Grouch of the year

Two weeks ago i thought of introducing a new category to my blog: Grouch of the month. I wanted to honour wonderful and lovely behaviour like the one cashier at my local grocery store. We had a thanksgiving dinner for friends and part of it was a pumpkin dish with sage (Amazingly good!!!!).

I went to the store and just found an awful looking old plant which they called sage. I saw that you could maybe use half of it so i asked the cashier for a discount. She looked at me like i told her she wouldn't get any vacation days for the rest of her life anymore. In the typical nasty berliner Schnauze-style she said: Det kann ick nich entscheiden und det mach ick och hier nich. (I can't decide that and something like that I don't do). That made me really angry and I said: So get me one who can decide that. At that point I didn't care that the line behind me got bigger. It is not my fault that even in better stores normally just 2 cash outs are open? Her face expressed sheer hate and with the biggest disgust ever she called someone. The superior who came gave it to me for 1/2 price. When I left I smiled at the grouchy woman and thanked her for her wonderful service. She must have had a muscle paralyzation because her expression didn't change at all the whole time I was there. If not I would recomend therapy: How can I learn to get happy in life and if it is not possible for me how can I hide my negative attitude so I don't ruin the day of other people!!!!! Does anybody know a therapist who offers that??? I would love to hand over the adress and phone number!!!!

Well, the story above is nothing compared to the experience my girlfriend and I had with a Deutsche Beamtin. And she will be named: GROUCH OF THE YEAR and we should send her a thank you-card for making our life so difficult.

As I mentioned in an earlier post my gf does a master program at Humboldt-University here in Berlin. In 2008 she got granted a 2 years student visa. Since she needs another half a year to finish she had to renew her visa. So we went to the Ausländer-Behörde together and we thougt we were prepared. Boy was I wrong!!!

First the Beamtin was kind of nice and she asked for her health insurance status. In Germany everyone needs health insurance and if you don't have it as a foreigner you have to leave. Since she is covered under her mothers plan in the US for free she opted out of the German system to save 65 Euro every month. She has a very good health care plan with her mother and since she goes back to the US every semester break for some time she always went to the necessary doctors appointments. She was told in 2008 by the student who did the visa stuff for her at her school that this is possible but she could never get the German states health care anymore for the rest of the master-program, she would have to get private insurance if needed. So she took the document which showed that she opted out to the Ausländeramt in 2008 and since then it wasn't a problem.

This time the Beamtin looked at it and said she doesn't have health insurance and that her college must have been overworked so she misread the document as a confirmation from AOK that she is insured there. WHAT ???? If it wouldn't be so urgent I could have found some unintentional humor in this statement. If someone in 2008 would have told her the problems with her mothers plan she would have gotten the German one. Now she has to send a document to her insurance. I asked the Beamtin if you could get this formular in English because it might be difficult for someone in the US to read it. She didn't care and just said: Hamwa nich!!! (We don't have that). So the only possible option might be now to get private health insurance here, because AOK won't take her anymore and her insurance in the US can't guaranty what this document asks for: No time limit for the plan (her plan will expire in 2012) and no co-payments (she has very little but even that is to much).

This is just the little of the 2 problems the Beamtin caused. She asked her then to show that she has a monthly income. Her grandma and her mother give her money every month. She showed the notified statement from both of them. Then the woman got really nasty: "No, no, no that is enough that doesn't work here you have to have a blocked account where the minimum they have to put in is 8000 Euro and you can just take out 650 Euro every month. Otherwise you have to show me your bank statements wchich shows this amount to be put on every month in the past". She then decided to not renew her visa and just give her an extension of the old one untill January 18, 2011. Thank you wonderful lady. If your "overworked" collegue from 2008 wouldn't have missed to tell her that, too she might have been able to put the money she lived of in her first year into this blocked account. She sold her car in the US and it was a big part of the required amount of 8000 what she got for it. But nobody told her to do so, especially NOT the overworked Beamtin in 2008. In the last 2 years my girlfriend always took the money out of her US-Bank account and put the money into her German account. That was the cheapest and easiest way to get money from the US. Why should she have done it differently. Of course she did not put all the money into her German account because sometimes, liebe Beamtin, you have to do something like grocery shopping or you need other stuff.

