Germany (Lonely Planet, 6th Edition) - Andrea Schulte-Peevers [31]
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Ingo Schulze’s Simple Storys (Simple Stories; 2001) focuses on life after reunification (unemployment, racial violence etc) in the small Thuringian town of Altenburg.
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For all this popular tradition, Germans are not prudish. Nude bathing on beaches and naked mixed saunas are both commonplace, although many women prefer single-sex saunas (usually a particular day at a mixed sauna). Wearing your swimming suit or covering yourself with a towel in the sauna is definitely not the done thing.
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OSTALGIE
Who would want to go back to East German times? Well, very few people, but there was more to the GDR (German Democratic Republic; the former East Germany) than simply being a ‘satellite of the Evil Empire’, as Cold War warriors from the 1980s would portray it.
The opening lines of director Leander Haussmann’s film Sonnenallee (1999) encapsulate this idea: ‘Once upon a time, there was a land and I lived there and, if I am asked how it was, I say it was the best time of my life because I was young and in love.’ Another film, the smash hit Good Bye, Lenin! (2003), looked at the GDR with humour and pathos. It also gave Ostalgie – from Ost (East) and Nostalgie (nostalgia) – the kick it needed to become a more or less permanent cultural fixture in Germany.
Whether it be in the form of grinning Erich Honecker doubles at parties, Spreewald cucumbers and GDR Club Cola, or the Ampelmännchen – the little green man that helped East German pedestrians cross the road – Ostalgie is here to stay. For a taste of what the East offered in daily life – and former East Germans are finding hard to leave behind – check out the DDR Museum Berlin.
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LIFESTYLE
The German household fits into the mould of households in other Western European countries. A close look, however, reveals some distinctly German quirks, whether that be a compulsion for sorting and recycling rubbish, a love of fizzy mineral water or filter coffee (a German, Melitta Bentz from Dresden, invented the coffee filter), or perhaps even an abhorrence of anything (but especially eggs) prepared in a frying pan before noon.
Tradition is valued, so in this household Grandma’s clock might grind and chime the morning hours somewhere in the room, although these days Grandma herself contemplatively sucks on her false teeth (which she might have had done cheaply in Poland) in an old-age home or discovers the benefits of having a voluble Romanian carer in her own home. A TV will sit squarely in the living room and a computer somewhere else in the house (about 50% of households have one); maybe this is one of the 42 million internet surfers. Eight in 10 Germans own a bike, and a car is also likely to be parked nearby, embodying the German belief that true freedom comes on four wheels and is best expressed tearing along a ribbon of autobahn at 200km/h or more while (illegally) talking on a mobile phone. In every 10th home, a mobile phone has replaced use of the landline network.
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Women’s issues are lobbied by the 52-member association Deutscher Frauenrat (German Women’s Council; www.deutscher-frauenrat.de).
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When it comes to hammering nails in coffins, about 28% of Germans are smokers.
With such high unemployment and many economically depressed regions in eastern Germany, there are large differences in the standard of living among Germans. The average gross monthly income for a German working in the industrial or service sector is €3127, but over 40% of that would disappear in tax and social security deductions; if the woman of the house also works – which could be difficult if the children are at preschool or half-day school – she might earn €2637. In eastern Germany, the average for both is €2366 per month.
The birth rate is low (1.37 children per woman), on par with Spain. On the face of it, though, the traditional nuclear family is still the most common model in Germany: 63%