Notes from New York

Obama is all over the place in New York. Vendors in Union Square were selling all manner of Obama T-shirts, and people were actually wearing them on the streets.  There were still Obama signs in store windows and on apartment buildings. Apart from that, I heard, saw and sensed no lingering reaction to Obama’s victory.  I had wondered, somewhat naively I suppose, whether I would see or feel a difference in the city’s mood–in people’s faces on the subway and on the streets, or in conversations.  But any difference in the city’s mood I felt was related not to Obama’s victory, but to the financial crisis.  I heard from friends who are worried about losing their jobs, and thus working harder than ever to hold on to what they have–even while looking for new work.  Others have seemingly secure jobs, but little work to do, given the economic slowdown–and correspondingly lower bonuses to spend this season.

Although I didn’t experience this first-hand, one friend reports that people are going out drinking less often, another casualty of the economic crisis.  I saw the impact on the street, too.  One night, a friend and I went to one of my favorite Chinese restaurants, only to find an empty storefront with white paper on the windows.  I suggested a sushi place a few blocks away but it, too, was for rent.  All over the city stores were boasting gigantic reductions on merchandise, even before Christmas.

An even more troubling manifestation of the economic crisis in New York is rising crime.  I had lived in New York most of my 30-odd years until June, and had almost never personally heard of or experienced any crime.  But on this brief trip that changed a little bit.  A friend of a friend I met in a dance club reported that earlier that day, on a busy C train on the Upper West Side, two muggers tried to take his iPhone.  He managed to resist, coming away with only a slight bruise to his cheek.  The other passengers on the car simply moved away, and did not help him out.  He seemed a bit shaken, but more proud of himself for not giving in.

The next day, I was walking to the ritzy Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle to shop at Borders.  A group of teenagers approached me and started blowing spitballs at me.  OK, not high crime, and I just kept walking as the pellets bounced off my jacket.  But this had never happened to me before in the city, and the incident added to the sense I had that unlawful or at least uncivilized behavior is on the rise back home–a sense that seems supported by the statistics.  I read on the plane back that there were four armed bank robberies in the five boroughs on the day before I left.

The other thing I noticed more than ever on this trip — probably because of the comparison to spread-out, empty-feeling Berlin — is just how crowded New York is. The ride from JFK Airport to Midtown took about 90 minutes on the day I arrived, which would be absolutely unheard of in Berlin, where the most traffic you’ll ever encounter seems to last about 10 minutes. Restaurants (those that haven’t closed, anyway) were full at 9 pm on weekday evenings. I saw Milk, which had been out a month already, and there was not an empty seat in the house. There was a line half a block long just to get into the Abercrombie & Fitch store on Fifth Avenue (hey, I had a gift to return!). It’s funny, but crowds like that are both what I most miss living here in Berlin, and also what it’s the nicest to be away from.

Comin’ Home Again

Shortly before I came abroad, I had dinner with a friend who had spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer.  I must have mentioned that I was apprehensive about the fact that I would go away and miss out on a lot back home in New York, because I remember clearly what he said in response: “Don’t worry, you will come back and things will be almost exactly as you left them.  People will be going about their routines as if no time had passed, while you–having been abroad, having started something new–will be the one to have changed.”

But as I prepare to come home Monday for the first time in almost seven months, I wonder how true this will prove to be.  This has been no ordinary seven months in the U.S. and in the world since June 1.  The world economy has collapsed and Obama has been elected–two events of enormous historic significance. I wonder whether the political and economic mood will be vastly different today than it was before summer–perhaps both more optimistic and more depressed?

There have also been lots of changes in my friends’ lives.  One had a baby, three got pregnant, two started new jobs, two got married, several have new boyfriends, one moved to L.A., and so on.  OK, I guess this sort of thing is inevitable.  And the vast majority of people I know are living in the same apartments, working in the same jobs and seeing or not seeing the same people.  But still, it seems like it’s been a busy time in people’s lives–perhaps because a lot happens around my age, in our late 20’s and early 30’s.

So I wonder, what if I come back looking for the United States, for New York, for my life, circa June 1, 2008, and it’s gone? And what if I come back having lived abroad, traveled the world and learned a new language, but still essentially the same person as I was in the spring?  I wrote a recent post here about lessons I have learned since coming to Berlin.  But overall, I don’t really feel different at all. What if I’m the one who hasn’t changed?

There Is No Future…

There is a future tense in German, but people don’t use it very often. In fact, after studying German for about five months, I had to ask my teacher if we could learn the future tense.  “Sure, if you want,” she replied, “but it takes five minutes and we really don’t use it.”  Instead of the future, Germans say most things in present tense. If you want to say, for example, “I will be going to New York on Monday,” you just say, “I go to New York on Monday.”  Instead of, “I will make dinner tonight,” you say, “I make dinner tonight.”

