huh?! Actually, I was quite grateful for this very un-German reckless disregard for the rules. He couldn’t resist a parting response to my question of ‘who knew video games could be so difficult to buy?’ observing that, “everything from America is dangerous.” What?