Just so

I lived in California where there is so much cultural diversity (esp. in Silicon Valley) that by and large people are very comfortable with things being done in many different ways. Cooking rice like the Mexicans is different from how the Japanese do it or the Italian way, dressing in saris is fine, so are jeans and suits. Some celebrate Christmas, some Hanukkah, some nothing or something else. Indians shake their head when they agree, Westerns nod.

From an environment that is very flexible on those little things I have come to the culture of “just so”. Maybe it is the fact that we live in a small, well-off southern German city or that I have a lot of contact with my parents’ generation right now but “just so” creeps into my life all the time. Things are just done a certain way and that is that. Nobody ever seems to even questions whether there are other, different but equally valid ways of doing stuff.

Is hard to come up with examples for that phenomenon. If it were big things it would be easy, but it is the little things that by themselves are not fit to exemplify it and only in aggregate, observed over time create the complete picture. The List I wrote about in my last post is an example. The whole “they don’t like this” discussion I had over taking geek-boy out of school for a couple of days and the pervasive attitude that things should just stay the same even if they could be improved upon because “this is how we did it” (implied is “why should you have it any better than I did – just shut up and suck it up”).

A little story about that was when geek-boy started school. Instead of getting the supply lists (there seems to be a list theme going here) a few days early on the website or via email we got it on the first day of school, along with several thousand other families with kids in school. The supplies were needed within a few days and naturally all the parents and kids flocked to the stores that day. Now this is not NYC, there aren’t dozens of stores, there is a handful that have all that is needed. The scene in those stores resembled a “Black Friday door buster deal” type situation only that we weren’t going for electronics and sweaters but fountain pens and notebooks.

I run into a neighbor that day and mentioned that scene and how easy it would be to mitigate by just putting up the lists a few days early so there would be more time to shop for stuff. She clearly did not think that this was a good idea, mainly because “this is what I had to do for two kids” (little side snide comment on my being a lazy person for only having one kid).

And then vacations …. It is early December and I hear tons of adverts everywhere to book summer vacation now before everybody else does it in January. Summer vacation? What? It is December, I am not thinking about booking summer vacation until April – and then I think I am early. But this is how it is done here and one better goes along with the program or else all the nice hotels with German speaking staff will be sold out.

I know that I am not being entirely fair here, there are 14,000 students in this city most of which I am sure embrace new technologies and do not overcook cauliflower and serve it with white creme sauces because that is the only way one can serve cauliflower – but still. A little more willingness to open ones mind would sure not hurt.

Tomorrow we are going to an Asian restaurant for my friend’s birthday. They serve sushi there. I love sushi and I just hope it isn’t offered with a creme sauce because “that’s just how food is served here.”

The List

So it is the three of us and 2 home offices on about 850 sqm. Not exactly a lot of space to spare – at least by Californian standards. The weather is grey, humid and cold and dryers do not exist. So I hang my laundry on little laundry rack things that – during the nice season – I put out on the balcony for relatively quick drying. It works – sort of – though my mom insists that I should be ironing all the t-shirts and pants, in fact pretty much everything.  In fact the laundry isn’t as nice and wrinkle-free as the one I pull out of the dryer at home. Just for clarification, though, I do not iron. I despise ironing and it is only done under extreme duress in my house.

The laundry rack in the living room will likely be a fairly permanent installation throughout winter and early spring.

But now we have that grey, nasty stuff going and the balcony option does not exist anymore. So it is hanging the laundry on the rack thingy in the living room but then we can’t see the TV anymore or taking it down to the special laundry hanging room in the basement. Not super convenient but doable.

So over the last few week I wash and haul down and hang and all is well until the other day I get down to the room with an armful (literally, the basket was full with other stuff upstairs) of clean wet laundry to find the darn place full to the last centimeter of hanging space. Geek-boy is trailing behind me. I offer a few choice words for commentary of the kind that I probably should not utter in geek-boys presence and start ranting about how inconsiderate the (…) neighbors are to take up all the space.

