2005-05-17

How German it is

So now I am German. It is official. It says so on the nice certificate I picked up this morning and on the temporary ID card I was issued. It was just another administrative task. Get up, have breakfast, brush your teeth, fill out some more papers, pay some money, get your citizenship, go shopping, get the mail, make dinner.

"Did you do anything special, today, honey?" "Oh, I'm now a citizen of Germany". "That's nice, pass the salt".

No ceremony, the lady at the desk for the IDs just wanted to see my "abgesiegeltes Passbild" and kept a dour expression on her face the entire time. They must have training for this at adminstrative school. How to keep a scowl on your face for the entire transaction. No "Welcome!", no fanfare, no Lord Mayor with a handshake. Okay, the Beamte handing me my certificate gave me a handshake. But that was it.

So I had to do something, and thus I went out and bought a dirndl (a decent one, no colored flowers and no apron, although an apron would look nice with this) and wore it this evening. No one wanted to dance polka with me, but at least the friends helping me empty two bottles of bubbly said "Welcome". Well, to be honest, one said "My deepest sympathy" and another one said "I hope you know what you are doing". Really comforting, guys.

5 comments:

el imi said...

:-)
Nice to have you with us.
But a Dirndl is out of fashion at the moment. The state-of-the-art sytle is the so called "Wedding-Style", it originaly comes from Moabit, but this is nicer word-play.I will search for some pictures.

el imi said...

I have to publish my own block to make a comment to your articles? I would prefer to stay with WordPress a more user-friendly system.

WiseWoman said...

Hmm, right, the block is kind of wierd. I shall have to see if Blogger has something nicer around.

The dirndl is lovely, I now have a necklace to go with it. It is nicely cut for the, um, larger woman, has deep pockets for neat stuff such as Swiss Army Knives, and it really isn't recognizable as a dirndl until I tell people because it is just black and not green with fancy stitching on it with a white lacy blouse. Just takes an hour or so to iron....

Patrick-Emil Zörner said...

What do you want? A medal? I got a bloody nose for being German in England. He was surly able to use his fists. I remember this well being 13 or 14 years old. He called me a fascist on the grounds of being German. It was a nice camp. For sure I was a son of Hitler?! I born in 1975 caused all the trouble? At least I could speak his language. He could not speak german though. But using his fists was effektiv. I had a bloody nose alright. My experience with the brits.
Going to the DSL "Deutsche Shule London" I was living in constant fear. My guitar teacher, my enlish teacher and our jewish neighbors have been a great help. You will find out set se germans are not so bad.

WiseWoman said...

Sure, I'll take a medal!

Germany has not done a lot of work to get rid of the image German=Kraut=Hitler in the rest of the world. Gives us something to do.

So you understand what the Germans-who-look-like-Turks feel when they are accosted in the streets of Germany and told to "go home". Good!

I get to pick up my passport tomorrow. Made it without having to have an RFID one!