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. 

Manchester Airport - I take it all back (well, almost all)

At the end of September, I had cause to nip over to North Wales for a quick family visit. I hadn't been in the UK since Easter 2019, what with one thing and another, including a global pandemic. And to be honest, I was in no great hurry to return to the UK, and a large chunk of the reason was the fact that I would have to fly in and out of Manchester Airport. Before booking my ticket, I had researched other possibilities, such as flying to Birmingham Airport (much further away) and even travelling all the way by train from Germany (16 hours and many changes).

And why did I try to avoid Manchester Airport? Well, every year, there is a survey of air passengers as to what the worst airports across the world are, and you can bet your bottom dollar and your first-born son that Manchester Airport will be in the top 10 of the worst, if not even the top five.

Compare what happens when you fly from, say, Dusseldorf Airport. As soon as you get there, you look at the large information boards for your flight number and destination and you can see the number of the desks where you can check in for your flight, and even the gate number you have to make your way to after going through security. You go straight to the check-in desk and after about 10 minutes to half an hour, depending on the length of the queue, you're done and you move to the security area of the section of the airport your flight will be leaving from, A, B or C. At security, there are loads of lines available and you choose one. You're through in a matter of minutes. Then you go through the duty-free shops and seek out your gate number and you can even sit there and wait half an hour or more, in peace, reading a book or whatever. Or you go and have a coffee or browse the shops. Everything is calm and peaceful. From arriving at the airport to sitting at your gate number has taken about 20 minutes. 

And then there is Manchester Airport and this is what it was like in the past... You get dropped off at the airport and the car zooms off since if it's not out again within 5 minutes, it will cost more than £5 to get out again. Yes, they charge people a minimum of £5 to drop their relatives off at an airport. Then you enter a dingy airport which looks grey and shabby. There is chaos everywhere. You find the check-in desks of the airline you are booked with and stand in line. Slowly, the long line shuffles forward and when you get there, you are told you are too early to check in for your flight. So, you go to the back of the queue and inch your way forward to the front again, whereupon you are told that you are still too early to check in. Reader, I think it was my fourth attempt that was rewarded with a boarding card. 

Then you have to go through security. In 2017, I flew back to Germany with my youngest cousin and we stood in one of the only two security lines and nothing and no-one moved for 45 minutes. I checked. We didn't move a millimetre. Only two men, one for each queue. People were so patient, but ultimately some started shouting, "My flight leaves in half an hour." I hope they made it.

Eventually (letztendlich or irgendwann mal and not eventuell), you get through to the other side and find yourself in the duty-free area, with loud music blaring (plärren, schmettern) at you. I've got sensitive ears!. The noise continues when you get to a large area with rows of seats in the middle ringed shops of all kinds. If you sit on the seats, you'll be shaken like a milkshake, because children are jumping on and off the seats and their parents won't admonish them at all. From every single shop, there is more loud music - and they are all playing different kinds of music. My ears feel they are under assault. And all this time, you don't know what your gate number is because they don't tell you - unlike in other airports, where you know as soon as you enter the building. No, in Manchester Airport, you have to leave your shaking seat to walk metres over to a small screen hanging from the ceiling to see if the gate number has finally been announced, which it generally is 30 minutes before the flight is due to take off. Then you have to look around you to see if you can see signs that point in the directions of all the various gates - they're not all in one area. And it seems that your gate is inevitably going to be the one that is furthest away from wherever you are currently standing,, so you have to walk briskly. 

That was then - this is now.... I got to the airport and the driver quickly let me out of the car so he wouldn't incur further charges beside the standard £5 fee for dropping passengers off and I scurried into the building. A shabby, dingy place crammed full of Arab families, the women clad in black from head to toe, queuing miserably to check in. I wove my way through them, pulling my little red suitcase being me, turned a corner and...my mouth dropped open. What a transformation. Lo and behold, a new, modern, clean, bright and shiny airport terminal stood in front of me! Checking in took about 15 minutes. The security area was much larger and there were many lines open and a swarm of security personnel checking everyone's baggage and personal belongings. Another few minutes and I was through - after taking my keys and a handkerchief out of my jeans pockets. (They're always there so I hadn't thought about them.)

