There's an Ausbildung for that

The German capacity to impose order rivals that of the Borg. Many people don't notice it because it's such a quietly pervasive part of German society. Spend enough time with Germans or in Germany, though, and you'll start to see it too.

There are little habits like the German love for office supplies. Go to a classroom and nearly everyone has a “Mäppchen“, which is a little pocket that holds their traditional pencils, mechanical pencils, ball-point pens, felt-tip pens, markers, ruler(s) and highlighters. All usually in assorted colors.

Then there are some very well hidden things, like the German legal system. This one took me a long time to notice. I was sitting in a seminar and all of the students seemed to be quoting legal statutes in their presentations, and I thought “Why the hell is there a law for the establishment of recreational small gardens or the amount of fertilizer you can apply to a potato field?” But when I was making my presentation on patent law in the US, all of the laws I found were vaguely worded, and I ended up referencing dozens of court cases in my presentation to get the point across. Then it dawned on me; Germany's legal system isn't based on laws open to interpretation or hair-splitting court cases like the US. They have a statutory legal system, and they codify everything beforehand; there is no uncertainty. The US inherited a common law legal system from Britain, so we have dozens of court cases to determine exactly how a law applies in this and that situation. Also the German legal system doesn't use wishy-washy, imprecise juries. There is just a judge, and if need be, two lay judges, but the lay judges are most certainly not your peers like the jury would be in the US. This bit would be a bonus for me if I immigrated, since I've already been called for jury duty twice in the US!

But my favorite daily example of German order, and, incidentally the topic of this post, is the German apprenticeship system (Ausbildungssystem). The German lower schooling system is a riddle wrapped in a mystery broken into a jigsaw puzzle and cloaked in a conundrum, so I won't even attempt to explain that in this post, but at the end of it all the students have to choose a career, and heaven knows they can't just get a job. They have to first go through one of Germany's 344 governmentally approved Ausbildungen (translated). When I first heard about this system, I though it was fantastic, and admittedly I still kind of do, but for different reasons.

The Ausbildungssystem assures you as the consumer that not just anyone is building your roads, painting your walls, or wiring your house. And in the US we still have apprenticeships for professions like plumber, electrician, barber, carpenter and so forth. It's a good system. I don't want some guy whose “got a thing for electronics” wiring my house, I want a professional. But Germany takes it to a whole new level. If you looked through the list of approved apprenticeships, some of them make perfect sense. They provide the German work force with people trained to do very technical and specific jobs that any industrialized society needs. Some of the jobs though, just seem like the sort of joke a lawyer would hide in a contract to see if anyone actually reads the fine print. There is the Biology Model Maker (this link is in German), the Screed Layer (what the hell is screed?!), the Precision Optician (who is different from the regular Optician...somehow), the Surface Coater, and the list goes on.

The point is, it gets far too specific for my tastes, and some of the jobs seem like they hardly need training. For instance the Ausbilding to become a waiter takes three years! At Red Robin I got a week of training and was thrown to the sharks. My first table was a birthday party of handicapped tweens. I made two of them cry and one boy dislocated another girl's wrist. It was a blood bath. More training would have been nice, but three years is still ridiculous. On the upside, I think the Germans who go through the apprenticeships have more pride in their careers and tend to keep them longer, whereas many Americans take a job and then switch when it no longer suits them.

Now, you might say that this is just an example of out of control bureaucracy; just because the apprenticeships exist doesn't mean the Germans actually hire the people. I beg to differ. Another note on German culture is that Do-It-Yourself does not exist here, not to the extent it does in the US. When I was in language school in Radolfzell, my host mom's son had his birthday party at our house, and they didn't grill or potluck; their hired a butcher. I've been volunteering at a library in town. They had to move buildings and instead of taking things apart themselves, they hired a carpenter. A motion-controlled light needed to be installed, they hired an electrician. My bathroom ceiling molded over, they hired a painter and a sheetrocker.

It's not that the Germans are lazy or incapable, not at all. It's just that the Germans want things done right, and they value dependability. I guarantee, if that motion-controlled light stops working, the electrician will be there to fix it the next day. And the carpenter that was hired for the move was, incidentally, the one who built all of the fixtures in the first place 10 years ago. For me, the sense of fulfillment and triumph I get when I build a futon or a desk is worth it, but for a German it's better to know that that futon or desk is built properly, and that there is someone whose reputation you can depend on standing behind the desk.

I don't think I'll ever be able to understand totally the German need for Ordnung, but I'm getting closer. Though I still wonder what three years of training would be like to become a waiter.

die Frustration

I had the opportunity when I was accepted to the program to choose where I would be staying, living and working. The deal was that I had until May 1^st to secure an internship in a foreign country, without being present, and 11 months in advance. Needless to say, I did not secure an internship in advance. I didn't try to secure one in advance. Well that's not totally true, I googled some things, got bored and decided that it was such a long shot that it wasn't worth the effort. This, ladies and gentlemen, is how the mind of a boy genius functions.

