lucid in deutschland

Completed my scarf. Now onto the hat.This is my 3rd January in Germany and finally I’ve learned an expression I’ve been dying to know: Das ist nicht meine Angelegenheit meaning, that’s none of my business.

Or better: Kümmere dich um deine eigenen Angelegenheiten! Can you guess? That’s right: Mind your own business!

Do native people use this expression? I’ve never heard it but then again I don’t ask enough questions, which is sort of a New Year’s resolution (or Vorsatz) for me.

It has been pointed out to me that I rely too heavily on assumptions that don’t work in the German culture. When I don’t understand something I need to speak up.

Only it isn’t that I know immediately that I don’t understand something, rather it is mostly the case that I understand it differently. It is recognizing that I am understanding something differently and subsequently wrongly is the point where I could save myself from getting into trouble or not. But regardless I’m destined to repeat my mistakes over and over again if I don’t start getting a clue soon. And this is where I start to miss Florida.

In Florida and I image in other states in the U.S., the people and perhaps the ‘lack-of-culture’ culture is often times more forgiving than it is here. Mind you I’d never want to experience the nightmare of being a foreigner trying to get a green card or just to pass customs for a few days vacation in the U.S. It is certainly comparatively easier in my shoes.

But once you are in the US, you aren’t told in so many words that your thinking is backwards or you lack proper communication skills. Am I wrong? Americans just take you for who you are. They are open to jesters and speaking slowly, imitating sounds and relying on facial expressions if need be.

Try using these primitive measures in Germany and you’ll get a blank ape stare from your confused, native speaker. Asking politely of a native German speaker to speak slowly is like slowing down the merry-go-round for 2 seconds. Then it gets boring or unnatural for the German and the merry-go-round accelerates again. The struggling foreigner has to weigh whether to ask to slow it down again or hang on and hope he’ll recognize something after all that spinning. (When in doubt and even if it feels rude, ASK!)

To a certain point, the way Germans speak is infectious. Now that my German is pretty good (once I get going) I don’t like to switch back to English. In fact I prefer to speak in German; I don’t have to worry about my hands or facial muscles. It’s all just brain and mouth. In an unfair way, one could say speaking in German is robotic, like Data. yeah.

Now it feels completely out of place to speak English in public places and when I do, I can feel that inside my cranium is war to arrive with the most appropriate words. It’s when my thoughts land in a mushy spot on my brain and the German words get mixed up with the English. Then nothing comes out and then I revert to the old assumptions and the old way of telling a story, which is to use body language, but opps! how?!

I know that it is just a bad, bad, bad thing to just give up on a train of mindless, American thought just to save the conversation. But sometimes that is the only thing that feels comfortable. Better to skip to a clean part of the record than to relive hearing the skinny lady tumble out nonsense repetitively.