Archive for January, 2010

Yesterday my girlfriends and me took a little trip to the future. We wondered what our lifes will be like in a few years, what jobs we will have, how much money we will earn and how it will feel like when I’ll come over to visit for the holidays. One of the girls begged me not to become that kind of person who seems to forget their native language within days of living in a new country. She told me about a boy she went to school with, who went to America for an student exchange month and when he came back always said things like: “Ah, I don’t remember what the german word for this was.”

I swore to her that I won’t get one of those persons, especially because I am not moving abroad alone but together with my husband, whom I am not planning to talk in english to. But this talk again made me wonder about how big a problem the new language will be for me. I am still so shy to talk in english, even if I know that my english is not the worst. I told you about the american colleague I have right now. He always talks english to us and I always have so funny answers in mind, but am too scared to actually say them. When I know I have to talk in english to someone (for example when we were in Florida), I always try to put sentences together in my mind before I say them. I know that I kind of get warm with people very fast and then don’t worry about my language anymore, but I am still scared that I will not succeed in a job in the US.

I try to practise my english nearly every day by reading english books, watching english movies, series or write in english, but speaking is still my weak spot. I may worry to much about that stuff, because I don’t know what will actually happen when we move to California and I feel very positive overall. But whatever will be, will be. Even if it means that I might never speak without mistakes or my german accent.

I know that people all around the world say that german people are very punctual and reliable. This may be right, but what definetely isn’t is that german companies are as reliable as their employees. Right know I am working in Frankfurt and have to take a train trip over there twice a day. I need to ride on a so called ICE train, which only covers longer distances mostly between bigger german cities. As you may guess these trains are very expensive and mostly used by business people and commuters.

Right now it is snowing over here and the temperature goes under 0 degree celcius most nights. So it is no surprise that you wake up to snowy and sometimes even icy streets. The Deutsche Bahn doesn’t seem to have understood the german winter in the last 15 years of it’s existance. So the train schedules right now are a mess and you even have to sit in your train for hours when the mean snow doesn’t let the poor trains pass. These situations are so frustrating for all the passengers that are headed to work in the morning or back home after a long day. But do you think that bothers the company? No! They actually seem to make fun of you. They offer you cold drinks to make up for the hours you waited in the freezing cold or just ignore that people just paid a hundred bugs to stand in a horribly full train which is hours delayed.

This made me realize again how horrible the service of german companies is compared to the ones in the US. Nobody gives you a warm welcome or hello when you enter a german store. The bored staff mostly gives you a cold hello with the underline “get the f*** out, you are annoying me in my boredom”. And isn’t it a barefacedness that you don’t get a free coffee or a free ticket when you wait hours to get home by train?

The Deutsche Bahn is definitely a thing that I will add to my just forget it list when I leave Germany. But for their favour I have to say that the amateruish announcements the train drivers make for their foreign guests are something I would recommand to every english-speaking visitor in to not miss!

I am not exactly sure, but I guess I never told you about our interview at the consulate in Frankfurt. The short version is: it was horrible. The long version would blow the space I have to write on this homepage so I give you a medium version. Our day began with the standard security check which left me speechless, because I carried a bottle of water with me and had to drink some in front of the security guards to demonstrate that the bottle actually contained water and no poison or flammable liquid. I am not exactly sure what I could have done with it though, because you are not allowed to take a lighter inside the consulate or anything else.

Our whole visit was about three hours long and ended with the actual interview with a woman (I am not sure if she was a consul), which was horrbily mean. She didn’t believe us that we are actually married, told me that I am just there as a Greencard winner’s wife and therefor are not allowed to open my mouth and send us away without a hint of what will happen in the future. We were actually both near tears after that interview and terribly frightened that they might send our passports back without the Visa in it and accomponied by a letter of refusal.

As you all know the story has a happy end, but I still would so love to go back and ask that woman what her problem is. Especially after what I heard this week. I just started a new job and one of my colleagues is American. I told him about that whole Greencard thing and our interview at the consulate and he just laughed. Because not only the staff is nice to you, if you are American, you also don’t have to wait in one room together with the “german infantry”. Till that interview I had only met kind and helpful Americans. I know that there is always a negative side to everything and that not everyone in America will welcome us little Germans with open arms. But a Two-Class society that even seems to exist in the American Consulate here in Germany kind of frightens me. I do understand that perhaps the consulate staff is happy to deal with Americans, because it may be easier to handle them due to the not existing language barrier. But there is no need to be that bitchy to Germans, who are excited to have their Greencard interview and may give some wrong answers or may not understand everything on the first try.

Perhaps I should only talk in english to my colleauge from now on, so that not every American will notice that I am German in the first place and I may fit in the higher class of this society! But for now I will try to calm myself down about this by thinking that the woman we talked to might just have had a bad day and is no good example for the typical American!