Every six months, when I arrive in Philadelphia for a visit, my brother hands me a cardboard box filled with several months worth of mail. There are credit card applications and coupons and catalogs; bank statements and bills and going out of business flyers. I haven’t set foot in a Bed Bath & Beyond in at least three years but I know they alone will have sent me at least a dozen pieces of mail. I know this like I know death and taxes.
Days later, just as I finish sorting and shredding that heap, my parents come to visit. They, too, have a box filled with even more mail despite the fact that I haven’t used their address for more than 20 years. I’ve given them permission to throw it out, but they never do.
“It might be important,” my mother points out.
She is right. Someone might have sent me an important message a full six months ago. I imagine they tried to call me on my soup can too.
When I moved to Germany, I didn’t give much consideration to the mail – this because I am a normal person with a reasonable thought process. But if I had been pressed to imagine what my future relationship with the Deutsche Post might look like, I would have laughed. In a country known for efficiency and environmentalism, how much mail can I really get? Who’s going to be sending it to me anyway?
Those were supposed to be rhetorical questions, but Germany seemed to take them more as a challenge. When I opened my mailbox at the end of my first week in Munich, a veritable avalanche poured out. Thick envelopes and postcards and catalogs of all kinds welcoming Frau Halliwell to her new home and alerting her to every business in a ten-mile radius.
It was just like the States, except worse. Because here in Munich – Achtung! – the mail is all in German.
The annoyance I once felt for mail has died. From its ash, dread has arisen. Whatever I find in my mailbox today is something that I will have to painstakingly translate. The words are long and the type is small. Unlike most business correspondence, German companies like keeping the reader in suspense, sometimes letting entire pages of text float by before finally getting to the point.
For example, in March I received a notice from Deutschlandradio. At the end of a two-page letter about their exceptional programming and valuable service, there was a single question: Wie hoch ist der Rundfunkbeitrag?
After that, there were several options listed:
1 Rundfunkbeitrag: €17.50 monatlich; €52.50, 3 Monate
1/3 Runfunkbeitrag: €5.83 monatlich; €17.49, 3 Monate
This, I gathered, was Germany’s version of NPR and they were seeking membership dues or monthly donations. Either way, I figured it was optional.
“How about zero Rundfunkbeitrag?” I asked aloud in my kitchen. “I want zero Rundfunkbeitrag.”
Still, just to be sure, I translated the letter start to finish because, well, I was not at all sure. I was also not at all correct. The letter was a bill for the broadcast tax that Germany imposes on all residents regardless of whether or not they even own a TV or radio. My landlord was supposed to pay this fee, but I got the letter nonetheless. I considered sending them €50 euros anyway. That seemed a fair price to pay to avoid any further correspondence about arcane German tax laws.
Here in Germany, the mail has become one giant guessing game: bill or donation; FYI or request; form letter or informed. Everything – every logo, every company, every sender – is completely foreign to me, which means that none of it is easily identifiable as junk.
In April, I got a three-page letter from my health insurance provider that appeared to announce that my ID card – my Gesundheitskarte – was on its way. But the letter seemed too long to just be about that so I set to work translating the second page. In fact, they were requesting a passport photo that they could use to print on the card. They’d send the document, once I sent a picture.
This one, at least, was worth the effort. Now I have photo ID to present whenever someone sneezes.
It’s not just the mail that’s a challenge. Everything in Munich seems to be a little more complicated than I expected. Take, for example, setting up my cell phone. For years, I’ve been walking into wireless providers all over the world – in Albania, Serbia, France, Thailand, Indonesia – and arranging a short-term contract on the spot. I handed over between $3 and $30 and, in return, they gave me a local SIM card. I used it until I left and never heard from a single one of them again.
I expected that transaction to go the same way in Munich, but it did not. Here, I needed to sign a two-year contract and pay an activation fee. The data plan was a measly 2GB for €20, even though the tourist SIM package offered double that for the same price. Still, it was hard to argue. I’m good at negotiating in English, but definitely wasn’t up for it in German. I could have walked around and found another shop, or at least another salesperson whose English made more sense to me, but I didn’t really have time. I needed the cell phone number to set up a bank account. I needed the bank account to give to Payroll. I needed both done within about 48 hours or I would miss my employer’s deadline to get paid for the month. I signed the contract and went straight to the bank.
Three weeks later, I received a wireless bill for €100 more than I expected. I went to the shop and was told that amount included three months of service, plus an activation fee. So I paid the bill. The following month, I received a bill for €40, which is twice the amount that I expected to pay per month and a full four times as much as I was expecting that particular month since I was told I had already covered it. Back to the shop I went, where the same clerk told me that the bill was correct. My contract was actually €40/month – only the first month was €20.
I’ve decided that this salesperson is either a moron or a crook. But I’m helpless and that seems worse. Normally I’d check the contract and sort it out. I’d argue. I’d refuse to leave until I had an account credit and the bills were accurate. I’d take down this salesperson’s name and talk to his manager. I’d write a letter to Vodaphone alerting them to the problem. I am cheap and I am vocal and I have flexible work hours. I am every business’s worst nightmare.
But none of those options are available to me here in Germany. I can’t read the contract or speak the language. Online and phone customer service is only available in German. The other shop in town won’t talk to me since they didn’t sell me the contract. I have no cards left to play. I’ve resigned myself to paying the bill every month regardless of what amount is due. I chalked it all up as a self-imposed expat tax and moved on.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bhbpj0tHHV8/?taken-by=adviceineeded
Did you catch that? I just referred to myself as an expat! I hate that word but I used it anyway, not out of elitism, but out of honesty. I would never equate my experience of moving to Germany to that of an immigrant. I’m calling myself an expat because I know I couldn’t hack it as an immigrant even for a day. I arrived with a well-paying job and an overpriced apartment waiting for me. I had my residence and work permit applications processed by a relocation agency. My employer gave me step-by-step instructions on how to enroll in health insurance and how to validate a U-Bahn ticket. And still there are moments when I feel completely lost.