Since her brother is in a masters program in the US her family doesn't have 8000 Euro in cash to put on her account at once now. So what to do ???? Not your problem, liebe Beamtin, I know. If you want people to follow the schei.... Deutsches Beamtenrecht than teach your collegues better and don't blame it on someone who can't know your silly rules.

At home I went on the internet just to find out that for a renewal of her student visa you don't have to proof all the things she asked for. Did anybody experience similar problems??? Why does this country make it so difficult and complicated for you always...

German google streetview paranoia - part 2

Two days ago they finally launched google street view germany with photos of Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and some other bigger cities. Of course i looked for the street where i live and what did i have to see?: Half of the buildings where blurred.AAAAAHHHH!!!! I think I am surrounded by paranoid ... (i don't even want to use the word). I learned that if one person in a house doesn't want it even if all the other people would want it the house would be blurred. WELCOME TO DEMOCRACY GERMAN STYLE!!!!

When i saw that this morning it seriously made me really mad. In no other country on this planet it is like it is here in Germany. And it is really stupid to blur houses on a main road where hundreds and thousands of people pass by every day. I could just hit my head against the wall. In my opinion it has nothing to do with being more sensitive to data protection because of the misuse in two totalitarian regimes in the 20th century. What is going on here???

For me this is a general thing being against so many things. There is always a Bürgergruppe against something. You could say that is a good thing that people care about society but where are the groups in favour of something???

There is serious research how anti-progressive Germany is and always was. In the 19th century doctors seriously told people they should not get on a train because a speed higher than 35 km/h (20 m/ph???) would be bad for the brain. I think it is deeply rooted in Germans to be against new ways to do something. You can even find newspaper articles which ask if this country turns in the country of no and that this might be a sign of the aging society
(http://www.focus.de/magazin/debatte/focus-leserdebatte-sind-die-deutschen-fortschrittsfeindlich_aid_560345.html)

People say no to Stuttgart 21, No to Heidelberg congress center, No to the new-built and badly needed new autobahn A100 in Berlin and other autobahns, No to the new airport in Berlin and runways in Frankfurt, Munich, etc. even no to wind power plants because it ruins the landscape. NO, no, no!!!! There is this ideal of back to the roots-eco-friendly-green lifestyle. Don't get me wrong, we have to do everything possible to avoid climate change and we have to be sensitive with pollution and look after good old mother earth but we also have to adjust this to our modern life.

This NO-mentality is one serious reason why i would like to leave this country one day.

Disappointed with the US-Voter

Election day was a mostly sad day for me and my girlfriend. Since in her family are all really really strong democrats (her mother even did door to door campaigning for President Obama in 2008) no one is happy about the outcome of the election. As a German I think i have this gene missing to be able to understand how you can possibly vote for the republicans. The german political spectrum just reaches from the left of the Democratic party (Bernie Sanders) to Dennis Kucinich to the center right of the Democratic party.
Well, as you can see now i am absolutely not a republican and don't get me started to talk about the "caring" next to be speaker of the House John Boehner. Ice Age has come to congress:-(

Could you close the window please, i am freezing!!!

Well normally i write about things i don't understand or don't like here in Germany. Since i live here there is much more about to write.
Today i want to tell you something i don't get about the USA. Maybe it is also just something my girlfriend and her family does so i shouldn't generalize.
I commented on another blog that I have to admit that i like aircondition. Yes you other germans out there: I LOVE IT!!!! and not just in the car. In early july when it was so f.... hot here in Berlin we almost bought an ac, but we didn't at the end because we worried about the additional costs of electricity.
In the US it is so cold inside (especially stores) that i think you could store dead bodies in these buildings. And that is to much for me sometimes.
Now the weather got cold here in Berlin but i believe it is still not that cold outside that you couldn't open a window. And even in winter i do it at least once a day for 5 minutes. I like the air and i hate how apartments smell after a few days without opening the window.
So here is my question: Why does my girlfriend never complain about the freezing temperatures in american stores, restaurants, etc. during summer, but after one minute with open windows now she tells me to close it because she is freezing??? Is it maybe the killer draft she fears while my countrymen do that when it is hot??? I always thought Americans like it cold. Rooms, drinks with ice cubes, etc. This doesn't match for me...