And then the duty-free area - massive but bright and clean and I treated myself to some perfume by Guerlain. The rest of the area was also much larger than before with many more shops and instead of one space surrounded by stores, the retail outlets and places to sit were dotted throughout the area, as were the restaurants, cafes and bars. An astounding transformation and most pleasing to me. I was fair enthralled and enchanted by it all. As though a frog had turned into a prince.

Sadly, one thing hadn't changed, and that was the noise, but, fortunately, I managed to find a seat in a two or three places that were in more peaceful spots, although not as quiet as in other airports. On the whole, though, that is a relatively trivial matter, considering how much everything else has improved. A big thumbs up from me for the new Terminal 2 at Manchester Airport, which I had previously dubbed "Dante's inner ring of hell".

Who knows? I might even use the place again - but this time, with no prior trepidation.

P.S. If you want to see how Manchester Airport has been transformed, there's a short video on this website: https://www.manchesterairport.co.uk/at-the-airport/terminal-2/your-new-t2/

 

WiFi - why bother?

This year, I had to buy a new printer after my last HP printer gave up the ghost after four years. Unfortunately, I listened to my computer guy and got an Epson printer, which is the worst printer I've ever encountered in my entire life because there are white stripes across the pages, which means I have to guess what the words in the damaged lines actually are.

On top of that, though, is the faff (Herummacherei) involved in setting up the WiFi (WLAN) connection between the printer/scanner/photocopier and the computer itself. It took a long time to get that done. The password that I had to enter was damned long and with letters in lower and upper case, plus numbers. And I can't tell you how many times I had to enter it before it was accepted. Then, the next day, I'd have to do it all again. And the day after that, too. And so on and so forth.

After a while things settled down, but last week, I had to try to re-establish the WiFi connection yet again. And I did it, but only after entering the password a fair few times. But the next day, when I had to establish the connection yet again, I failed. Again and again and again. And the WPS button on the router didn't work either, before you ask.

In the end, with a bit of googling, I found you could buy a cable to link the printer etc. to the hard drive, so I went to notebooksbilliger, thinking it would be better for the high street if I were to actually support a local shop rather than order it via Amazon. Reader, the young man in the shop swore blind that they didn't have such a thing. Despite there being a whole load of cables hanging on the wall behind him. A young, good-looking man, the kind you might have found in a boy band of the past, I reckoned he was either too lazy to actually look at the cables on offer, or was working for a rival company and was trying to sabotage the business of notebooksbilliger. I left, returned home and ordered the cable on Amazon after all. 

Four days later, it arrived and I just took the cable out of the box, plugged it in to the printer and the hard drive and hey presto! Everything worked. No faff whatsoever. What a relief.

Just because wireless connection is possible, it doesn't mean you have to use it. A simple cable does the job much better.

Past, future - but what about the present?

I have a confession to make: I am a great worrier. No, not 'warrior', like some hulking hunk who's managed to survive an entire series of Game of Thrones or some other bloodthirsty programme, but a person who worries a lot.

Years ago, my past seemed to be stuck on a loop, playing scenes from my childhood, adolescence and the previous years of my adulthood time and time again. Images flashed before my mind's eye, as they are supposed to do when you're on the brink of death. They haunted me. However, I found some weekend seminars on psychology at the local adult education centre and they, along with some private sessions with the woman that led them, helped me put the past (mostly) to rest. (No-one's perfect.)

Now, however, I worry constantly about the future and have been doing so for the last few years, ever since the pandemic started. I am forever making calculations about how much money I might be able to set aside for my old age and how much I might still be able to earn from teaching even when I get the full UK state pension, and what might happen if the exchange rate drops further, and so on and so forth. There are bits of paper with calculations on them scattered throughout the flat - not to mention the endpapers of books that I've used to jot down some figures. The pocket calculator is one of my most-used gadgets.

Yet what will all this worry bring me? Nothing. I've survived so far and I can be pretty certain that I will continue to survive in the future. After all, what do I need? I certainly don't need to keep up with the Joneses; I am no status seeker. What I cherish most is my freedom, such as my freedom to pick and choose the work I want to do. If that means I have to live in a bedsit (what the Germans call a "studio apartment"), then so be it. So long as I have a bed to sleep in (and earplugs), a place to wash myself and cook for myself and space to store my stuff, that's fine.

