Omnia Mutantur » Germany

Cultural differences, part 2

Ricardo — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:57:48 +0000

I can’t get used to how most supermarkets are closed on Sundays.

Something else I’ve noticed is that groups seem in the habit of waiting outside a place until all their friends arrive, and then go inside once they’re together, instead of the Costa Rican way of waiting inside and the group growing as people arrive. Why a culture that has to withstand such weather would develop a habit of waiting outside in the cold is beyond me, unless it’s to encourage punctuality so that their friends don’t freeze to death.

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International day

Ricardo — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:43:21 +0000

My next door neighbor is Irish. There’s an Australian married to a German living downstairs. An italian couple stopped me on the street and asked me for directions, right after I came out from having dönner at a Turkish place. Two dutch took my photo at fragment of the Berlin Wall, and a japanese woman did the same favor at the Berliner Dom. A Bosnian woman begged for money. Later, at the Reichstag, a couple who may have been dutch as well took another photo of me, right before I walked about 1km to a russian tea house, where a very nice Peruvian guy who is studying Mechanical Engineering translated my order in German to (whom I presume was) the Russian owner.

It was a long and varied day.

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Breakfast

Ricardo — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 10:36:31 +0000

Gabriele, the very nice lady I’m renting the flat from, left me some breakfast

Someone’s getting fat.

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Live aus Berlin

Ricardo — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 19:12:29 +0000

Fuck it’s cold.

I had forgotten what real cold was. I had experienced it on Romania, a few years ago, and quickly came to the conclusion that any weather in which you can unplug your fridge and leave the food on the balcony without it getting spoiled (not even an open balcony, mind you) was just not designed for humans to live on.

But you know these things intellectually. After a while you forget the experience since, you know, in Costa Rica we consider 22 celsius to be cold. You don’t grok them again until you cross a gate in a sunny Holland afternoon, wearing a heavy coat, and are blasted by freezing air. Air so cold that you’re soon shivering and breathing in short quick gasps.

And Holland was sunny. Coming down into Berlin I could see a large canal full of ice, and found it was very lightly snowing when I stepped off the plane.

Then at the airport I was greeted by this:

Springtime For Hitler. That’s nice and timely.

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