Auf Wiedersehen Deutschland

After 5 years of hard labor for little reconnaissance and few opportunities it was time to take off to another place and check if the grass really was greener on the other side. We will come to that in my forthcoming articles called “Learning French with Christian” - but now let’s write an article as a for me final look of those years in Vaterland. Obviously it won’t be the last one as good and bad memories will need to be written over time. I finally took off from East Germany after a well prepared 6 last months. Everything went as planned and I do believe my moves were not understood as such but instead as madness. As usual I got everything under control. I came to Germany with an idea of the excellent organisational skills they were known to have and I literally lived through the opposite. Now, and calmer about it, I can only say that I didn't find it at work but I did find it in some other areas in East Germany. I was surprised to find so many interesting and caring local persons my last two months there. Actually I found more during that period than during all the other months of my 5 years. The main difference? It was at school. Both teachers and employees were nice and valuable. Sadly I think the workplace I was in was just an endless pit of sorrow and incompetence. From top to bottom. There is a lot to tell about it and I will at some point. When it will be advisable to talk about it. At the end, I am happy to have been there 5 years. Well actually 3 years were great, or sort of. The other two were difficult times that I do believe I managed to live through due to my better half and my close friends and family. I did it my way as someone famous sang once. But I wouldn't have accomplished it without them. I closed many circles and started a new life. At the end I changed myself for good but I realized what I lost in the process. After a couple of weeks after these 5 years in East Germany, finding myself in a complete different place, I can clearly see that I had become less human than I am genuinely, less warm and less caring. Yes, 5 years there made me a colder person, but old habits die hard and I am recovering quite good by now. I can kiss and salute my new work colleagues normally everyday with a real smile, have decent food in the cantine, see and interact with most of the locals simply and happily but first and foremost - I am happy. I finish my day with a smile even if I miss my dear friends and family left over there or around the globe terribly.Bonjour Toulouse, O mon pais.

The Game Of The Chicken

In East Germany there is a popular game called The Game Of The Chicken. I knew the game in my childhood and used to play it with dubious results while biking. In East Germany I renamed The Game Of The Chicken to The Panzer Game. Locals are really playful lads and don’t miss an opportunity to play during the day - at work, stores, trains and of course the toughest one: on the streets - ie The Panzer Game. Easy to play, hard to master, you’ll find yourself quickly addicted to the game playing it even without noticing except if you find yourself abroad were the game is quite unpopular and people even excuse themselves when you do end a casual street play.

This sounds interesting you may say, but how can I play? Do I have to be a club member or something? Do not worry avid reader - I’ll explain everything you need to know about the game now. To play you’ll need at least two persons coming from opposite directions in a collision course. The point of the game is to keep on walking straight and oblige the opponent to swerve before a crash happens. In Erfurt I discovered that the city is full of professional players as they do not swerve. On a non-player environment if you find yourself almost crashing both persons will give a step aside and slightly turn their body in the opposite direction in order to make both walkers pass by without problem. In Erfurt I’ve found that when they don’t play, they practice. I cannot remember the many times I crashed because I was just walking slowly, lost in my thoughts, and some “Profi” just ran into me because I was supposed to move aside. The first times I did excuse myself, for me totally normal, though me expecting the same treatment from the other person involved led me to get insulted and blamed for it instead. It seems it was my role to "chicken out". Here it was, the discovery of The Panzer Game.

I don’t know why but many people assume that when they walk EVERYBODY has to give them passage; men, children - even women! Really classy I must admit. Getting a closer look to it I noticed that this situation happened on a daily basis, mostly with older men, but many younger ones were taking over this habit too. Usually I tried to walk fast and just avoid the people passing around if necessary. I discovered that trying to normal giving in a bit aside is not corresponded by most of the people arriving from the opposite side and I ended up most of the time bumping in to a Panzer Gamer who didn’t believe he should move or did not understand why I did not give him a clear way. During my last days in Germany I decided to simply not budge a millimeter and play the game as hard as I could. That day I was walking back slowly to my place on an empty street on a direct straight line. Soon, a Panzer Gamer was ahead, 150 meters from my position. I continued to walk slowly in a straight line while my random opponent was doing the same but at a much quicker pace. I could see on his body language that he was not going to stop or chicken out - neither would I! At 100 meters distance I started looking around and down, sending him enough signals of that I was not aware of his presence. I glanced shortly and saw that he was looking straight ahead as a professional Panzer Gamer at heart he would not have changed his course for anything in the world. At 60 meters, he quickened his pace, I slowed mine down, which probably made him think I am backing off I thought. At 30 meters, we were entering the decision time, I talked with the persons at my side, avoiding eye contact with my opponent, distance was soon decreased to under 15 meters - your call, Panzer One. At 5 meters I almost could feel his arrogance in the air asking himself why I was not budging? BAM!

A frontal shock but we kept walking. After a safe distance of 5 meters away from me he send a “this is not a pinball god damn it!” in the air. I answered by some self explanatory hand language about the possibility of both of us giving space to each other showing him my two hands sliding paralleled. Just saying “Hellllooooo? Can you understand that?” I kept on walking. My last game was a tie.