I discovered earlier this week that this can cause a problem of miscommunication.  My co-worker asked me to update a document, and I replied, “Ich mache das jetzt,” which means, “I do it now”–but my intended meaning was that I was about to do it.  In English, I would have said, “I will do it now.”  Five minutes later, she came back to my office and asked me again, whether I was doing it.  This time, I actually was in the process of updating it, and wanted to say, “I am doing it now,” but my answer in German was exactly the same: “Ich mache das jetzt.”  I bet the Germans have a way to distinguish these situations, perhaps just by adding other words to supply context, but I just missed the future.

German Word of the Day: Gemeinnützig

Someone pointed out to me recently that the German word for non-profit, gemeinnützig, is purely positive. It translates, when broken down, into commonly-useful, or common-profit.

I never thought about the fact that we in the U.S. define non-profit organizations by what they’re not doing–making profit–rather than by what they are doing for the public good.  Even in the legal world, we use a Latin term (pro bono) to describe such work. I don’t think people think less of non-profit organizations for this reason, but who knows–maybe there is an impact on the subconscious level.

Putting People First

I worked this fall at the American Academy in Berlin, which though host to American scholars and public policy figures, is predominantly staffed by Germans and run by German workplace rules.  One of the things most interesting to me was the policy and practice with respect to sick leave.  At least in my experience at law firms back home, when you are a little sick, such as with a head cold, you are expected to show up to work, take some Advil or Sudafed, and plow through the day.  If you are really sick, then you are expected to work from home.  If you are really, really sick, then you stay home and don’t work, but you come back as soon as you can.

Here, the culture is quite different.  First of all, you are not expected to report to work at all if you are sick.  That means even a cold–it seems to be considered rude, in fact, to come to work with the sniffles.  Second, if you are home sick, you are not expected to work.  I once heard a co-worker inquiring whether another co-worker, who had called in sick, was working at home.  In the U.S. the purpose of the question would be to make sure she was doing so.  Here, the tone of the question was, “What, is she crazy?”  In fact, after expressing disapproval that she was working at home despite being sick, the other co-worker said, “Well, I’m not her mother.  She should know how to take care of herself by her age.”

Third, people call in sick in advance for a week at a time.  This really threw me for a loop the first few times I saw it.  Someone would send an email around on a Monday saying, for example, “I am sick with a cold and will be out of the office until at least Friday.”  I saw variations on this email throughout the fall–people predicting well in advance how long they would be out sick!  Later I learned that you actually bring in a note from your doctor indicating how long you were advised or instructed to stay home from work–although the exact nature of your sickness is not described on the note.

While a bit strange and heavily bureaucratic, this system also seems more humane and to show more respect for the really important things in life–above all, health and well-being.  I’ve started taking it to heart, too.  Last week someone showed up at volleyball with a heavy cold and I thought, how bad for your health, and for the health of others!  Stay at home and get better if you’re sick!

For Bilingual Education

I was in Karlsruhe, a city in western Germany  near the French border, today.  On the tram to the train station on my way out, a group of little schoolkids got on with their three or four teachers/chaperones.  One of them spoke to them in German and the other in French, though both (as far as I could tell) were saying the same thing (“Come closer, let the woman get off the tram”).

It occurred to me that ideally, every school should be at least bilingual.  Why repeat the command twice in German when you can (resources provided) have someone say the same thing in French?  After all, at such an age, it is so easy to pick up two languages.  Why spend the whole day speaking one language when you can just split it in half, and kids will come out of the experience knowing two languages?

The Breyer Week

Sorry for that unannounced week-long break.  Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer was visiting the American Academy in Berlin this past week, for which I had been preparing much of the fall.  I had the privilege of escorting him to various meetings with German government officials and taking part in or observing numerous workshops and lectures with German and European judges, law professors and law students.

It was quite interesting to be that close to someone so influential.  As Justice Breyer said himself many times this week, judges are people too!  Indeed, one of Breyer’s favorite things to say is that Supreme Court justices are not infallible because they’re brilliant — they are brilliant because they have the last word, and someone has to have the last word.

Some of the sessions I participated in were off-the-record, so I don’t want to comment much on what I heard, but I will say that I find it interesting and commendable that Justice Breyer is one of the justices (along with Scalia) who regularly travel and give speeches both domestically and abroad about what the court is and what it does.  While judges are not supposed to be politicians clamoring for attention and publicity, it lends the judicial branch greater credence and legitimacy when people understand what the court does and (to some extent anyway) how and why it reaches the decisions it does.  Justices like Clarence Thomas and David Souter (correct me if I’m wrong), to name just two, who rarely if ever participate in conferences and panel discussions and don’t write books or articles explaining their judicial philosophies to the public do a disservice to the country they are employed to serve.

Anyway, this was not only one of the most interesting weeks of the year so far for me, but also one of the seemingly longest of my life, so I didn’t make time (I won’t say I didn’t have time… must make a greater effort!) to blog.  I will be back in the States Dec. 22-30 and may not blog regularly from there, but I plan to post at least a few times.  In particular, I am working on travel diary entries from some of my trips this summer and fall, and would like to post those before the New Year!

Genau.