Culture shock

Since two days my girlfriend is back to Berlin. She was at home for almost two months. As i know from previous trips to the US (and I stayed at the most 6 weeks) it is hard and takes a while to adjust being back in Germany. Houses are so close together. I never thought about it before i went to the US for the first time but when I was back I felt a bit claustrophobic. People look so different, especially the teeth, it smells different (I will never get this deodorant-hating attitude some people have here). A lot of people on the streets run you over or pass very close and if you wait for a sorry you could spend the rest of your life where it happened.

Of course it was always easier for me to adjust again because i was born and raised here so i knew how it works in Germany. Back in 2006, during my first trip to the US, i always wondered why people constantly said Excuse me, when they passed 3 meters away from me, but i loved it fast because for the first time it was like my parents tought me. They told me to always hold the door open for people behind you, especially women, to offer my seat to the elderly or pregnant women on public transportation, etc. If i told my more conservative parents about my american experiences they always would say: Oh it is the fault of the 1968 student movement. They protested against the conservative and hierarchic situation in the German post-WWII society but they also declared manners as something superficial and unnecessary which were just designed to limit the potentials of people. Since I was born a lot later than 1968 I can't tell if it is true or not. I can just say that manners are not seen as something very important. I feel the need to add again, that not everyone is like that, there are exceptions, but the general observation i think, is like i said.
Back to my girlfriend. She is going through that early phase of jet laged-culture-shock. People are rude, unfriendly, the design of curtains, furnitures, rugs, etc. everything is better in the US, etc. I know this will take some days for here to really be back again but untill then i wonder if the only thing i can do is listen. But i can tell you it is not always easy because i beef about my country quite often but in such situations i feel the need to defend Germany. Life can be confusing sometimes.

The American brands of my life

Tomorrow i can start to count down untill my girlfriend E. will come back from Pennsylvania. She will bring an enormous pile of new clothes for me (at least i hope that:-) from the outlets close to her family's hometown. I think since I met her in 2006 i never bought clothes or shoes here in Germany. Since then it is ROCKPORT and TIMBERLAND which comfort my feet, and mostly BANANA REPUBLIC and GAP for clothes. I am always stunned when i go to a store here how expensive clothes are in the old world and how enjoyably cheep they are in the new world. Does anyone know a reason for that? America-The Shoppers Paradise!!!
When E. will be in Berlin again her luggage is also stuffed with other goods of COSTCO (Thanks to her G'Ma's membership), so life is at least tolerable here in Germany;-). Vanilla Extract, brown sugar, cream of tartar, evaporated milk, GHIRARDELLI morsels, Craisins from OCEAN SPRAY, SUNMAID Golden Raisins, canned pumpkin (yes, Thanksgiving is comming up), CREST toothpaste and all the female beauty stuff, i as a man never remember the name. She will have made good deals at TARGET and TJ MAXX and will have enjoyed amazing Mu Shu chicken at the best chinese restaurant i ever went to. Very important!!! she will also have had real mexican food at places like CANTINA LAREDO, etc.
My profound german friends will hopefully excuse my superficial thoughts of commerce and brands. Yes, you are absolutely right, the best american brand she will bring back is she herself!!! I miss you E.!!!

Smelly Europeans - Danny Granger Tweet

This is an insult to every person in europe. People never smell here, never ever!!!! At least not in Berlin;-).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/01/danny-granger-team-usa-fo_n_700457.html