Life in the Former DDR

As to be expected, life in East Germany is a bit different than in the West. Take for example Barbara, Thomas' mother. Having been born in 1952, she was raised in an environment that is the complete opposite of mine. She claims that 'Socialism' is her religion, and romanticizes the era where people had to line up for days for their yearly supply of potatoes every September.

Just to be clear, not everybody here in the East is very fond of the former German Democratic Republic. The young people, in particular, don't care. Like those old Marcos loyalists, the people who want the DDR back are those who think that things were better back then. The point is, that time is not going to tick back into the past.

Old habits really die hard. She still buys 'Rot Weiß' toothpaste ("This was the brand of toothpaste we had in the DDR!"). She eats potatoes that have tubers growing out of them ("We can only get them every Spetember in the DDR. They are still Ok!"), and is very proud of her crockery ("Made in the DDR!"). East Germans then had to line up and hoard whatever was available back then. Carrots, flour, you name it. Suplies are only available while it lasts. STaples like vegetables were available maybe only three or four times a year.

The modern day East German, instead of hoarding whatever is available from the state grocery stores, is on the prowl for discounts. Everytime Barbara and I go grocey shopping, she buys whatever she sees is on sale. Regardless of whether or not she needs it, regardless of whether or not she actually knows what she is actually buying, it goes in the basket.

One time I was rummaging through her cupboards for something to eat, I chanced onto an unopened bottle of Wasabi.

"Hey cool, Wasabi!"
"You know what it is?"
"Yeah, it tastes great with fish. It's Japanese."
"Oh."
"You don't know what it is? Why did you buy it?"
"It was on sale."

Old cloth, unnecessary flower pots, and unknown spices. We have so much junk in our house just because "You never know when you're gonna need them. You never know when they will go on sale again."

I once asked her if she prefers Socialist East Germany or today's united Germany. She chewed on my question and answered, "We do have a lot of freedoms now. But one needs money to buy it. We had the best schools and everybody had a job. Everybody was really equal."

I was silent after that. I thought about Darwanism. She would never survive evolution. She knows that not everything was great back then. Power failures and heating interruptions were frequent. She once had to spend three days curled up fetal position in bed, while taking care of three children, during a particularly bitter German winter.

I guess the DDR represents to her a time when everybody was happy, she had a husband, a job, and a family. In the present, she was not able to find a job, he left her and her children are grown.

Barbara and I get along very well. It's just that sometimes, I wish she would stop living in the past.

The One Where the Ugly Fat Italian Thought I was a Prostitute

Tip for Travelers Number One: Almost all North Italian gas stations are automated. Not only do you have to pump gas yourself, but you also have to feed 5, 10, or 20 euros into a machine before the pump comes to life. And no, it doesn't give change.

Tip for Travelers Number Two: The only time the pump person shows up is from 8 am to 12 pm, after which they take a two hour siesta, then pack up for the day at 5 pm.

Tip for Travelers Number Three: Italian hookers congregate in industrial areas, where many cars pass but human traffic is few and far-between. Thomas and I had to pass by a port area to get to Venice. In this particular stretch of the road, I saw several women in miniskirts, three meters apart from each other, hailing cars or hunched over car windows. Prostitutes! I cried out. Thomas could barely hear me above the din, and therefore my remark went unheard.

Our Little Engine that Could could only take 5 liters of gasoline at a time, and therefore could only take at maximum 5 euros worth of gas, (1 liter = 1.30 euros in Italy). One sunny day we were running low on gas, and there were no gas stations in sight. Alas, we only had a 10 euro bill. Worse, it was in the middle of a two week holiday, and siesta time, to boot. Every freaking restaurant and establishment in the area was closed. Heck, even the McDonalds was closed!

What do we do then? We asked each other. I was furious at Thomas for not having his 10 euros changed at the pizzeria where he stopped to take a leak. We drove on and found a gas station in the middle of an industrial area. Problem number one solved.

Where to get change then? With a determined look on my face, I took off my helmet, and tried to stop motorists for change.

