Susanne’s Page
Are Germans allergic to food smells? Posted February 5th, 2010
The longer I stay in Germany, the more I appreciate the almost 30 years I spent in America. It took me 30 years to relax from the uptight German that I was to the passionate person I am now. I left Germany in ´77, came back in ´78, stayed for a month and couldn’t stand how I felt so boxed in here. Then, for years in America I wondered, if I was missing something in Germany. Somehow I thought things might be better in Germany than in America. Now I keep being reminded of why I left.
Yesterday a funny thing happened at work. My co-worker who up until now had not been willing to talk to me, stood up and declared ” We have to get something clear here. We have a rule, that no one is allowed to eat strong smelling food in the office.“ I was eating my cold noodles with pesto. I had watched him eat his apple and sandwiches at his desk, and had therefore assumed it was okay to eat at one´s desk. Also, after 2 weeks there, no one had told me about the lunch room that is hidden in the cellar. All I knew was that there was a coffeemaker and refrigerator in front of the bathroom. Since we have a couch in our office, and I didn’t want to eat in the parking lot or in the bathroom, I had been eating my food in front of him and the other two in our office for 2 weeks. Now he told me I should eat in the lunch room down in the cellar. I asked him what defined strong smelling foods. He said my (cold) noodles were bothering him a lot. I was too mad to ask him, why kind of symptoms they caused in his body. I never knew Germans were so fragile they couldn’t handle food smells. I still wonder, just how food smells might affect them. Was he likely to fall over dead or throw up or pass out or break out in a rash? If I can ever talk to him about it, without getting upset I might inquire about this. Then he proceeded to tell me, that he had told me nicely about it. He didn’t like that I got upset about his way of talking about it. Then the woman behind me chimed in to back up the man. Yes, he said it nicely. To their excuse I have to tell you, they are both very upset, because their hours have been cut to half and they no longer get to do the job they were hired for, because the company can no longer compete in that part of the business and is changing to a new industry to stay alive. These 2 people don´t seem to know what is happening in the world, or they wouldn’t be so mad at their boss. He is trying like hell to find a way for the company to survive. I am making new products for them, to help them with that. My male co-worker is totally closed, the woman complains all day long, he then chimes in with her. I wish they would appreciate, what they have instead of being mad at what they lost. But I realize, whatever I am most upset about in others, is something I have going on too. So, yes, I have trouble appreciating what I have since I moved to Germany (the opportunity to spend a lot of time with my parents and other family members and the chance to build up a new life and to get to experience another country) and often fall back into being upset about what I lost (I temporarily lost the buying power to buy new clothes, go on trips out of town). I talked to my father about the whole thing this evening and he told me, the guy was just trying to show me who is boss in this office room. He wants me to follow his rules, it´s not about the food. He had actually said in this conversation, that I can’t just walk in there and do whatever I want. – I don’t know of anything I have done that was out of line. I guess he just wants me to be submissive to him. Fat chance, I have taken enough crap from male co-workers in the US. I’m not about to go back to being the scared and uptight person I used to be either. I will follow their rules, but I will not be submissive. My father actually said, you´re lucky he didn’t lift his leg and pee on all the desks to show his territory 
.
But why did I get so upset about the way he told me? I had been working in the office with him and the 2 women for 2 weeks, before any of them told me anything. I felt put on the spot by him getting up and saying “we have to get something clear here“. I immediately felt he was going to attack me. Because they all work half shifts opposite each other to cover the phones, I had not been in the room with all 3 of them at the same time yet. So I felt more embarrassed, because he did it in front of the 2 women. Maybe he needed their support. The other woman is nice, by the way. She does not put out any negative energy.
Since it upset me so much, something about what he did must be something I tend to do (see above, we usually get most upset about things other people do, if they are things we do ourselves). So I looked: When I get upset about something, I usually wait, until I boil over, before I say something. And then I usually make the person wrong, instead of just stating, what my expectations are, or what doesn’t work for me or making a suggestion to them. I believe, everything happens for a reason, there is a lesson in this for me. I´m not in the habit of believing this, I have been working hard to un-teach myself negative ways of being. My new way of believing makes sense to me though, and it empowers me.
Somehow, I had hoped people would welcome me into their office. That´s the way I would have liked to have been treated. Not possible in this situation though, and I don´t know, if Germans would do it. My mother told me, when you move to a new place, the new arriving person is the one that´s supposed to invite their neighbors and reach out to them. I had reached out to all three co-workers though and tried to make friends with them.
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Coming back home as an immigrant/foreigner Posted February 6th, 2010
Coming back home to Germany as a naturalized American, I had to go to immigration and only got a 1-year permit to stay in my home country, where all my family still lives and has always lived. It can be extended after that year, if I make enough money. That did not make me feel welcome, though it´s better than what the situation is for a non-former German foreigner. Also, I had kind of hoped, my old friends in Germany would welcome me home. But they didn’t, none invited me to see them. According to the rule my mother told me, I should have invited them. But I didn’t have a job, my place isn’t nice enough, I felt I couldn’t afford to financially, and at first I didn’t even have all the dishes. So I didn´t and they didn’t. Maybe none of them were my friends. I can explain that to myself, since I was so shy growing up, that no one really got to know me. I kept everything inside. Maybe, once we have made a life for ourselves here and have a decent income and are able to invite people, I will think differently about this. I never felt quite belonging in America, especially in Eugene, OR, where people treated me like a foreigner even after 25 years. They expected me to conform to be just like them, and I don’t want to be a sheep in a herd. I want to be the best me I can be. And frankly, I think it would be great, if everyone did that. Ever since I left Germany I feel like an outsider, when I come back. I think it´s like that for anyone. The Vietnamese woman I met in the lunchroom at my job later that day, told me it´s the same for her. She’s lived in Germany for many years now. I think once you have moved to a new country, you will never be totally accepted in any again. So, that sounds pretty negative to me, so I thought about that. How can I see something positive here? Well, for once, maybe I never was accepted in Germany as a child either, whether because I already believed in marching to my own drummer, or maybe no one feels that way. Then again, there is a group I feel I belong to: It´s the immigrants. Being an immigrant in Germany had a negative connotation growing up there, like a less than or not as good as. I am an immigrant in both the U.S. and in Germany now. Believing what I believe now, 1) being a world citizen, 2) that all people are wonderful radiant beings of light, who have some stuff that covers up that light sometimes, it cannot be true that an immigrant is a less than or not as good as. An immigrant contributes something new and different, and maybe that;s a great thing. A little breath of fresh air can be good in any place that is stagnant. Welcome to our world, beautiful radiant being of light.