I have to remind myself of a popular German saying: Unkraut vergeht nicht. I've just checked the translation and LEO.org suggests "bad weeds grow tall". Basically, it's usually said to imply that you're a bad lot and should survive. Rather in the same vein as "only the good die young", implying that you are a right old devil and should live to a ripe old age.

One thing I did a lot of last week was looking for inspirational quotes. I read a lot of quotes by Marcus Aurelius and then widened the search a bit.

This is one quote that I liked best:

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow; it only saps today of its joy.

How true.

And to finish, here's a nice quote from the Dalai Lama:

If there is no solution to the problem, then don't waste time worrying about it. If there is a solution to the problem, then don't waste time worrying about it.

If only I could put that into practice. I shall try.

Germans and tea: the good, the bad and the incomprehensible

The Germans are famous for coffee and cakes, partaken in the afternoon. My German Oma always served them at 3 p.m. sharp and we always joked that my German Opa was always able to smell the coffee from afar as he always managed to get back from his post-lunch constitutional in good time for a cup of coffee and a slice of home-made slab cake or, as I believe the Americans call it, tray bake.

However, that does not mean to say that the Germans do not drink tea. Here are some points I've observed during my time in the Land of the Sausage (as I like to call Germany).

1. THE GOOD

What never fails to tickle me is the fact that the Germans are much more concerned with the quality of tea than the British, who are supposed to be serious tea drinkers. This German town has slightly more people in it than the whole of North Wales and has at least three tea shops that I can think of off the top of my head. (There may be more, but I don't know every corner of this town.) And yet there isn't one specialist tea shop for loose-leaf tea and accoutrements in all of North Wales. (Not when I last looked, anyway.)

When I tell the Germans that the British make tea with teabags, their faces fall. So disappointed are they. They still believe that the English in particular drink "four o'clock tea". Even in this day and age. 

The Brits make tea so strong you can stand a spoon up in it. Brick-red it has to be. And it's rumoured that what goes into the teabag is what they sweep up from the floor in the tea factory. The good stuff, it seems, is put into bags and sold in Germany: real loose-leaf tea of various blends and single origin teas. One accoutrement that I've only seen in Germany so far is the famous "Teeei" or "tea egg". They're like a perforated egg that you can unscrew, fill with tea, screw together again and thrown in a hot cup of water. Personally, I prefer "tea tongs" - no screwing involved!

2. THE BAD

Well, it's not so much bad as damned annoying.

As I said before, the Germans seem to think that just because you're British, you drink lots of tea - and only tea. Many are surprised when I order coffee and when I tell them that I drink more coffee than tea. And when it comes to presents at Christmas or "Mitbringsel" (little gifts you bring when invited to someone's home), I often get tea. HOWEVER, in the UK, when we say "tea" there is only one option we have in mind: so-called black tea. 

The Germans, however, think that any dried leaves constitutes "tea" and that the Brits will drink that, too. Sure, we have some herbal tea in the UK, but it's drunk by "cranks" or "health-food freaks" - well, that's the reputation such teas had. I hear that younger people are now turning to herbal infusions, but generally we do not normally drink "Christmas tea" or stuff like that. Tea that smells of all sorts of plants and aromas but isn't black. Basically, if you can't add a dash of milk into it, it ain't tea.

I can't tell you how many times I've passed on herbal tea to, say, the local library. Chamomile or peppermint - fine. Anything else... not tea.

3. THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE

So, since the Germans have good-quality tea available, I often order a cup of tea when out and about. My theory is that it's harder to muck up a cup of tea than a cup of coffee. (With coffee, it depends how much coffee they put into the filter and how long the coffee pot has been standing.)

However, when I order a cup or even a pot of tea, I get a cup and saucer, a spoon, milk and sugar and a cup of hot water and a teabag in a small paper case.

WHY????? How can you not pour the hot water straight onto the teabag when the water is boiling? You are supposed to pour freshly boiled water onto the tea. Not pour the water into a cup or pot and then maybe wait a while before taking it to the customer and then making them put the bag into the water themselves. Sure, you might say that if you do that yourself, you can calculate how long it's been brewing, but you can see that yourself from the colour of the water. 

On the whole, however, Germans take tea seriously and the quality is superior to what you get in the UK, so I'll suppose I shall just have to put up with this idiosyncracy. Now..where's the kettle?