I wasn't thinking "OhMyGod, TheyMightThinkI'maProstitute," but more like "OhMyGod, WeNeedCash!" Besides, I was wearing a windbreaker, a pair of jeans, and my helmet was tucked under my arm: there was no way anybody could have mistook me for anything else other than a motorist in distress.

Cars whizzed by me. I was hoping that somebody would stop and pump gas there, but nobody came within the next five minutes. I walked on a bit further when an old white box-type car stopped at the opposite side of the road. I crossed the street with a relieved look on my face.

Italians can understand some Spanish. There was one time, while we were asking for directions, a dude asked us if we either spoke Italian or Spanish. I said we had some Spanish (meaning that our knowledge of Spanish could fill a thimble), after which he proceeded to give directions in Spanish.

The guy was friendly enough, and gave me a smile. From what I could see, he was short, stout, bald, and old enough to be my grandfather. His broad nose had little white hairs on the bridge (ewww!).

With a sheepish look in my face, I explained in broken Spanish that we needed change for 10 euros. "Tienes dos cinco euros para cambio por diez euros? Para gasolina?" At the back of my mind, I prayed that I was understandable, at the very least.

The old man said something unintelligible. I repeated the question, and gave him my ten euros. He took my ten euros, took a good look at it, and handed it back to me. I was puzzled at his behavior. "Scusi?" I asked.

More Italian words followed. Then he reached out of his car window and touched my crotch!

I was so shocked that I was speechless for a minute. Actually, my mind was blank. I just turned around and crossed back to the gas station. The nerve of this man, he actually backed up his car to follow me!

"Thomas!" I cried. "The man is following me! He thinks I am a prostitute!"

I was too far away from Thomas, who was watching over our bike, to be understood. I think it dawned on the man that I was NOT a prostitute, and that I had company, because he drove off.

Thomas doubled up in laughter when I later told him what happened. Then he asked, "Why didn't you slap him?"

In reality, my mind went blank. But in the split second after the blankness, I became afraid that he would pull me inside the car. So I fibbed. "Well, he had his car windows partially closed."

"Then how was he able to reach your crotch?"

Doubly embarrassed by the situation and for being caught in a lie, I sorely said, "Let's drive on. You said that we still have enough gas to drive on for a couple of kilometers."

Speaking in Tongues

One of the disadvantages of moving in a country where you don't speak the language is that it really highlights how alien everything is. The food is funny, the people act weird, and worse, you can't understand them. Reading a newspaper, one of my favorite actvities, is a daunting task in German.

Because of my bilingual origins, I thought that learning a new language would not be so hard. I can fluently speak and write in either English or Tagalog. I can switch between speaking or writing in these two languages with a snap of a finger. It should be relatively easy to learn German, right? WRONG!

There is a difference between learning a langage as a child and as an adult. Whenever I change langages, between English and Tagalog, my mind fluidly switches gears automatically. Like how water flows in a river. The part of my brain that stores German seems to be in a completely different segment. It's akin to driving a car along a street. Whenever I have to switch gears, I have to drive back to the fork of the road that divides English and German, encounter a few humps, before everything evens out.

I have made considerable efforts to speak and understand the language. I took private German lessons in the Philippines, and I take language classes here. People here are amazed that I can speak German the way I do, despite having only started learning it last Febuary. Despite that, I have not made life easy for my poor teacher, who is also the English teacher in the language school I attend. English is so strongly ingrained in my brain that she has given up trying to explain German grammatical concepts in German, a no-no in our multi-cultural classroom, and now uses English for my benefit.

I applied and was accepted for an internship program in the Jena office of the Thüringische Landeszeitung, the newspaper in the state where I live. I hope that will strengthen my understanding of the language, and eventually help me find a good Masteral degree program.

I think that unlocking the key to this riddle is finding the rhythm of the German language. Aside from the craziness of trying to determine what nouns go with the articles der, die, and das, German is a logical language. It should not be too hard to follow something that beats at a regular rhythm.

Unfortunately for me, logic is not my strongest suit, is it?