Breaking the Ice With Germans - You're Only 3 Hellos Away

If you aren’t familiar with the research I am doing here at the University of Münster, I am working on my PhD in Behavioral Finance.  I am fortunate enough to conduct a number of experiments here for my dissertation.  

If it would fit my dissertation topic (it doesn’t) I would do an experiment with a large group of people that I have tested myself with success (again, I am only a sample of one).  

I think that it takes 3 friendly hellos before the hello is authentically reciprocated.  Other people, both Germans and foreigners, have told me how unfriendly the store clerks and restaurant staff are here in Germany.  I will agree that it is not the same ‘customer experience’ at these places compared to America, but it may not have to be.  3 Hellos are all you need.  (This is sounding like an infomercial now.)   The three responses to the 3 Hellos are as follows:

Hello 1 = Strange look.  No response. 

Hello 2 = Strange look.  A tentative hello back. 

Hello 3 = Friendly smile.  Reciprocated Hello.  

It takes 3 friendly hellos for the store clerks to go from this ...

to this!

I have tried this at virtually every store we shop at in Hiltrup and the success rate is astounding.    I get friendly hellos at the grocery store from the people stocking the aisles.  That’s normal in America, but I know that’s totally not normal here.  Here is our top list of friendliest store/restaurant owners (in no particular order):

Ti’ Amo Döner/Pizza place.  The nicest people own this shop.  The owner always comes and talks to us to see how we are doing and gives special drinks and candy to Dylan. 

Ice Cream Shop – Again, really nice owner and waitresses.  Dylan has a crush on one of the new waitresses (Dana says that she is indeed really cute, so I definitely need to check it out myself…for Dylan, of course) and said upon seeing her, “I like her.  She’s very cute. Can I go pay for our ice cream now?”

Tapas y Vino – This is the Spanish restaurant right below our house, so this is always a great last stop on our date nights.  The owner is very nice and is Peruvian, so we get to speak Spanish with him while we are dining there.   We are so motivated to get caught up with our Spanish (that we learned in school) that we booked a month long trip to the southern coast of Spain next spring.  We will be able to test/maintain our Spanish afterwards at our downstairs restaurant. 

I issue a question and challenge to the other expats and Germans living here.  Are we weird for having a friendly relationship with restaurant/shop owners, or is this normal here?  If not, the challenge would be to test the 3 Hello system (definitely an infomercial now) to see if you get the same results.  Please let me know about your experiences. 

Myth Buster - Is Germany Dog-Friendly? Not Really.

In (a very delayed) response to why Oscar isn’t more involved in our day to day activities, here is a brief look into our experience of having a dog here in Germany (for reference, see comment on this previous blog post).  I could be wrong and I can only speak from the voice of one person’s experience, but Hiltrup (and the NRW in general) doesn’t seem to be the friendliest place on earth for dogs.  Each day on my Oscar walk, I get to see lots of old, miserable people who I swear haven’t laughed since 1971.  I secretly want to see if somehow I could make them laugh, just to see if their face would break.   My mother-in-law had an old man growl at her on her last visit.  "He just literally growled at me as I walked past."  After a few visits here, she wasn’t surprised one bit and told us that she was used to "The Coldness."  Don't confuse this with our previous post about our nice neighbors who seem to be a minority of overly friendly, helpful people; whereas most other people here have an unreasonable and unjustified suspicion towards everyone and are quick to point out faults in strangers with sharp, gruff verbal confrontations on the street. 

I hate walking our dog because of "The Coldness." In Florida, Oscar was king.  Everyone in our neighborhood knew him by name and only knew me as "Oscar’s Dad."  Occasionally here, there are really friendly people who come up to me and want to know about Oscar.  Most of the time, people avoid me even to the point of crossing the street.  People veer away and sneer at me, and mothers grab their children as if I am walking a wild tiger down the street.  

The other alternative to walking Oscar down the Main Street in Hiltrup is to take the back streets.  This where these same old, grumpy people walk home from their shopping and perch themselves at the windowsill to make sure no one steps foot on their carefully crafted yards.  I am almost convinced that they age, the love they had given to their family and children is replaced by the love of their yard/garden.  

One day in Borken, Dana got yelled at so badly about Oscar peeing on some shrubs, pointing out one browning leaf out of literally thousands that was not a brilliant green, and that it was Oscar’s fault (presumably the only dog in the city!) even though they never actually witnessed his infraction. In these cases, we are never asked nicely to do something.  It’s always in the harshest 0-to-100 in 2 seconds way imaginable.  I could be wrong, but there seems to be a lot of anger behind these requests. Little do they know but prior to the tongue-lashing we rarely walked Oscar by this house, but after the old couple reprimanded Dana, she actually went out of her way to walk Oscar by their house more often so he would pee on their bushes (and maybe once or twice "forgot" to pick up his poop by their walkway). It was imminently satisfying.     

