How to be German in 50 easy steps: A guide from Apfelsaftschorle to Tschüss

by Adam Fletcher

It would be easy to dismiss this book as just some stupid Ausländer making fun of German stereotypes. I hope it doesn’t come across that way. I hope my affection for German people and culture shines through any mockery or jest. That the weight of the punch lines is distributed fairly across myself, the English and finally, where appropriate, German culture.

You should be sleeping in a double bed made up of two single mattresses and two single duvets; what it lacks in nocturnal romance, it more than makes up for in practicality, the most prized of German possessions.

Being a good German is about understanding the risks, insuring for what can be insured, preparing for what cannot. You are your own life’s project manager. Plan and prepare. Make spreadsheets, charts and lists. Think about what you’re doing each day and how you can make it more efficient.

As a marketer, I was always told: Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. In Germany, it’s the opposite: Never let a good story get in the way of the truth. For Germans, truth is sacred and prayed to from the altar of fact.

As a result, many Germans believe Erstickungstod (death by suffocation) is a serious concern if fresh air is not regularly allowed to circulate in their Zwei-Zimmer-Wohnung.

You know when sometimes you’re online and you try to load a Webpage and it just sort of gets stuck. No biggie, you just wait and refresh and a couple of seconds later the page appears. Do you know why the tubes of the internet got clogged for those few seconds? I do. A German, somewhere, just emailed a prospective employer a copy of their CV. You see, German CVs are not like the CVs of other countries …

Anyone who has seen how English women dress for a winter’s night of partying will know that practicality is not a primary concern of ours. Like magpies, hoarding anything shiny, we evaluate things first by their aesthetic value, then, secondly (or not at all), by their practicality.

On arrival in more distant lands Germans are often disappointed when they see these countries are just not run efficiently. Their disapproval will manifest in sentences like ‹They said the bus would leave at 6 p. m. It’s 6:15 p. m. already. Typisch!›, ‹A bathroom this badly ventilated is just a magnet for mould›, or ‹Is a simple split bill just too much to ask from these people?› Germans abroad are part traveller, part Techniküberprüfungs-employee, tallying health and safety violations with their eyes, marking off locations of emergency exits and toilets.

In Germany you don’t just go moving your birthday. You were born on the 1st March. That is your birthday. That is the day of your birth. That specific date commemorates your expulsion from your mother’s body. You can change the day of your birth just as successfully as you can grow a second nose. So don’t even try, liar. If you do have to move the day for logistical reasons, only move it to a date after your real birthday. Because being wished a happy birthday before your real birthday is considered terrible luck here. Judging by the level of superstition afforded to it, it must increase the chances of you dying before your real birthday by about 74 %. It’s also important that you know the exact time to the minute that you were born. So you can celebrate your birthday more truthfully and precisely, which is, after all, what’s really important.