Frohes Neues Jahr! - Or maybe not, then

In a desperate attempt to finally shift some of the pandemic pounds I gained during lockdown, I have started walking for 2 hours a day. I pull my boots on, wrap a scarf around my neck a few times, zip up my anorak, jam a hat on my head and put some gloves on and off I go, pounding the streets of this town, window shopping along the way.

Now, I'm a bit of a shy person (anyone who knows me will probably laugh incredulously at this point), so I have to force myself to perform some of the "social niceties", and one of them is saying "Happy New Year" or "Frohes Neues Jahr" to people as you pass by them in the street. 

The streets were fairly empty on New Year's Day, and yet, everyone I passed didn't say a word, not even "Hello", not even a nod in acknowledgement of seeing a fellow human being on such a quiet day. And on 2 January, walking in a greener area, things were no better. I said "Frohes Neues Jahr" to people and they just stared at me. Not even a grunt in return. 

This is just so puzzling. I've never encountered such rudeness before. Normally, it's me who has to reply to others. I mentioned this to a German journalist this morning and she said she had also had the same experience. She thinks that people may think that the innocuous phrase "Frohes Neues Jahr" is much too personal to say to any Tom, Dick or Harry you may encounter. Personally, I am not convinced by that. I believe that such unfriendliness may have two causes: 1) the increasing amount of time people spend online at home - especially since the pandemic and 2) the media that stirs up mistrust of other people.

It's been years, probably a couple of decades, since I watched the news. These days, I don't much listen to the news either. No, what I prefer to do is to trawl through the newspapers - online or in the library - because they offer two advantages. Firstly, you can read different slants on news events by reading more than one paper with different political views. Secondly, even the most morose newspaper includes a few upbeat articles, a few snippets of good news, a line or two that might raise a smile.

We need to remember that even though the TV news programmes want to stir up our fear and despair by showing us the worst of humanity, all humans are not inherently wicked and that there is more good than bad in the world. 

Having said that, may I wish everyone a Happy New Year! Onwards and upwards! Never give up - never surrender!

I seem to have moved country

Recent visits to the Altstadt of this town - or any street between the old part of town and the main station - always make me think that I'm now living in another country, that I've moved out of Germany. And why do I get that impression? Because all I can hear the people around me speak is Dutch. 

Last week, I walked along the Rhine from the Altstadt to the northernmost district of this town (from my flat to there - 14.7 km) and I counted 21 coaches in one car park on the river, and most of them from the Netherlands. 

Now, if you think that Germans are tall (you generally have to raise your eyes to look straight at their face), then you've not seen the Dutch. When speaking to them, you have to flip your head back; they are at least a head taller than the Germans. 

Even today, on Boxing Day, with all the shops closed, the centre of town was still flooded with tall Dutchmen and Dutch women strolling around.

As soon as the Christmas markets close, things will go back to normal, and I'll hear mostly Turkish, Arabic, Spanish and Russian again.

Bootlaces are not an optional accessory

Recently, I've started going ice-skating again. This entails a 30-minute cycle to get to the ice rink and a half-hour bike ride back home again, with 60 minutes on the ice sandwiched in between.

I've had my own ice skates ever since I took lessons in London many years ago. One thing we learnt was that you have to lace up your boots so that they fit snuggly all the way up the ankle. You might get away with leaving the last pair of hooks at the top unused, but basically, once you've tightened the laces around the foot, you pull them tightly around the hooks of the bit of the boot that goes upwards. The main thing is that your boot grips around your leg.

When I'm on the ice, though, what do I see? I see teenagers who think that they can do up ice-skating boots the same way as they do their trainers: they don't lace their boots at all. They sort of wind them round the bottom of the ankle, not using the hooks at all. And then they wonder why they wobble so much, why their feet are at an angle to the ice instead of being upright. 

When I see teenagers with badly laced boots, I want to go up to them and tell them what to do so that they'll feel more secure on the ice, but then I restrain myself as I've been told I shouldn't "poke my nose into other people's lives" and I let them get on with it. But I do feel sorry for them. If only they could figure out for themselves that those long laces and the hooks on the boots are actually there for a purpose and aren't an optional accessory.

This is how boots shouldn't and should look like:

Like living in a black-and-white film

These days, even in the summer, when I am out and about, walking through the streets, I sometimes think that I must have some sort of eye defect, because I seem to be living in a monochrome world: everyone is dressed in black. From head to toe. Even small children. (No kidding!) Even at the height of the summer.

And I wonder to myself what is wrong with wearing, say, a splash of blue, orange, red or green? Personally, I would rather die than wear a black anorak. All mine are red, because when the days are gloomy, you don't want to pile gloom upon gloom and just wear the most dismal colour around. You want something a bit uplifting, a dash of something bright and cheerful. At least, I do. 

Some people tell me that black doesn't show up the dirt, but there are plenty of things that will show up on a black anorak, such as bird poo and ice-cream, to mention but two.

It was similar in the City of London, when I used to pass through it on my way to work: everyone was wearing sombre suits, but at least there was some colour variation - not just black, but dark grey, medium to light grey and navy blue. All pepped up with white shirts or blouses and, for the men, a tie. But even then, I did think they looked like a bunch of crows.

These days, though, people seem to clad themselves in black in some sort of attempt to be self-effacing, to disappear into the background, to not be seen. I presume this from the fact that not only do they wear black, but they wear the most shapeless clothes around, baggy to the extreme. Like some human Shar-Pei,  a dog famed for having more skin than is necessary for its actual frame.

