Epilogue

So, as you can see from the title, this blog has come to an end! As I said in my last entry, I would make this entry to discuss things that the British Council, tourist websites, and indeed anyone else I knew didn't mention. This section will include hints and tips about living in Germany as an assistant; some learnt from bad experiences (some of my own, and others' too!), and others found through a streak of look and good fortune!

They'll be listed in no particular order, simply the order in which they come to mind!


1) German Efficiency
This is no myth, but it's no negative thing either. The Germans can be cold bloodedly efficient in almost every aspect of their daily life. Allow me to provide some examples from my own experiences: The bus will leave the bus stop if you're not there at the same time as it; running towards doing an impression of an epileptic windmill will not do you any favours (and will indeed get you some more strange looks!), Germans do not waste words being polite; it's simply not worth the oxygen; rather than saying, "That was a good effort, but you could have focussed more on a, b, c, and d", they would, instead, say "what about a,b, c, and d. You missed the aim of the task, and the work that you did is not entirely appropriate to the task set!". Both of these mean the same, you see, but the Germans see no need for unnecessary beating around the bush, they call a spade a spade, rather than a stainless steel garden tunneling instrument; as you can see, it saves a lot of effort. Naturally, the epitome of German efficiency is Deutsche Bahn, and to give them their due, I only had a handful (and although I've got big hands, First Great Western needed a shopping trolley) of bad experiences with them! German efficiency also extends to written forms of communication; if your e-mail, letter, post-it note, brick through a window doesn't directly require a response, then you'll be lucky! As I said, all this effiency is no bad thing, and I found some of it rubbing off on me, which will undoubtedly cause some culture shock when returning to the UK!


2) Rules and Regulations
The Germans are famed for their love of rules and regulations, and being a disciplined nation. This is also not an entirely inaccurate stereotype to hold! One of the most important rules that a foreigner in Germany must bear in mind is that it is a requirement to carry your Ausweis (papers) on you at all times. I believe shower and bed may be exemptions to this rule, but with the German police, you can never be too careful! For those of you who don't have a German Ausweis, your passport is sufficient, although I carried my registration confirmation (Anmeldungbescheinigung) around too, just to be on the safe side! In every German town there is an Ordnungsamt (Order Office), whose members of staff are responsible for issuing fines for the petty/nuisance offences. These are powers which these people relish! Examples of things their job entails are: Parking, Littering, Illegal posters, badly placed market stalls, noise, etc etc. As a rule, they won't really bother you, if you're not too irritating to German society! Another level of enforcement you will probably, no almost certainly, come across are the "Kontrolleur". They are the equivalent of Revenue Protection Inspectors, and they also relish their jobs, and like nothing more than to issue a 40€ fine for "Schwarzfahren" (literally, travelling black; equivalent "Fare Dodging"), and they can be remorseless in their search. Luckily, in Saarbruecken, they were slightly few in number and were easily recognisable once you'd seen them once, so if you were to consider fare dodging, you'd probably not find it too hard, providing you weren't in a hurry (as you'd have to get off the tram/bus when the Kontrolleur get on!). In spite of, or perhaps because of, all these different levels of enforcement, there is, generally, a fair amount of respect for these people with power. There seems to be a rather sporting attitude towards the police; very much "it's a fair cop" seems to be the way it works in Germany. People run the risk, and accept the consequences of their actions without too much resistance if they get caught; this was also my experience in school; kids messed around, they got caught and got issued lines to be brought in the next day, and usually they were waiting outside the staffroom the following morning to hand them in!

3) Travelling in and around Germany
This was somthing on which I became a bit of an expert, because I, along with the other assistants, was often away doing something every weekend. Below I've listed some cheap ways of getting around; some are more specific to Saarland, whereas others are applicable wherever you might happen to be!

Schoenes-Wochenende Ticket
This ticket is valid for up to five people, on any form of Deutsche Bahn's very extensive Regional Network throughout the whole of Germany, from Schleswig-Holstein down to Konstanz/Basel in Switzerland. It is valid from midnight on Sat/Sun until 3 am the following day (Sun/Mon respectively). The ticket itself costs around 35-40€ which sounds quite expensive, but when you divide the ticket amongst 4/5 people it becomes a very reasonable way of travelling around. The major disadvantage is the fact that you have to take regional trains (RB/RE/IRE/S-Bahn), which do tend to take substantially longer, so this ticket may not be so good if you want to go miles. That said, we used this ticket when we went to Nuremberg for a couple of days near to Christmas, and the journey took about 4-6 hours, but was substantially cheaper than buying individual normal IC/ICE tickets, which would have been towards the 100€ mark (each way)!