The stereotype of Germans as overly disciplined, serious and focused on exactitude is actually not far off.

There is no better proof of this to my mind than the fact that the most commonly used word in the German language, I would guess, is genau. It means exact, or exactly, and in a typical conversation it comes up as the answer to any question to which English speakers would normally say anything from a rather definitive “yes” or “yup,” to a weak or uncertain “I guess,” “uh huh,” or “OK.” With the Germans, there is little room for such imprecision — even if it’s there in reality.

Indeed, the word is used so often, it sometimes seems like some kind of secret code that reflects two people being on the same mental wavelength, not needing to say anymore. I have heard entire conversations which seem to consist of people saying genau back and forth to one another, as if playing tennis, with just a few substantive words thrown in for context or good measure.

I have even heard people saying genau to themselves; at these times, the word appears to be some mental tic they cannot avoid for the life of them. My favorite genau story concerns an apartment I went to see when I was first looking for a sublet here over the summer. As my twenty-something tour guide led me from one room of the apartment to another, he would introduce each by saying, genau. For example: “Genau, here is the kitchen.” “Genau, here is the bedroom.” “Genau, here is the bathroom.” “Genau, this is the balcony, it gets a lot of sun.”

I felt like grabbing him and asking: Why are you saying “exactly,” exactly? To whom? It was sort of as if he was talking to himself, confirming a thought he had had in his own head. (“Hmm, this room… what is it for again? Oh, right, exactly! It’s the kitchen!”) Or maybe it was that he was trying to read my mind, and responding to a question I never asked. (“Is this the kitchen, this room with the sink and the dishes and the food in the cupboards?” “Genau, this is the kitchen.”)

The overuse of this word may rise to the level of a mild, widespread societal mental illness. Genau makes some sense as a response to, “I just solved this problem and I think 2+2=4.” But to an English-speaker’s ear, it sounds like overkill as the answer to, “Oh, you just got back from a week in the Canary Islands, didn’t you?” or “Is today Thursday?” We might say, “yup!” The Germans would say, Genau.

This habit seems to also reflect the Germans’ tendency to be know-it-alls, to always be a step ahead of what others are thinking or saying. So it’s not enough to agree with someone, or to answer in the affirmative–you have to give the impression that the other person is, rather, catching on to something you already knew. Now, as with everything else in language, there’s the chicken-and-egg problem. Do Germans use genau so often because they have know-it-all personalities? Or do Germans come across as know-it-alls in part because they say genau so often, and because they are conditioned to do so in every generation from an early age by hearing it said all around them?

Either way, genau is a hallmark of the language as currently spoken, and is so pervasive that I cannot see how it could be changed. I now use it myself all the time (you don’t sound like you know the language if you don’t), and have also caught myself more and more saying, “Exactly” in response to questions when speaking English, too. It’s addictive, and I’m sure it’s an addiction that would be hard to overcome. But for the Germans’ sake, I wish they would try.

German Words of the Day: Gehminuten and Ausgehviertel

Gehminuten is, literally, a contraction of the words for “to go” and “minutes,” and is used to indicate that something is reachable by foot, i.e., is in walking distance.  So, you might say, “my house is just a few Gehminuten from the subway station.”  Clever.

In an apartment ad I saw today, the owner boasted that the studio is located in Berlin’s Ausgehviertel – a contraction of the verb ausgehen, to go out or to go clubbing, and viertel, literally “quarter,”  but used to refer to a neighborhood. Think the Meatpacking District.

Like so many useful and informal words, I don’t believe these are technically accepted by the German language authorities (a story for another day), but they are certainly in use on the streets–and isn’t that the first inevitable step to coining new words?

Making a List, Checking It Twice…

I’m heading back to New York in less than two weeks and have been making a list of things I need to buy or experience while back home, and it is unbelievably short.  Stuff to buy: Balance Bars, undershirts, running shoes.  Stuff to see/do: “Milk,” a museum exhibit or two, maybe get my computer battery replaced. That’s it. If you had asked me before I came, I would have predicted I would have needed an extra suitcase to take stuff back.

The fact is, just about everything I need is available in Europe, in exactly the same if not better form. From food to clothing to movies to books to toiletries, I can get whatever I need here. In fact, the only reason I want to buy running shoes back home is that they’re a bit cheaper in the States. But I could get them here if I needed to, whether online or at a sporting goods store. (OK, admittedly not everything that you can find in NYC — say, an amazing bagel — is available here in Berlin, but my frequent trips elsewhere (especially London and Paris) have helped in that regard.)

What’s worse — and maybe this is just a matter of some kind of present bias — is that I can imagine if the situation were reversed, and I were coming back to Berlin for a week, I would, in fact, need an extra suitcase to take stuff home: my new favorite toothpaste, aluminum-free deodorant, fancy and inexpensive dark chocolate bars, sanddorn preserves, this delicious horseradish spread I found… and then I’d have another really long list of places to eat and drink I would absolutely have to visit while in Berlin! What is going on here?!