Some Things I Won't Miss

1. The Culture of Bureaucratic Deference
There is a myth of the submissive German. Historian Richard Evans wrote a clever essay about it years ago called "In Search of the Untertangeist." He argued that Germans are as cranky and rebellious as the next folk. True, he wrote, the Prussian bureaucracy spinned together a fantastic web of regulations, but that did not mean that Germans followed them.
I am not going to contradict Sir (or almost "Sir") Richard, but living in contemporary Germany does make you feel that the great myth of submissiveness is founded upon a certain truth. German employees tend to have an insanely deferential attitude toward their bosses' pronouncements.
I faced this attitude buying bread, getting a video, filing for my daughter's papers. Germany's bureaucratic hoops and twists are ultimately no more idiotic than the ones in America. The difference, however, is that German workers tend to honor these regulations with solemn self-righteous loyalty. What I have longed for in Berlin are the winks, smirks, and pleasure-filled rule breaking that you get from the average American grunt. I wanted some acknowledgement, any acknowledgement, that the rules do indeed suck (even if we must ultimately live by them), that the boss could in fact be an idiot.
The video store example stays in my mind because there was this ultra-hip, rebel film dude behind the counter, when I posed the question: Is it really necessary to make your customers stand in line for 10 minutes just so we can return a dvd? Couldn't the store have a drop box? No, hip dude counter man said to me with great solemnity and self-righteousness. We cannot have a drop box, because it is important for us to make sure that the dvd has not been damaged at the point that you return it. I gave him my but-let-us-join-in-solidarity-against-the-corporate-boss-man laugh and also a wink, and I said, "somehow 100 + million Americans manage to drop their dvd's in drop boxes without causing major damage to the entertainment industry. It must be possible, no?"
No, he said, and explained to me how the policy needed to stay in place because...well, just because. No wink, no smirk, not even a momentary acknowledgement of the possibility that his corporate boss might possibly demand something irrational.
Then there was the bakery: The great "Backfehler" episode. There is a French bakery in our neighborhood. Many mornings I got a baguette there, and it was excellent. Many afternoons I brought home a baguette that was stale and depressing.
I finally asked the young woman behind the counter what time the baguettes were baked. She told me they were baked once a day at 4 AM. Aha, I said, so that's why my baguette is always stale in the afternoon.
What?! She said. Your baguette was stale? That cannot be.
But, I responded. It's really not surprising. No baguette can be fresh after 12 hours.....
What, she said? Stale baguette. It must have been a Backfehler (a baking mistake). We are very sorry, she said mechanically.
....but a French baguette is not like a heavy German rye , I said to her. There's no way to make it.....
It must have been a Backfehler, she repeated, mechanically. People were starting to get in line behind me, and we were both getting self-conscious.
Ok, I said.
Please try our baguettes again, she said, gesturing to the pile of -- as I had just figured out -- 14-hour old baguettes.
No, that's ok, I said. I think I'll just get some cookies.
I'm sure it was a Backfehler, she said. Things were getting tense.
It's not a Backfehler when bread just gets old, I told her, starting to get annoyed.
She stared at me. For a moment I thought tears were welling up in her eyes.......Backfehler she said. I'm sure it was a Backfehler. The hard-drive in her brain had apparently crashed.
Reboot, reboot, I thought. No chance. I had to get out of the store.

2. The universally dyspeptic mood of almost every customer service person north of Bavaria (and the Bavarians are insufferable with their perky false cheer and cloying formalities)
Are Berlin service workers unfriendly? Is the Pope earnest?
Stay tuned for these and other answers to the troubling questions of Central Europe today.
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