Saarland-Pfalz Ticket
This ticket is one of those that is particularly applicable to anyone staying in Saarland or Rheinland-Pfalz. There are both individual tickets (priced about 20€) and group (up to five) tickets (priced about 27€) available. These tickets are not just valid on Deutsche Bahn, although you'd find it easiest to buy them from a station, they're also valid on pretty much ALL PUBLIC TRANSPORT in the two Bundeslaender; buses, trams, trains etc. They are valid Monday-Friday (from 9 am until midnight), or weekends (midnight until 3 am the following morning). NB: Whilst this information only applies to the Saarland/Pfalz area, most Bundeslaender have their own Landesticket offering the same benefits. 

University Semester Ticket
I've saved the most financially advantageous until last for these travel options. By signing up to the local university, in my case Universitaet des Saarlandes, it may (and in my case was) be possible to get hold of a semester ticket which for a semester fee, 137€ in my case, provides certain travel benefits. The one for Saarland offers FREE travel on any public transport (DB regional trains only) within the state of Saarland. This proved quite useful on several Sundays when I was bored, and able to just turn up at the station and see where the first train was going! Now, obviously, not all universities will offer such generous benefits as free travel for the state, (Bavaria's HUGE!) but most will offer you some sort of concessions. On top of that, they're a useful way of getting student discount anywhere you go, without having to explain that your own university is in fact real, but lies outside the boundaries of the Fatherland. Oh, and another good thing for those of you who are constrained by time/will/energy/all of the above, you don't have to attend lectures...sure they'd prefer it if you did, but if it doesn't count for your uni, then don't feel compelled to. The German university takes the view that it's your lookout, and as such, don't harass you about it!

 4) Daily Life Etiquette

As I alluded to earlier, the Germans like efficiency; that includes punctuality. One of the biggest social faux pas is to turn up late, DON'T DO IT! First impressions count a lot in Germany, and tardiness is a massive social mistake. Only marginally better is turning up too early for an arranged meeting. The meeting was arranged at that time to me mutually convenient, if you turn up too early, you put the other person under pressure, which they won't appreciate in the slightest. Generally speaking then, punctual means punctual, not too early, and not too late. If, as I did a lot, you find yourself arriving early for meetings/parties/work, then walk around the block a couple of times until it's the right time for you to present yourself!


Jeans are acceptable working clothes for a school. For those of us who grew up within the sheltered embraces of the UK School system, jeans were a definite no no; both for teachers and for students. In Germany, where there is no student uniform, there is a generally far more relaxed attitude to work attire. 


Sie-ing and Du-ing. What a nightmare...prepare to get it wrong! It's inevitable; during the first few weeks you'll do it so often, it'll almost become your trademark! The German language, in a rather smug manner, provides three different ways of saying "you". There is Sie (Formal, both singular and plural), Du (Informal, singular), and Ihr (Informal, plural). All of these, naturally, take different conjugations of the verb, which you will inevitably not know when you need to use them. Working in a school, you will learn to become fluent in choosing the right one, almost instantaneously, but it takes time...so you will probably end up addressing your class of 12 year olds as your equal, and your head teacher as your drinking buddy...but you'll get there!


Queueing. The stereotype goes that the Germans don't like queueing; just think back to your most recent holiday in Spain...How many of our teutonic brethren had their towels on the sunbeds even before the sun had thought about coming up!?! It is therefore time to brace yourself. Queueing is a complicated issue in Germany, there are no set rules, nothing written down; so the Germans are slightly confused by the whole concept. Nevertheless, I think I've gone some way to fathoming it out. First off, if there is a queue in place, then the Germans are subservient enough to join the back of it, and wait patiently, until it's their turn. If, for example at a bus stop, there is no distinct queue, then there's a mutually acknowledged order for getting on, you look to see who was there before you, and get on immediately behind them, at any cost. Trains, planes, and indeed anywhere else, is entirely different. It's the survival of the fittest...you need to speak the loudest, stamp the hardest, and barge the most violently if you want to get somewhere this side of Christmas, be it getting on a train. Whereas in the UK, prams would probably get priority over others, this is not the case in Germany. You would have thought I had commited High Treason when I let a woman on a tram with a pram before me once!


So that's it really...all you could possibly need for living in Germany. Naturally, some (or perhaps most) of what I wrote is written with my tongue firmly in my cheek, but the general principles of what I say stand, according to my experiences, and it is those experiences that I've written about, I don't claim to be an expert on Germany, or life in Saarbruecken, but I've certainly learnt a lot, and if you take one piece of useful advice from this blog, then it's served half its purpose!