I wonder what it would be like to arrive without any of those things in place. To show up and speak no German and have English be a second or third language. To have no college education, or, even worse, have a degree that wasn’t recognized. To need to find a job, then find a place to live as a foreigner in a country dripping with casual racism. To identify a bank that will open an account without a cell phone number or a wireless provider that will provide a number without a local bank account. To get slammed with an unexpected €100 bill and not have the means to shrug it off. Actually, I try not to think about all that too much. I don’t like panic attacks.
Last Friday afternoon, I took myself out for a drink in my neighborhood. When I found a café I liked, I sat down at a table outside and stammered through ordering a glass of rosé. I received it and I drank it. That’s it. That’s my whole story.
Not so for the man who sat down next to me twenty minutes after I arrived. In similarly stunted German, he placed an order for a large beer. He was disheveled and unkempt, dressed in coveralls and running sneakers. He looked like he just got off from a day of laying pavement or cutting grass. I will admit that when he chose the table right next to mine, despite there being plenty of other options, I was annoyed. Here we go, I thought. Time to explain to yet another man why I’d rather read a book than talk to him.
A few minutes later, a different waiter returned and asked the man, in German, if he would like to order something. I understood the customer’s confusion perfectly: I already ordered so what is this waiter asking me? Should I order again or not? Where’s that other guy I already talked to?
The second waiter repeated himself, more slowly this time.
“I don’t know,” the man said in heavily accented English.
It’s not often that I can follow a conversation better than the people who are having it. It is very rare indeed when I can serve as a translator. I cut in with delirious enthusiasm.
“He’s asking if you want to order something,” I explained. “You already did. A large beer.”
I turned back to the waiter, and repeated. “He wants a large beer.”
It was only then that I realized this was not a miscommunication at all. This waiter, like most German people, almost certainly spoke some English. Considering that he was young and white and working but a stone’s throw from a subway stop called Universität, I would bet my glass of rosé that he was probably fluent in it. More likely than not, he spoke at least four languages. I could make no such claim, but at least, for this one brief moment, I was kind.
The large beer came, arriving with the bill, which the waiter stood to collect. To be kind to him, I’ll acknowledge that his behavior, this small part of it at least, was based on the actual experience of people running off from the corner table at an outdoor café without paying. I’ll ignore the fact that he didn’t bill me in advance – that no one in Europe ever has and I doubt anyone ever will. But the rest – the refusing to speak in English, the feigned ignorance over the order, the likely behind-the-scenes debate if he should serve the man at all – I can’t allow. It’s too unfair.
This other customer and I were more alike than different. We spoke the same busted German. We each ordered a single drink at a two-person table. We were both foreign and alone, drinking in the middle of the day. But for some reason I was a novelty and he was a nuisance.
Immigration is a hot topic these days. Regardless of where you fall on policy, I hope you remember that what we’re really talking about is people. Very few of us have any idea how hard it is to find our way in an unfamiliar place – not as tourists for a week or two, but as residents for the foreseeable future. I have lived an extremely simplified version of the immigrant experience and I still find it difficult. I am routinely bested by a pile of mail and a cell phone bill.
I hear a lot of people say that immigrants have their sympathy, but I think they’re entitled to much more than that. They deserve our respect.
This is perfectly articulating what has been gnawing on my mind for so long! I am an Norwegian expat living in London. I shudder at that description of myself, but that is what I am. I’m the right kind of foreign to be a novelty that blends in the crowd, and I recognise myself in what you are writing here (other than the having to translate mail).
Thank you for writing it! It was a great read.
hi there – thanks for reading and I’m glad it’s resonating. sometimes it’s hard to tell if I’m imagining it or not… like are things really this difficult or just different? a little bit of both, maybe. in any case, I know how it feels to blend right in but still feel so foreign. it’s an interesting perspective, that’s for for sure.
enjoy London!
This is brilliant. I remember feeling this sort of frustration even when I lived in the UK – a country that shares my language! I can’t imagine how difficult it must be with that added barrier.
Actually, I did a semester in the UK in college and the best thing I learned was that every country did things “differently.” We kept saying “wrong” – i.e., they drive on the “wrong” side of the road, they call chips crisps – wrong, etc…. it was a good lesson in semantics – opposite does not mean wrong, different is not wrong. I try to remember that now as I’m all like WTF??? Anyway, thanks for reading. Catch you soon :)
All well said. I’m an expat living in my third country (including Germany-damn radio tax!). I’ve given up trying to pretend that I know what’s going on. I’m just so grateful when people are kind enough to slow down just a little for me. Personally, I’m trying to embrace the chaos & crazy and could hug my Korean instructor when she answers yet another call to translate for me!
I understand. I’m glad that other transplants/expats agree with the sentiment of the piece. I understand that my experience doesn’t have to match anyone else’s, but it’s nice to know that I’m not the only one… I still can’t get over how much easier it is to travel to foreign places vs. to live in them. that was the biggest surprise to me at first and it continues to be today. My boyfriend and I just spent 12 days in Italy and, for the most part, it went off without a hitch. We weren’t in Munich for 5 minutes and there was train construction that had us totally confused and turned around. The directions were all in German, even from the woman answering questions on the platform, and we were only getting half of it. It’s just funny that I expected to be a little lost in Rome, but not here at home… I think there’s something to the idea also that when you *think* you should know a place, you don’t ask questions and therefore make it harder on yourself. Anyway. best to you in the expat life! South Korea is on my list!