I miss the days when people dressed with some style and panache. With colour and an eye for what went well together. Nowadays, I walk along the streets with dark-clothed, shapelessly clad people that put me in mind of slugs and I think that I'm in some parallel universe, one that is a black-and-white movie from the time when Technicolour film had not been invented.

If there is one thing that the film The Wizard of Oz, a movie that is always shown on UK TV at Christmas time, and whose middle section is in glorious Technicolour, should have taught us over the years, it is that colour is something fantastic, joyous and uplifting. How sad that people have turned their backs on bright and joyful colours.

The advantage of the "Sie" form when learning German

 Now, as you may know, when you learn a foreign language, that is probably the first time you come across the word "to conjugate". That means you have to change the form of the verb according to the subject that is placed in front of it. English is a nice language in that there are only a few occasions when the basic form of the verb, i.e. the infinitive, changes in any way. Mostly, it's a case of sticking a 's' onto the end of the verb with he, she or it. (As the Germans like to say: he, she, it - ein S muss mit.) Have has the form 'has' for the third person singular and it's only really the verb 'to be' that has three different forms (am, is, are).

German, however, has a different ending for each person. The verb for 'to go', gehen, is conjugated thus:

ich gehe            (I go)
du gehst            (you go - informal you, singular form)
er/sie/es geht    (he/she/it goes)

wir gehen        (we go)
ihr geht            (you go - informal you, plural form)
Sie gehen        (you go - formal you, plural and singular form)
sie gehen        (they go)

[When my Japanese friend realised there were three uses of "sie" (with and without a capital S) as the subject of a sentence, she gave up learning German, but that's just en passant.]

As you may have noticed, however, the form of the verb for the polite you form, Sie, is the same as the infinitive, which is why, when I first started to learn German formally at nearly the age of 14, I promptly addressed even family members using the "Sie" form, because then I didn't have to think about conjugating the verb. It gave them a jolt, I can tell you. "Don't call me "Sie"!" they'd exclaim. But it was so much easier for a learner of German.

Naturally, a language wouldn't be a language if there weren't any exceptions and there is one: it's the verb for 'to be' - sein.

It goes thus:

ich bin
du bist
er/sie/es ist

wir sind
ihr seid (now that's a difficult one to master)
Sie sind
sie sind

People always say that German is a difficult language, but when you compare it to Spanish and French, it's the only one of the three that has infinitives that is the same form as the polite you - which is fine, as it's going to take a while before a German allows you to call them by the informal you.

One advantage of the "Sie" form at work

 As I have already said, the Germans set clear boundaries between their working life and their private life. They don't generally socialise with their colleagues. 

This means that, even though they may have been working opposite someone else in their little shared office for 20 years or more, they will still call each other Herr Schmidt and Frau Meyer. And they will normally say "Sie" to each other, i.e. the formal version of the word "you".

And why is this an advantage? I'll tell you why. It forms a sort of "wedge" between you and your colleague. It's a sort of barrier, across which you simply do not step. It keeps your colleague firmly at arm's length, which means that when they ask you for a "favour", then it's much easier to say no. You don't feel guilty if you turn down their request, not like you would if you were using the more familiar form of the word for "you" (i.e. "du"). 

It's very liberating - this feeling of not "owing" something to a fellow worker at your company or institution. You are not a "workmate", you don't feel chummy with them, you know they won't be moaning at you over a pint down at the pub after work because you don't socialise with them - so you don't feel bad at saying no. 

German might be an unwieldy language, but it does have some advantages.

The "Hamburger Sie" and the "Münchener Du"

As you probably know, German, like many other languages, has two words for saying 'you'. Well, three actually if you include the plural form of the informal 'du', which you use to address a person you are on closer terms with. If you don't know the person, or if you have to be more formal with them, then you use "Sie", with a capital S. The plural form of "Sie" is still "Sie", but the plural form of "du" is "ihr". So three different words to say "you" in German.

Now, when you work with someone for a long time and you get on very well with them, you feel a bit silly always calling them Herr Schmidt and Frau Meyer rather than using their first name. And you'd like to use something a bit more relaxed. On the other hand, however, it's still a working relationship, and the Germans are very good at keeping their private life and their working life separate. They rarely socialise with colleagues after work. No Friday-evening drink at the pub for them and their colleagues. Oh, no.

The so-called "Hamburger Sie" or "Hamburg you" is something I first came across when I worked for the German medical director of a Japanese pharma company here in Germany. He kept called me Frau and my surname. And I kept thinking, "But that's my mother's name." I invited him to call me by my first name, which he did, while still addressing me as "Sie". And I thought, "What a good compromise." It's a mixture of formal and informal. 

Then I was told that there is yet another possibility and that it goes by the name of the "Münchener du" or the "Munich informal you". In this version, you address the person by their surname - with your without Herr or Frau in front of it - but use the informal form of the word for you. Like this: "Gruber, mach mal bitte das Fenster zu!" (Gruber, please close the window) or "Frau Müller, weißt du, wie viel die Tomaten kosten?" (Mrs Miller, do you know how much the tomatoes cost?")

For a nation of people that can be very inflexible in their way of thinking and doing things ("We've done things like this for the last 70 years, why should we change now?"), I think this goes to show that they can mix things up if they are so inclined.