Disclaimer: I like cats. I am not advocating skinning them or any other cat-unfriendly activities. Also, this is me whining about Germany. If such things bother you, move on.
It occurs to me that there is almost certainly no German equivalent for the English phrase, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”[]
And that would be because here in Germany, there isn’t.
There is one, and only one, right way to do something. All other methods of getting something done are sloppy, inferior, or, quite possibly, don’t happen, even if you see them happen in front of your nose.
Now, much to the chagrin of people who talk to me, um, ever, my favourite example for almost anything stereotypically German is my mother-in-law — she is so German she makes normal Germans look, well, un-German, so it’s hard to resist. And she yet again fails to disappoint as an example here.
One day, when my in-laws were on one of their visits where I was unfortunate enough to still be in town, my in-laws came by while we were still eating dinner.
My MIL looked at us with big round eyes, astounded.
“What is THAT?!?!!??”
I had expected there to at least be a naked man or something in the kitchen, but, um, no.
She was apparently referring to food.
I looked at the table. There sat a dish my husband has made in her house since, approximately, the fall of the Holy Roman Empire. It couldn’t have been that surprising.
“Chicken curry,” I said, shrugging and going back to eating.
“No it isn’t!!!!” she insisted, her eyes still as round as saucers and her countenance slightly… offended?
“Yes, it is,” I said, perplexed, and went back to eating. I do try to ignore her, folks. I really, really do.
“No,” she insisted. “THAT,” she said, pointing to a dish on the stove, “is not chicken curry.”
“Ah, that,” I said, nodding toward the coffee cake I’d baked earlier that day. “That’s a coffee cake.”
“No, that can’t be.”
I raised my eyebrow at her. “It certainly is…”
“No, it can’t be. I’m quite certain that no one in Germany… what KIND of coffee cake is it?”
I am used to these bizarre conversations where she won’t believe water is wet if I say it is, but they tire me. If just having her in my kitchen is an insult to my intelligence, you can imagine why they are cordially invited to stay in a hotel when they visit.
So I sighed, poking at my dinner. “Yeast coffee cake. With streusel. Very normal.”
Her eyes got round again.
You’d have thought I’d just revealed that I was dabbling in prostitution for extra cash.
(Note to self: remember to casually drop line about prostitution into conversation next time I am forced to talk to ILs.)
“But… but…” she spluttered. “I am QUITE certain – QUITE certain – that no one in Germany would ever make a coffee cake in THAT. That would never happen, I am sure of it.”
All I could think was, “Are you shitting me?”
See, we moved to Germany with almost nothing and inherited a lot of dishes from excess parental supply/dead grandmothers/overzealous Schnäppchenjagd (bargain hunting with a fearsome German flavor) at the Aldi. It was like the usual hodge-podge of cast-offs your typical grad student has in his kitchen before he is flush enough to acquire quality kitchenware.
Big. Fucking. Deal. We’re flexible. We go with the flow.
But see, I had made a coffee cake in – horror of horrors – a casserole dish. As one does, when one does not have a cake or loaf pan. It tasted great.
It was also, apparently, an abomination. My mother-in-law blathered about this for a bit, boggling the crap out of my mind, and then looked at me oddly.
“Can I have some?”
She took a bite. Apparently it didn’t offend, though she didn’t say so.
This was then followed by, “I didn’t know you liked yeast cake! I like yeast cake,” said in a tone of voice that said I had somehow offended her by deigning to have preferences she hadn’t already decided I had, and worse that they agreed with hers.
And then, “But I’m quite sure no one in Germany would EVER make a cake in that!!!”
I just did, lady. Check the map.
I place this under failure of imagination.
Now before I make a broad generalisation about an entire culture, let me just state that I am not making a broad generalisation about an entire culture. Which I am, but, well, I’m not.
I work in academia, where a failure of imagination can be fatal. My colleagues aren’t really like this. Many younger people aren’t like this. I suspect most Germans in creative professions aren’t like this. I just run into this mentality so often when I’m out and about in the world that it’s impossible not to note its ubiquity.
So to all Germans who are flexible, creative, open-minded, I am really sorry about this post. I like you. You can come over for casserole-dish coffee cake any time. I promise coffee is served in actual coffee cups. Or possibly tea cups. You can adjust, I’m sure.
BUT:
When I revealed to a (very nice) gentleman of about my age that I make a horrible housewife, so I am not one, and I certainly don’t iron, he looked totally confused.
“Yes, of course, but ironing must happen.”
Nuh-uh. Not at my house.
It was implied in his shrug of understanding that ironing happens anyway, and that it happens through the power of me, though I also work full time, just as my husband does. If this is the case, I presume my hired elves[] do it while we sleep. It must, because ironing not happening is impossible.
(Don’t get me started on ironing – I’ve watched the neighbor women iron the family underwear outside on sunny days, and let me just say, before you get any ideas, that we Grothoffs? We wear wrinkled underwear. Totally unironed. How’s that for abomination, Germany?)
I CAN iron. I don’t. I tend to burn myself and it takes me too long. So it does NOT, in fact, happen.
Failure of imagination.
And then – and this was related to me by my husband after his last trip up to visit with Torsten – my MIL sliced her hand open on a small sharp knife which was pointing up in the silverware container of the dishwasher. My husband suggested, wisely, that she load them point-down, as we do, to avoid mutilation. She responded immediately, still bleeding, rejecting the idea – this is not done because it will break the silverware container.
Yes, because a silverware container is harder to replace than a hand.
Failure of imagination.
Wearing a ripped T-shirt as a pajama top? Nooo. Ripped clothes are horrifying! (Note that worn T-shirts make great soft pajamas for little boys who get bad eczema and are uncomfortable at night.)
Eating a piece of bread with two hands because there’s something on it which is threatening to fall off? Noooo. We eat bread with one hand. Always. That is the one true way.
I use my detachable bicycle basket, often, to bring stuff in to the office. It’s convenient. And on the way home, I use it to pick up groceries when I pick my bike up at the station. I don’t know why, but the fact that I have it with me but did not bike to work (only as far as the station before I took the bus) always throws people. I don’t understand what’s so weird about that – it’s just functional. It’s intended for carrying things, and I use it for stuff. It doesn’t have to have a predefined single use. It’s not like I’m using it as a toilet.
There is exactly one way to skin a cat, eat bread, load a dishwasher, care for your clothes, teach your children, live your life.
You go to school, get degrees, get a job for life, retire, and take a lot of vacations. That is how it is supposed to be, and if you’ve done anything else, something is wrong.
Except that for my generation, things are changing – people don’t generally have lifetime jobs because the world doesn’t work that way anymore. And so maybe there’s hope, born of necessity.
But even with that kind of change, for someone who has led a flexible, varied life, Germany is a real challenge. This is a hard place to be creative – it can be narrow, critical and aggressive – and I admire the people who manage in spite of it. Because in Germany, there is exactly one way to skin a cat, and there are people who are remarkably confused – sometimes even unnecessarily hostile – if you do it a different way.
Professional computer geek and linguist living in Germany, doing infosec stuff and being the freakiest mother ever.