I find it ironic that the same yards that have signs of ‘No Dog Pooping Allowed’ are littered with cigarette butts and other trash. 

We respect the sign ... unless you yell at us.

If you couldn’t tell yet, I am at my breaking point.  My German level is ok enough and my anger of being talked to like that is high enough where the next unlucky person to growl, yell, or otherwise play the role of dog police is going to get 3 years of pent up frustration.  The response is going to be in German and in English.  It will likely be laced with expletives and otherwise ungodly words.  It will be relentless.  Hopefully, Dylan won’t be around for it.

We love living in Hiltrup.  Our dog-walking experiences are among the few negative experiences we can associate with living here.  So please, if you see me with Oscar in Hiltrup, don’t be afraid of us.  And definitely don’t yell at us…you could be the unlucky victim.

Nette Nachbarn (Nice Neighbors) in Germany

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while now and was reminded about it after trying to fixing my flat bike tire.  The main point of this post is simply to say that we have awesome neighbors here in Germany! 

While living in Borken for the first 18 months of our time in Germany, we really became close to our neighbors and spent many evenings in the driveway talking and laughing.  Dylan would play with the other kids in our building and we would have a couple of beers, which aided my German speaking (my theory on this is that my German speaking ramps up with the first couple beers, peaks around 2 or 3, and begins the gradual decent afterward. At this point it still sounds good in my mind but does not to the person on the other end.  That’s usually the signal to go home.).  

My neighbor buddy Gerd, who is a retired worker from a large corporation, was always a. in a good mood and b. available to talk.  Gerd and his wife Julia were always looking out for us.  For example, my bike would always be fixed before I could get it to the shop because Gerd would see the flat tire in our car port (bike port in our case) and fix it.  I called him an angel because somehow my bike would be fixed overnight.   It was a miracle!  I was so impressed how friendly our neighbors were and how they would go out of their way to help us.   While the move to Münster was necessary for our sanity (I still get motion sickness watching the SprinterBus that I would take each day pass outside of the train station) we were so sad to leave Borken because of our neighbors.  I still really miss our neighbors there. 

After speaking to other “Auslanders,” I got the impression that our experience with neighbors was not typical, which makes sense.  Germans would naturally feel more comfortable living with other Germans.  I wondered how we would be received in Hiltrup. 

It didn’t take long to get introduced to our neighbors in Hiltrup and guess what - they’re really nice, too.  Everybody is friendly and nice to each other.  Most of the people go about their business here, so unfortunately, I haven’t found a Hiltrup Gerd here (he was one of a kind).  Instead, we have a female version of him - Gabby - who is about the same age and is just as nice.  She, too, is always in a good mood and always has time to chat.  She also leaves little gifts downstairs in our ‘kinderwagen’ just to be nice. 

In both Borken and Hiltrup, someone remembers to put sweets and chocolates outside our door on St. Nikolaus Tag (December 6^th) for our kids.  Thankfully, we always forget about this tradition and are able to sneak the candy into a pair of shoes before the kids figure it out. 

One of the biggest aids of making our transition to Germany successful has been through the kindness of our neighbors.  It’s great knowing that our neighbors are looking out for us.  

Gerd (and Balu) - our good friend and bike angel.

Beer, Bread, Bratwurst - The German Diet

It’s been nearly three years since moving to Germany.  Time is flying by so quickly and is only increasing in speed.  Sometimes you have to look around and notice the differences.   Recently, I have noticed some of the differences between our family now and when we were living in America.  Here is a short list of some of these differences:

Bread:  We eat bread with everything now and make daily trips to the local bakery.  Mehrkornbrötchen is our go-to bread, but Dylan prefers the Rosininenbrötchen.

Bretzeln:  We actually bake pretzels (Bretzeln) in our oven for our Sunday afternoon snack.  Yes, we have 4 to 5 different types of mustards in our refrigerator at any given time. 

Bratwursts:  We eat this more often than I am willing to admit on our blog.  We originally ate these with real hot dogs buns, but now use normal German brötchen.   In America, we ate brats once a year and it was a really special occasion.  

Schnitzel:  If bratwursts are the go to meal at dinner, then Schnitzel is the second in line.  Again, this is really easy to cook here, so when Dana puts me in charge of dinner, I always rely on this meal.

Döners:  I can’t remember the last time I ate at McDonalds or Burger King, because every time I want a quick meal on the go, it is always a Döner.  Same goes for Dana and the rest of the family. If the Professor thing doesn’t work out after the PhD, then I will start my own Döner franchise in America.  This is a multi-million dollar idea just waiting to get executed. 

Beer: We don't actually drink beer all that much and have been limiting ourselves to a Saturday indulgence.  That being said, Dylan really enjoys the "kinder bier" that they have here, which is like a malt-flavored soda that comes in a beer bottle and is marketed towards kids.