More monster cucumbers (Schmorgurken) from the vegetable market in Charlottenburg.
Berliners seem to like to complain that Berlin is lazy and slow and inefficient compared to the rest of Germany; whatever, but if so, someone forgot to tell the people at the post office. They took my international parcel, sold me a couple packs of envelopes, sold me some international stamps, and I was done literally in less than three minutes. Of course, it was all so brisk I didn't actually end up registering or insuring my parcel, but I hope it will get there okay nonetheless! (The only thing that mystifies me is that for some reason every transaction had to be done separately: calculate the international postage, pay for that, ring up the envelopes, pay for that, find the stamps, pay for that. I'm not complaining about it---I simply put some euros on the counter and the clerk just took whatever money she needed for the transaction of the moment and put the change back in the pile---I just don't get it.)
Unfortunately, however, the more I make the effort to learn my way around and cope with things in Berlin, the more difficult I make life for the unoffending Dutch. After living for a couple years in the Netherlands a few years back, speaking Dutch (even though I don't do it very well) comes far more easily than speaking German. So if I try to speak German for more than a sentence or two at a time, it veers off into Dutch, or as much Dutch as I can get hold of, at least. Moreover, if I don't know a particular German word I will deliberately use the Dutch equivalent instead, because if I'm lucky it turns out to be the same in both languages, and if it doesn't, well, start over.
Naturally, this linguistic strategy carries the risk of causing people to believe that I'm from the Netherlands myself, which is hardly fair to the Dutch. At the post office today, for instance, I couldn't remember the German word for "stamps" so I asked for "zehn Postzegels", that being the corresponding Dutch term. The brisk clerk whisked a book of ten stamps out of the drawer and kindly but firmly replied "zehn Briefmarken" as she handed them to me. (Oh right, I knew that.) So now I look like a Dutch speaker who not only doesn't know enough to use the German word for stamps in a Berlin post office, but doesn't even know enough to use the English word for stamps instead of the Dutch one since English is more likely to be widely understood in a place like Berlin. Would you want one of your countrypeople going around giving that sort of impression to foreigners? I didn't think so.
I suppose I could try to counter that impression or at least confuse the issue by trying harder to look more American: wearing a "USA" T-shirt or an American flag lapel pin or something. But I'm afraid that would just make matters worse by making me seem like a Dutch person who's obsessively enamored of the US, which heaven knows doesn't enhance anybody's reputation either. The only alternative seems to be to give up altogether and speak only English as an out-and-proud monoglot American, which would be a real waste of an opportunity to improve my language skills. So I guess I'll go on trying to speak German and the unfortunate Dutch are just going to have to take the hit. Het spijt mij jongens, but if it's any comfort, by the next time I visit the Netherlands I will probably know and use enough German words to make German people look stupid too.
In the meantime, getting out of the mostly-English-medium enclave of the Institute and into the life of a German city is fascinating. Even the names on street signs are fun to read, both for pronunciation practice and the recurring startled recognition of historical figures you've read about in books but never seen directly commemorated. (I remember on my very first visit to Germany some 27 years ago being impressed by all the streets named after famous scientists, although it took us longer than it should have to figure out what was going on with all the signs apparently honoring some mysterious Herr Doktor Professor Einbahn.)
Schlüsselkäfer says, "Look at me, I'm a rationalist philosopher! A priori monad transcendental Ding-an-Sichlichkeit!" Shut up, Schlüsselkäfer, and quit photobombing.
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