A Few Cultural Differences

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Hi {first_name, "there"},

Here’s your latest post from The St. Agnes Journal, my account of eight months on a mile-wide, English island.

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---12.25.1999---

It’s early morning, Christmas Day, and Germany lies outside the window, eleven floors below, bright-eyed, even through its rainy haze and naked trees. I’ve just woken up, wet with sweat, again, though my fever is starting to break. It was London that did me in, London and Isabel Allende.

Wednesday I walked around London shopping and picking up a few books to fill in the island evenings, one of which was Isabel Allende’s The Stories of Eva Luna. The stories were so beautifully wrought, so potent and alluring that, reading her on the train on the way back to Zoe’s, I missed her stop, Balham station, by an almost impossibly wide mark.

I had been on High Street Kensington that afternoon and decided to head back around 4pm with what I thought would be ample time to get to Zoe’s, grab my things, and jump back on the Tube for the trip out to Heathrow, and my 8:00 pm flight to Cologne.

At Victoria Station I left the underground for a Connex train to Balham, a diagonal shortcut that would save about ten stops versus taking the Tube. I boarded the train, sat, and was immediately engrossed in tales of jungle codes of honor, and women, lithe, bird-like, and fair, held captive by greed.

As we silently departed, my mind filled with what was transpiring on those pages. Later, as train gradually cast off more and more passengers, I thought surely we’d be getting to Balham soon.

I tried to divine our position from the spider-web-like map on the wall of the carriage but gave up, asking a kind-looking woman, of apparently Jamaican descent instead. She laughed, “Oh, Balham was many, many stops ago.” Noticing the book in my hand, my index finger still marking the page, she added, “Must be a good book.” I smiled in agreement and made a quick exit at the next station.

I had allowed myself to be carried so far out into God knows what borough of greater London that, in accordance with the laws of English systems design, I couldn’t simply take a single train back the way I came. It was the classic, “Balham? You can’t get there from here, mate.” So I took the next train back to a freezing, wet, little junction and waited half an hour for the long ride back to Balham—a journey that, had I been paying attention, would have been four stops.

I arrived at Zoe’s precisely the moment I’d originally planned to leave in order to make my flight. I substituted a relaxed dinner for a fat slice of Stollen and a frantic session of throwing my scattered belongings into a bag. There you are, the dangers of literature.

I left again, hoofing it down to the Tube station, stuffed suitcase in hand and overweight backpack on my shoulders. When I transferred to the Piccadilly line for the haul out to Heathrow, the train was stuffed like a Christmas sausage, every steamy link bursting with shoppers, office workers, luggage, and babies. I was roasting under my coat. By the time we neared the airport, the train was nearly empty and getting chilly. The doors opened and I ran the escalator/conveyor belt obstacle course, checking in without a moment to spare. Mercifully, the flight had been delayed. I bought Vitamin C and ate a cheap sandwich at the gate.

In Germany, the plane emptied into freezing cold air as we all made our way to one of two, extra-wide, airport buses waiting on the tarmac. The doors remained open while we waited for everyone to board. It was freezing. I zipped up my parka and hung onto the rail with one hand, the other wrapped around my chest like I was nursing a wound.

The bus made its way towards the customs gate and we all flooded out of its belly on arrival, funneling towards a little booth in which two uniformed agents scanned passports, making lists, and checking them twice on orders, it seemed, from a millennially-tense government.

To my shock and woeful dismay, the air in the arrivals hall felt colder than on the tarmac! Everything in Germany is so meticulously well organized that it seemed improbable that this could have been by accident. I imagine the idea was something about it being unhealthy to go from cold, outside air to artificially warm, inside air. Great in principle, perhaps, but far too zealously applied here, if that was indeed the case. Sub-arctic air tumbled down on us from the vents as the customs officials double-checked. That’s where my immune system, weakened over previous evenings by too many two-toned cocktails and too few real meals, gave up. Hours later, in bed at my aunt and uncle’s apartment, I was sweat-soaked and shivering while my every movement set off in my head the distinctive, high-pitched, outer-space ping of illness.

I’d spent the whole night busying myself with repetitive, assembly-line-derived, workplace hallucinations. My brain seems to disconnect itself from reality at even the slightest hint of fever—some would say fever isn’t even a requirement but that’s another story.

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It’s rare that I get a chance to see my relatives since they all live in Germany, so when I do it’s a pleasure. My dad’s sister Doris is one of my favorites. I’ve loved her since I was little. She always smiles from the heart and welcomes joy easily and often. She is the exact female version of my father: same face, same laugh, and the same slight shuffle in her walk. She tells it like it is and does so with a good sense of humor. That’s a bit of a rarity in my family but a skill my sister has also mastered. It’s great to see her, and my Oma and cousin, to root through old photos, eat big meals, and talk about family history.

I enjoy talking with my uncle as well. His name is Jürgen, same as my father, same as my mom’s brother. Jürgen and Doris run a fruit stand in downtown Cologne, which means that nearly every morning finds my uncle at the wholesalers’ market negotiating prices for crates of cherries, asparagus, and so on. I’m not sure if it’s for this reason that he can recite (and does parenthetically in conversations) the price of anything in their apartment, when it was bought, and how much was saved. If the item in question is an electrical product, he will also tell you the wattage it consumes, and how much less it uses than the previous version. This provides me with endless quiet amusement.

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Being back in Germany I note a few cultural differences. Even though my aunt and uncle’s apartment is decorated in what I would call “ woodsy, Baronial-Bavarian,” everything reflects modern, German, cultural coding. Door handles work with Mercedes-Benz precision. Glass doors and windows can be opened at the top, so that they tip a short distance into the room, by engaging hinges at the bottom of the frame, or opened like a door by engaging hinges in the side of the frame. This is done by positioning a handle in the frame itself either up, down, or horizontally. Very neat. Very functional.

The 27-year-old kitchen looks modern by today’s standards. Everything is modular, measured, and organized. My aunt sets the table for breakfast the evening before. The bathroom, like the rest of the house, is hospital-clean. Towels hang on a rack, each with a hook labeled with an individually engraved tag: Jürgen, Doris, Hands & Feet, etc. A towel with a temporary identification tag was provided for me as soon as I arrived.

The quality of the bedding is a bonus, deliciously fluffy goose-down feather beds and mattress covers. The only thing I have yet to work out is the proper method of pillow use. On my bed I found a) a huge goose-down pillow approx. 1-meter squared, b) a smaller pillow, exactly half the size and thickness, but four times firmer in fluff quotient. I’m sure they’re meant to be used together in some pre-ordained way which I have yet to work out.

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As a window on English culture, I offer this... Last week on St. Agnes, I met Jon at the pub. He ordered tea which was delivered in a cheap, cylindrical, metal pot. As he attempted to pour it into his cup, the tea ran down along the front of the pot and onto the saucer. After the rest went in properly, he topped the cup off by pouring the spilled tea from the saucer into it. That probably wouldn’t happen with German, restaurant-issue teapots, but Jon argued that was part of the English charm. He offered that this was, in fact, standard for British restaurant teas. Furthermore, he speculated that replacing all of these faulty pots with functional ones would rob his countrymen, and women, of their traditional, and expected, tea experience, thereby creating much distress and dismay.

One more thing on the two cultures: God help the German, non-smoking, vegetarian, and the English, recovering alcoholic.

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Thanks for reading,Nik

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