Now, the last time I studied abroad, I was in Tübingen. There we had 30,000 students, which included close to 1000 exchange students. There were so many Americans that they didn't even all know each other. There was a bar or club on every street corner, and a party several times in the week. I wondered how people completed their degrees, there was so much to do. I spent 4 months having the best time of my life. I had class like 7 hours per week, I had an enormous friend group from English-speaking countries, and I could travel to France, Switzerland, or Austria for less than 5€ any weekend.

You can imagine my shock when I was placed in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the least densely-populated state in Germany. My college here only has 2000 students, and of those only about 20 are other exchange students, I can name them all. There is one other American in the town. And there really isn't that much to do here. Apart from the American girl, none of my friends speak English. The nearest and only country adjacent is Poland, which, in fairness I am visiting next weekend. And mensa parties, parties in the school's cafeteria, are a highlight. There are only a handful of bars, but they aren't very hopping.

This placement did not meet my expectations at all. And here's why that's actually a good thing. My expectations were based on a 4-month study abroad stint in Tübingen. Tübingen was a blast, but in Tübingen I got the lowest grades in my life, speaking German was a rarity, and I probably spent more on booze than I did on food. In my defense on that last part, I can cook very cheaply, but whiskey is expensive!

Here in Neubrandenburg, if I open my mouth to speak, it has to be German or I won't be understood. There is most certainly less to do, but this also means that I can't escape to a bar with my American friends or to Switzerland with my Australian friends. It forces me to interact with Germans, to speak their language and to learn their culture. I am also forced to connect with Germans for friendship. I have learned more about German home life in the past month than I did in all my time in Tübingen. And that is the goal of my year here, not to study abroad, but to learn about another culture.

It sucks, though. I sit in class and the professor asks why the Earth has seasons. I know the answer is because the Earth tilts on its axis by about 22° and, as it rotates around the sun, certain parts get more or less light at a different angle, and that's why the sun hovers at the horizon toward the poles, and that's why we have solstices and equinoxes. And I open my mouth, but realize that I don't know how to say tilt, angle, hover, pole, equinox, or solstice. So I have to sit there silently. After class, people tell jokes that I don't get. I meet a German and I want to say “I really like you, you're so smart, and kind, and understanding when I stumble through a sentence and could we please get coffee sometime?”, but all that comes out is “You are cool.”

If I had to pick, I would never have chosen Neubrandenburg. But since I'm here, I'm (sort of) glad of it. I'm learning a lot about what it means to be a foreigner, and what it means to be in a foreign country. It's easy to be abroad when you're surrounded by friends and compatriots. I wouldn't have experienced a very important part of being abroad without having lived here. I would have lived only in Tübingen and claimed to understand Germany and Germans. Now I don't totally understand Germany or Germans, but I'm closer, and I'm thankful, and Lord Jesus I miss 1.50€ shots at Kukuk

das Denglisch

I can think of at least two readers of my blog who have already noticed this trend, but I need to bring it to everyone's attention before I embarrass myself. My English is trash. Seriously. Writing blog posts brings it to my attention, but when I speak English, I've lost my flare for word play. Let me give you a taste of what I running through my head right now. The rest of this post, I'll write only correcting typographical errors. I'm gonna go back and add in the appropriate translations, and I'll bold the text whose word order or phraseology is weird but would sound fine if translated into German.

Most of the problems stem from the fact that the deutsche (German) words come leichter (more easily) in my head, and I always have to überlegen (consider) what is the richtige Wort auf (correct word in) English. It usually happens with not commonly used words in English, like trainstation or marketplace (both are one word in German). There are also other words that have a very specific meaning in German and I use them in German because I hear them so oft (often) in only German. For example, das wort (the word) Anmeldung means registration, but specifically in my case it means registration with the city. There is also the verb anmelden, and when you conjugate it you break off the an- and put it at the end of the Satz (sentence). So I will say sentences like “I have not yet melded with the stadt (city) an.” I have problems like this with sentencebau (sentence construction). And I usually get a Mischung (mixture) out of German and Inglisch (English pronunciation with German spelling rules) sentence order when I speak. Or if I'm trying to erklär (clarify) something precisely in Englisch (the -sch gets me every time) I always have to pause and get the sentence right in my head before I speak it out. Deswegen (a fantastic word that means “because of that”) sound ich (I) like a moron or some sort of person who can speak well. Aber in der Tat, bin ich sehr klug, und gut with my wörter. (But in fact, I am intelligent and good with words)

Ok, holy crap. I've got to stop this. Writing like that is legitimizing the problems I make all the time and will probably make me slip completely into German by the end of the post.. Now, I'll go back to correcting everything I say. The word Denglisch is what we call the mixture of German (Deutsch) and English that we speak everyday. We can all understand each other, but anyone speaking only pure English or German, would get lost pretty easily.

In other news, my English spelling is really going downhill. I tried to look up the word “maneuver” today only to realize that I have absolutely no idea how to spell it. Even after writing it down, all of the possibilities looked ridiculous.

On a scale of 1 to 10, allowing myself to write that way has totally destroyed my ability to compose in English, and I'm going to have to end this post early. I guess the moral of the story is that, If you notice me speaking more simplistically, or if you notice that I no longer know how to use a comma the proper prepositions, don't think I'm illiterate.