“Big shoes, you’re steppin‘ in to!“ - Who hasn’t heard that phrase when occupying a new work position and replacing someone else who did a good job and didn’t want to leave. No doubt, it’s helpful and makes sense to know the size of the shoes you are dealing with. It gives you an idea what kind of challenges you’ll have to face in the future and what people expect from you. But honestly, like it is with toothbrushes – who likes to wear somebody else’s shoes?
Life in Manhattan requires solid and lasting footwear. How many blocks can you walk until you catch a cab or enter a subway station? The number rises with growing rush hour traffic on the streets and in the metro tunnels. For many newcomers in the city – or “againcomers” like me - it all begins with a stroll through the many shoe stores in town. You can get good deals and good quality here, if you look carefully.
Filene’s Basement was the place where I got caught in the shoe department just days after my arrival in New York. A pair of Florsheim penny loafers for a very good price was my choice. What a feeling – good looks and no blisters the first day I wore them! But to get into the stiff shoelaceless leather boxes was a little difficult. When the helping fingers hurt after a while I began thinking of a supporting instrument for the daily dressing procedure.
The comfortable and well-equipped hotel room offered a minibar, Internet access, a hairdryer, a flatiron, bathrobes and toiletteries but nothing to please my feet and shoes. The concierge in the funky lobby understands what I am trying to explain with my hands and gestures but she doesn’t know the proper English word for it either. “I’ll ask,” she says with a big smile and walks away. Her smile is even bigger, when she returns: “A shoe horn is what you want!” she announces proudly. “Do you have one for me,” is my desperate question now. “I’ll ask,” comes her reply, before she disappears again. The answer is a “no” with a shoulder shrug — and no recommendations where else to look or ask.
The drug stores at every other corner, selling everything you can imagine, don’t have shoe horns either. “We don’t carry them anymore,” is the stereotypical answer. Not Anymore? What has happened to the feet and footwear of New Yorkers? Sneakers don’t need the help of shoe horns, I suppose.
Passing a shoeshine place near Grand Central Station I stop, turn in, and try again. “Shoeshine, Mister?” is the offering question. “No thanks, but …” “Yeah, we have some,” is the reply in a businesslike tone. The man grabs a torn cardboard box containing a collection of used shoe horns in all sizes. I choose a short one with a big loop to hang it. I am relieved and pay one dollar for it. “And a shoeshine?” The voice sounds hopeful again. “No thanks, you helped me a lot – next time, definitely!”
When we traveled to Italy for the first time, my mother bought a Langenscheidt language guide that translated useful phrases for every day use into Italian, for example: “I lost my passport, please show me the way to the German Consulate.” However, I can’t remember that my mother used the language guide very intensively.
Recently in a bookstore, I found a language guide that takes the concept of the good old Langenscheidt to an entirely new level:
“Wicked German for the Traveller” or: How to get around Germany as a tourist with off-key phrases.
Under the headline “Beer Connoisseurship” you can find the following examples of a beergarden conversation:
“The Hefe-Weizen has big feet and small head” which means in German, “Weizenbier hat große Füße und einen kleinen Kopf”, and is pronounced as follows: “VEI-tsayn-beer haht GROH-seh FEW-se oont einen KLEI-nen KOHPF”. For the continuation of that beergarden night the guide recommends the sentence: “My stomach feels like an old woodchuck” – in German: “Mein Magen fühlt sich an wie ein altes Waldmurmeltier.”
When using the German railroad, “Die Deutsche Bahn”, the greeting “Guten Tag meine Dame/ Herr/Genosse Schaffner” (”Good day Madam/Sir/ Comrade Conductor”) is recommended, with the additional remark: “Warum halten wir an diesem Rangiergleis an?” (”Why are we stopping at this switching track?”).
Apparently, the authors did their research shortly after the German Reunification. But the chapter I liked best was “Surviving the Autobahn”, for example with this sentence: “Geben sie mir 12 Zylinder oder mein Geld zurück” (”Give me 12 cylinders or my money back”).
The authors also researched the fines for swearing at other drivers:
“Damischer Bulle costs 2760 dollars, “Knolle” 425 dollars and “Rchtlfrtzlkraut” 100 dollars, what ever that may mean. For additional 99 cents you are allowed to say “Wichtigtuer” (”poser”) twice.
You might want to hand out this delightful mixture of intended and unintended humor to every American visitor of the Oktoberfest. Surely this would improve German-American relations.
As a German in New York, when I feel lonely and out of place I read the Merriam Webster Dictionary. It makes me happy to see words like “Fahrvergnügen,” “Zeitgeist,” “Doppelgänger” and “Leitmotiv,” and I always marvel at the beauty of these compound nouns. I also think it is just aweso
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- This year 12-year old Sidharth Chand just rattled off “K-U-L-T-U-R-K-A-M-P-F”. Amazing
This year 12-year old Sidharth Chand just rattled off “K-U-L-T-U-R-K-A-M-P-F”.* Amazing!
In New York City there are spelling bee contests for adults only every month, which is much more fun. First, the words might be a little different from the ones the kids have to spell and secondly, you feel more allowed to pick on adults when they make mistakes. (“What? You don’t even know how to spell “pornological”? What planet are you living on?”).
