J.O. not in Germany

Hi all, 

I am not sure if anyone reads this blog anymore, since I have more or less abandoned it for the last few months - I was not even sure that anyone was reading it. 

I am no longer in Germany. I am writing out of Toronto where I have move to on 30 July 2008. I guess I now have plenty of free time, and feel rather interested to connect to the outside world as I don't know the city so well. 

As I am typing away here in my new kitchen I wonder inevitably if it was a good choice to move back to Canada and to Toronto? I had it good in Freiburg. Colleagues, housemates, friends, boss, all was good. It took me a while to build a life there, say at least a year, and I don't think I ever had a greatest place to be at. Montreal did not even get close. I can't help but wonder if I'll be able to pull that one again in Toronto? This time around it does not seem like my office will be the center of my social life as in Freiburg, but I guess that's normal. We'll see where the fun will come from. 

Walking around Toronto last night I found it strange that I could understand each and every conversations. In Germany I got used to not getting anything around me, living in a sort of loud silence. And as I walked, a little dwarfed but the huge buildings, I thought that Europeans might have a got a thing or two right about lifestyle. Here it seems all rather artificially flavored. The most striking thing is perhaps that nothing is very pretty. Spaces or things aren't particularly cared for or well-thought. But people sure are friendly. 

I wish a lot of you in Europe would be here, but I made the choice myself, and I guess I still trust it is the right one. 

Cheers

Critical Mass

FROM GRIST.org

Pope urges youth to care for the planet

Pope Benedict XVI preached the gospel of green to hundreds of thousands of young Catholics in Loreto, Italy, on Sunday, one day after the Italian church's designated Save Creation Day. While the church gave out recycled-material backpacks filled with biodegradable plates, hand-cranked cell-phone chargers, and prayer books printed on recycled paper, the pontiff implored young people to care for the earth. "New generations will be entrusted with the future of the planet, which bears clear signs of a type of development that has not always protected nature's delicate equilibriums," said the Pope, who was decked out in vestments of green, the liturgical color of hope. "Before it is too late one must make courageous choices that can recreate a strong alliance between mankind and the earth."

Canada, as sold to the German Tourists

Discover our true Nature...yeah.

My five bins and their symbolism

German garbage disposal system, and what is says about Germany.

As an expatriate in this Bundesland, garbage has still got me confused, more than a year post-arrival. By all account, it is the most competent waste disposal system I have encounter, putting to shame any North American efforts. Yet, its symbolism goes much further than environmental concerns, it embodies perhaps some basic tenets of the 'German Way'.

First, the system has five different bins. 1-Paper, 2-Compost, 3-Glass, 4-Wrappings, 5-the trash. Each household pays the city for a weekly allowance of trash (all the grimmy non-recyclable stuff). We have a whooping 60 liters of trash in my house, or the equivalent of a carry-on luggage. So, better get the rest all out of the way. So we split all of the above duly, filing the external bin, and a funny looking 'Gelbe Sack' or yellow bag, with all the wrappings. Interestingly, the manufacture of a good must pay for disposing of the wrapping, a system called the 'Grune Punkt' or green dot, which is actually black.As a wasteful Canadian, it took me perhaps a whole year to figure the tricker part of the system, Glass. Unlike our simplistic green box in Montreal where you just put all your glass and paper on the curb-side, here one must 'go' to a big bin in the neighborhood and drop of the glass. However, the complexity is not over, once there one must separate the green, clear and brown glass. Wow. This would never ever work in my 'Heimlatland'.

A City of Freiburg staff explaining the waste system to an Indian Delegation during a ICLEI Conference in Freiburg: Local Renewables Freiburg 2007, june 7.


Beyond the nuts and bolts of the system, it can be seen as a metaphor of German behaviors. Germans are rule abiding. Period. While they are free-thinkers, sometimes living on the margins, creative and bold, they follow some basic social rules. It helps that the system is somehow 'policed', but how much, I wonder?

German enjoy a clean environment. This country has 80 millions of people on half the land area of Ontario and still preserves much of its forests. Being concerned about climate change or water pollution is all but a fringe attitude. Threaten some German to cut a forest and they shall form multiple week-end activity clubs to hike its trails, do environmental education and grow rare species of mushrooms. And it would operate flawlessly.

Even in my German course a whole lesson was dedicated to the vocabulary of trash. My teacher initiated an intercultural discussion on waste streams in our home countries. A little bewildered, we proceeded, not sure that we had much to say beyond 3 sentences. I sensed a certain pride in her tone. She should be - yet I find it always slightly disturbing.

If there is anything I am learning in my stay in this Bundesland is that German are hard to beat for making systematic operations. (Perhaps the Swiss have an edge there, but still). There is an enthusiasm shared at the national level to make things work. And they do.

