Things haven’t been going entirely to plan over the course of November. Fair enough, shit happens, etc. etc. Not really a big problem. The “problem” has been my reactions towards said setbacks. In every single case, the person who has caused me grief has been a German. The buggers are everywhere, thwarting all my efforts to progress towards, well, to at least tread water.
It’s as if an entire nation is ranged against me, jointly scheming and plotting new ways to irritate and annoy me.
I occasionally find that I have to remind myself that they are simply individuals and the fact that they’ve all been German is mere coincidence or may in some way be related to me living in Germany. Just because those few were German doesn’t mean they’re all like that.
Probably.
German Phrase For Today: “Es tut mir sehr Leid, aber….” - That’s a surprise!
Song playing as this was published: Belle and Sebastian - “Le Pastie De La Bourgeoisie”
Are these thwartings of a bureaucratic/officialdom nature, by any chance? One way of dealing with this sort of setback is, of course, to shut yourself up in your house, never go out, never talk to anyone, live virtually. This is a route I often take. It is not a good one. So go on hacking through the undergrowth, scoffing at the stings and nettles, and you’ll eventually come out the other side into some glorious, nice bit of nature - a nice Alpscape, say, to be pro-German. Sometimes, though, I agree, the thwarts are seriously infuriating. Having had a tad of trouble with the Finanzamt - including them blocking my bank account once because I paid my tax late, and this was before they sent a reminder! - I thought I’d be a very good boy and pay my last tax installment, due in December, early as I happened to have the cash. Checking my bank account recently, I thought I was a tad richer than I ought to be, only to see they’d sent the money back to me - I must have paid TOO early, according to some unspoken rule - and now I’ve frittered the money away on booze and fags and will no doubt start getting nasty letters again in December…
Keep your pecker up.
*Just because those few were German doesn’t mean they’re all like that*
Don’t beleive a word of it young sir, the dastardly hun is out to get the British Tommy in any way it can. The teutonic scheming of the bratwurst chomping hun should never be underestimated. Be on you guard. Todddlepip!
I’ve had similar experiences lately, although they don’t sound as severe as yours potentially were. Maybe we’re on some sort of list, a blogroll of inequity, if you will.
BiB: It’s not just been the usual little things, but a bit of a combined effort by (surprise) the Finanzamt, my Vermieterin, everyone who could possibly replace her as new flatowner and last, but certainly not least, Lufthansa, who managed to contrive to bump me from my very early flight Friday morning. I might have been given lots of free miles and more, a refund and a voucher for a drink (non-alcoholic) to the value of €3.50, but I’d have preferred to have been in central London by 10:30 a.m. for a non-rescheduable meeting. It’s the last time I’ll be getting out of bed at 4 a.m. for a while.
I do want to say how much I like it here, or at least go somewhere else and say “it’s crap here too”, but they even stopped me leaving the country. And bearing in mind who was going to show me the town, I suspect it wouldn’t actually have been crap either.
Haddock: Normally of course I’d never believe a word of it, but at the moment the only course seems to be to
retreatmake a tactical withdrawal to the local English pub for “a” pint. Cheers!Hamish: Welcome to Germany! Now, I do try and not be too much the whiney ex-pat, there are positives of living here (there must be, otherwise I wouldn’t have stayed so long), I just can’t think of any at the moment.
I agree that a disproportionate number of horrific events in my life have been caused by Germans. I do, however, recognize that they have paid me back in full by allowing me to “borrow” (I always gave them back) a respectable number of their women.
Plus points on living here, as compared to England: Weissbier and - this only works if you’re gay or a straight woman, of course - the men are better-looking. And Berlin is a third of the price of London. And… um, that might be it, actually, for now.
820: It sounds like a library lending. Are there fines for late returns, or is there some other (maybe built-in) reason that made you always give them back?
BiB: House prices down here aren’t at London levels, although they’re not exactly cheap either, which leaves me with Weissbier as my plus point. I’m not sure that the concept that men here being better looking is valid - although I have the fact of being foreign and exotic as a plus point on the attractiveness list - and of course I hang around outside the Anglistik department of the local university asking girls if they’d like to practice their English over a drink somewhere more relaxed……
Sir,
Could you be so kind to drop me an email with your new address if/when you move since I would be sending you a “baby annoucement” card through the post in the very very very near future.
Apart from that, … stay strong and…
PLEASE DON’T MENTION THE WAR! (even to gay Germans with cerise curtains!). be kind
we have a chinwag long overdue…
Nina xxx
Good move, hanging around outside the Anglistik department, you wily old roister-doister. That is cunning. I once thought I was going to have a sniff of success due to a language tandem in Russia. I was asked by a staggeringly beautiful gent - late 30s, former Kazakhstan speedskater, built like a brick s***house (I should have known I was barking up the wrong tree) - if I had free time in the evenings. “Yes,” I yelped, hardly able to believe my luck. Of course it turned out the classes were for his (equally staggeringly beautiful) 17-year-old daughter. Oh well. Amusingly, when she went to England the following summer, the queue of gentlemen offering to take her out and show her London was longer than a smetana queue in Syktyvkar circa 1983. Needless to say she found England to be a country peopled exclusively by gentlemen.
hmmpfff…there’s no british men lurking around our Anglistik department. Must be the wrong uni.
Nina: Now I have your new e-mail address, sure.
Bib: “wily old roister-doister“? Methinks you have been listening to Blackadder’s Lord Percy a little too closely. It is, however, a very cunning plan. Tail, stick on, weasel, etc.
that_girl: Yes, well it’s winter now, so you don’t get to see the t-shirt I got printed up and it’s a bit cold to just stand around handing out leaflets offering, erm, assistance.