Grown-ups are also allowed to memorize words differently. In Oregon for instance, the 56-year old Bill Long participated in the National Senior Spelling Bee and failed to spell “caipirinha” correctly. He punished himself by drinking the Brazilian cocktail for over a week and took the word “learning strategy” to the next level.
I suggest starting a spelling contest only with German words, just because there are so many: Posaune, Achtung, Angst, Blitzkrieg, Hinterland, Kindergarten, Poltergeist, Rucksack, Schnitzel, Verboten, Wunderkind.
I wouldn’t bother with trophies for the winners. Just give them a nice cold beer and some brats and they’ll be happy. Discover your “Sprachgefühl” (an intuitive sense of what is linguistically appropriate) and if you long for something German - read the Merriam Webster Dictionary.
* “Kulturkampf (literally, “culture struggle”) refers to German policies in relation to secularity and the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, enacted from 1871 to 1878 by the Chancellor of the German Empire, Otto von Bismarck. In the USA, the term Kulturkampf and its calque “culture war” has beenis used since 1960 to describe conflicts between Conservatives and Liberals.”
Annette Baran
When I left my old job in Germany, my colleagues gave me a couple of gifts. They thought might be helpful for me in New York. Besides getting a German cookbook for different types of wholewheat bread and rolls (indispensable), I received my new Bible, the wonderful and hilarious book “I’m a Stranger Here Myself,” by Bill Bryson. It was just so refreshing and comforting to read that other people love the American culture like I do — yet- see it through a different lens once they have lived overseas.
My all-time favorite story is the one where Bill enters a pretty empty restaurant and sits at a table without waiting to be seated (the most normal thing in Europe). The waitress comes up and says indignantly, “I see, you already found a table,” and Bill responds,: “Yes, and I even got dressed by myself this morning!”
Inspired by this book, I started this blog and hope you’ll enjoy and forgive my different take on things here in New York. For somebody who didn’t grow up with mailboxes for with flags, roasted Marshmallows and who always had real candles on their Christmas Tree (without knowing anybody whose house got burned down), it’s quite an adventure to assimilate happily in New York – but I managed and here is why:
First of all, you notice that “No” is the longest word in the English vocabulary. People who use it, say “I don’t think it is a good idea”, “I really can’t say right now” or “Let me get back to you on this one”. Here, it takes a lot of time to just simply express that you don’t feel like something. But there is hope.
Recently, I was sitting on a playground set with my two-year old son. A baby boy came crawling up the stairs, not able to walk yet and wanted to pass us. He looked at us and said,: “Excuse me” and when we let him pass, he turned his head and said loud and clear “Thank you so much” before taking on the plank bridge while struggling with keeping his pants from slipping down and displaying his Sesame Street diaper. His Mom called him asking, “Would you like some juice, honey?” and he really answered, “Not right now, Mommy.”
It gave me the chills to hear a baby boy of maybe a year and change talking as if he was in a business meeting. But when his Mom announced that it was time to go home, he finally turned into the kind of baby I know. He forgot about the 101 of diplomacy that babies inhale with their formula here and yelled, “NOOOOO!” - I was very proud of him for just being so normal. All of a sudden I felt a little more at home.
Annette Baran
Most Germans, like most Americans, have two legs. Germans use their legs for lots of fun things, like playing soccer, or pushing the gas pedals of their Porsches. But most of the time, though, they utilize their legs to walk from point A to point B. Sounds pretty simple, right? Well, it isn’t.
The German writer Kurt Tucholsky once observed that German drivers do not use their cars to just get from here to there. They drive in order to teach other motorists a lesson about proper driving. German pedestrians are even worse. You don’t believe me? Why don’t you ask the chauffeur of the white stretch limo who tried to make a turn from 48th Street while I was exercising my inalienable right to cross Second Avenue when the sign says “Walk”? That made quite a sound when I threw my attaché case squarely on the hood of his Town Car. Or the frenzied, cell-phoning mother on Broadway and 96th Street, running a red light while rushing her daughter to school. Sure, my foot hurt afterwards, but what a kick her minivan got!
Those were the olden days, when I was fresh off the boat and had not yet given up on educating my fellow New Yorkers. But the longer I have lived in the City, the more I have mellowed.
I realized how placid I had become one recent, unexpectedly balmy afternoon, when 42nd Street was all bathed in golden sunlight. I was strolling home from a good day at work. Munching on an apple, I was crossing Second Avenue, when a cab, not without elegance, forced its way slaloming through the pedestrians, the cabbie visibly proud of his driving skills, his arm dangling out of the rolled-down window. All of a sudden the apple in my hand became agitated.
“Look at this Knallkopf,” my apple yelled at me, “why don’t you throw me through the open window and hit this Rindviech on the head? That’ll show him. If everybody drove like that, this town would go to hell! Who does this Depp think he is?”
“And who do you think you are?” I replied. “You are a perfectly juicy Macintosh from upstate, so don’t start acting like a German Boskoop.”
“I know,” the apple grinned broadly. “This was just a test. You’ve lived here for how many years now? Slow down for a second, so you won’t get run over, and then eat me all up.”
And that’s what I did.