“Mom …” geek-boy pipes in “there is a list.”

“What (…) list are you talking about?” I reply annoyed, clean laundry slipping from my arms and me desperately looking for some place to deposit it.

“Here is a list on the wall that says when we can wash and hang laundry.” Geek-boy says absentmindedly because by now he is intently studying the list (he loves lists).

“So, we could have washed last week Tuesday and Wednesday and the next time we are allowed to wash is a couple of weeks from now.”

I stare at the list and wonder whether I just got sucked into some short-story by Kafka or something. There, in front of my very eye is indeed a list that tells me that I could have washed last week during two very busy days and in a couple of weeks when we’ll be away. Then there is one 2-day period in December and then we are into the new year.

I struggle for composure, seriously, still trying to keep the laundry slipping from the pile in my arms. I finally put down it down on a washing machine (not super clean but better than the floor where it would have otherwise ended up) and stare some more. Then I carefully check the neighbors big linen sheets – dry – take them down, fold them more nicely than I would have folded my own and hang my own laundry in the little space created.

We run our errand and then I go ring the neighbors door bell to apologies profusely for displacing some of their laundry from its rightfully claimed space. I mention my unawareness of “The List” and see the complete lack of comprehension in the neighbor’s face. How could I have not known about The List? How did I not intuitively comprehend that there had to be The List? How else did I think people could organize their laundry business if not by The List that gets posted in January and is valid for a whole year?

And here I am and the thought of The List had never even crossed my mind and I still can’t shake this feeling of absurdity when I think of The List.

So, I guess, at least in winter, in addition to holidays, school vacation, work requirements and alike I will have to schedule my trips – business or pleasure – around The List. At least if I want clean sheets and towels.

Weird Stuff

“Tank & Cut” – not the new innovation in service, if you ask me
(C) Tina Baumgarter

Every once in a while here in Germany I come across something that makes me stop in my tracks and stare – maybe even with an unbecomingly open mouth and an overall slightly brain-dead expression. The first such occasion happened fairly soon after we arrived here. I left the hardware store (what else) and my eye fell on the gas station across the street where I realized that a hair dresser – of all things – was trying to create a symbiotic relationship with the gas station. All under the idiotic and completely wrong slogan “tank & cut”. To understand the degree of idiocy you must know that “tanken” means to gas up in German. Now I can’t make up my mind whether I find it weirder that somebody uses English in their slogan for a German hairdressing service without bothering to check with somebody who actually speaks the language with a certain degree of fluency whether what they are saying actually makes any sense or the fact that somebody seems to think that there is indeed a certain logic to getting a haircut while gassing up, or before or after. Just imaging the following conversation:

“Oh, honey, now that we are here at the gas station I’ll go and get a quick perm.”

“Why, darling, what a great idea, I think I get a trim as well.”

Makes perfect sense, now, doesn’t it.

The latest such weird moment happened the day before yesterday. I went to a toy store with geek-boy to buy play-doh (what we need that for is a blog for another day) and while there we had fun looking at all the stuff on sale. A rather large section had lots of model train related products (at absurd prices I might add) including the usual trains and tracks plus all the little houses, trees and people to decorate the scene. All very cute and ever so detailed and – actually – a wee bit obsessive to me. I stared in disbelief at tiny plastic flowers, pets, intricate trees, firemen, retirees, kids, families in single and multipack when my eyes came to rest on a selection of nudists some quite overweight.

Nudists for your model train! You never knew what you missed.
(c) Tina Baumgartner

I am no prude, seriously, but a selection of nudists for your model train landscape?. There is something really weird about this. More disconcerting even a selection called “bathroom stories” depicting, well, just that. I’ll spare you the picture I took but it more than borders on the tasteless, weird and possibly even kinky.

So on we went, though selections of My Little Pony, board games, Pokemon cards and stuffed animals to pay for our play-doh. Problem is I really can’t unsee the stuff I saw in the ever so harmless sounding model train section.