Cheers,

Foreigned out

What is your name? Where are you from? What do you do in Freiburg? How long have you been here? How long will you stay here? Do you speak German? Where do you live in Freiburg? Do you have flatmates? How do you know [name of host]? Do you...

It seems this is the essence of all conversations I have been having recently. I keep going to parties, meeting new people, asking the old questions. I can just have a script conversation and say it all again. Is that what politicians go through talking about the same stuff, making the same jokes, all the time?

Basically the whole point of these chats are to figure out if both people have affinities and can get along. The questions above are unintrusive and give a glimpse of the other. But as in job interviews the first few minutes tell me plenty. But then I have started to talk. So I can not just leave. I employ various strategies once I get bored: get more food, go to the loo, introduce someone else. I am getting bored of just meeting people, never seeing them again (or really wanting to). Sometimes I luck out and find a fellow nerdy spirit that share a sense of humor and the longing to learn about a lot of things. Perhaps all these other times are for just those ones?

I am also 'foreigned' out today. It is tiring to meet foreigners or Germans that do not really speak English, or French, well enough to have a flowing conversation. It seems most social events I go to include mostly Spanish, Italians or Germans who like to speak their native tongue. The occasional two sentences in English acknowledge my presence before the flurry of unintelligible words resumes.

I wish there would be either some French Canadians around or old friends to share something with. Perhaps I should Germanize myself and join a hiking club? For now at least I keep chatting away, wondering where the salads are and asking myself if there is more to being a foreigner than constantly meeting foreigners.

Cheers.

I found!

Yes! I found a flat!

Great folks, great location, great room.

I feel out of the dark tunnel of house hunting. (And boy it was getting dark in there)

I want to jump around.

Here are a couple of pics of the flat:

Rant on rent

(Warning, rant ahead)

SERIOUSLY, I can not take this anymore! I am looking for a flat for WEEKS now and nothing works out. I have spend so much time looking at this, and worrying about this, it is really getting unbearable. I am constantly scrutinizing all the website with offers, reading the paper with ads, asking all people, it just does not work.

All that are find are small room on big loud streets. The occasional larger room is usually in a flat shared by folks that are either not interested at all to live with anyone but can not afford it, or people that smoke. (Who is the world smokes *inside* anymore?? yuk)

I guess I have high standards, but where I live matters greatly to me. I am in a foreign country I barely babble this language. I work hard and put a lot of energy into it. At least I want a comfortable safe haven to come home too! I am done living with sloppy students buying the cheapest toilet paper and eating only ramen noodle. I am done living in half-broken house that are cold and dark.I have got some basic criteria that I need: no carpet (allergies), no smokers (I despise that habit), no small room, no big loud streets, not a guy-only place. I do not need luxury, or fancy, just plain comfortable and pleasant to be in.


The harder part is the search process. I can finally decrypt all the ads from their abbreviated German. Example:

Moebl. 3er-WG-Zimmer (Stuehl.) zur ZW-Miete fuer ein Jahr (bis Aug. 2008), gr.
Bad u. Kueche; Tel.0761/3690149 o. 0172-3862421

Not easy. And then there are the phonecalls. I have to muster the energy to pick up the phone and call the people. Most of the time, they are not there. When they answer, they are usually just asking you: 'When do you want to see it?' And the male kind are the most difficult to handle. There is something so 'ungentle' about German guys. They have this authoritative voice as if they were always defending their turf. They speak to a stranger in the coldest most impersonal terms. Gee! What about a little 'Thanks for calling' or some enthusiasm in the voice? Instead I have been yeld at, lectured about timing, ignored in my requests for a slower pace of speaking, and so on.

The experience is just getting more difficult. I dread the phonecalls now. Especially I have started to speak to people in German, that might have been a mistake. I get the general point, but stay in the dark for a lot of it. If I do not speak in German I just phone and say, 'Hi, I am Jean-Olivier from Canada. I do not speak German well, perhaps you speak a little English?', that put a lot of them off. And if one of them in the flat speaks English other don't, or don't want to. So much for the idea that young Germans love to speak English, rubbish.

And now the problem, I am leaving on Friday for two weeks, so I MUST find. But the later we get in the month, the uglier the apartment gets. It feels like Halloween where the good candies are gone early and the average fructose sucker is all that's left for the latecomers.

Unlike a car or a pair shoes, one can not shop for a long time. There is a deadline: I am homeless in 14 days. Then I have to make a choice on a few 'not horrible' places and get stuck there for a long time.

Stupid Germany. This recent experience really adds to the tally of "I should leave" column. Things should not have to be this hard. I had tear of desperation this morning, I do not like that.

J.o.