Posts
Living in Northern Germany is, in many ways, like taking a trip back to the 1970's. Well, thankfully without avocado green, polyester and disco, but there are lots of other aspects of the decade still hanging around here.
Such as:
Stores are closed on Sundays. If you haven't bought your milk by 8pm on Saturday, too bad. (Of course, you shouldn't be eating cereal for breakfast anyway, as Sunday is a Broetchen day). As an American accustomed to 24-hour grocery stores, laundromats, pharmacies and fitness centers, this is a strange concept that catapults me back to childhood memories of Sunday 'Blue Laws'. Remember? You could only purchase certain 'necessities' on Sunday, and all the other products were blocked off with tape...
There is no streaming video service. No, really, I mean it. The motion picture and television industries don't release products to Europe until long after they are available in the U.S., so no Netflix. I read on Wikipedia that Netflix is expanding to Europe, but they are starting in Spain and won't be in Germany until we are long gone from here. If you try to get movies from Amazon in the U. S., you get a message that says the product is not available in your 'geographic location'. So much for the 'World Wide' web.
The kids are free-range. They wander the neighborhood without supervision. There are no 'play dates'. You simply ring the bell and ask if your friend can come out and play. Remember that? They walk to school by themselves and return home without any grown-up intervention. Of course, they are met at home at 12:30 by Mom, who has prepared a hot lunch. Some moms have jobs, as in the '70s, but many are still stay-at-home.
In the first grade, children start learning to write in cursive. Schools in the U.S. have started to explore getting rid of cursive altogether, a subject that is controversial. Many think that this is a critical skill, but when kids start using laptops and tablets in pre-k, perhaps it is time to rethink the necessity of being able to write quickly by hand. After all, I have never learned to use a quill, but I am still considered to be reasonable well-educated.
Almost no one has a microwave. This last one is really freaky. I mean, what happens when you want to defrost your meat, and you haven't thought ahead enough to take it out of the freezer the day before? I guess that is something that doesn't happen to people who have to decide on Saturday everything they might need on Sunday.
That reminds me. Tomorrow is Saturday. I better start making a list!
How far are y'all from Kiel proper? The Freiburg Hauptbahnhof has a grocery store that's open into the wee hours and on Sundays, so folks arriving late by train can buy food; maybe the Kiel Hauptbahnhof does too. The Closed-Sundays and weekday evenings thang started as government enforced family time in the 1950s--'cept apparently what families want to do together is buy groceries. Stores in Germany are open way longer now than when I first visited in 1991.
ReplyDeleteAh... this wasn't really a complaint, merely some observations.
ReplyDeleteThings are changing here, and my guess is that as more families have both parents working, stores will need to be open on Sundays. Same is happening with the school day. I plan to write something about that in the future, but the long-story-short version is that schools are moving to whole days, with options for kids to stay until 5pm. In M's parent's state, they have two 'long days' per week now that are mandatory.
It's pretty sad, as I think one of the nice things about being here is that both kids are home before 2pm!
The 'family' thing is pretty funny. You can go to a bar on Sunday, no problem. You can even visit the local prostitute. You just can't buy groceries.