Friday, September 02, 2005

In the light of the sheer suckiness of the first post, I'll try to make this one, you know, not suck.

As far as my adventures to this point, I can only say that they would be as piss poor on the reading quality as they were stressful to do; I bought a whole lot of stuff for my apartment, bought stuff for my apartment, and oh, yeah, bought stuff for my apartment. Let the good times roll.

Although, there are a some pleasures to be found in German department stores besides the almost frightening cleanliness of the store itself, and quiet attitude of the customers: it's a real Tim Burton-Stepford Wives kind of atmosphere. German advertising seems to have this irresistable need to make something sound either incredibly Prussian, or just plan stupid. For example, there was a stack of something in the corner of the store, I can't remember what, that sat under a sign that, I must assume, was meant to convey its popularity, a popularity that causes the items to "Fly off like chickens." Stupid. It made me laugh, but I didn't feel a need to buy the product. Another example from today, but from the other end.

Mister Clean. Given his propencity for cleanliness, one would assume he'd be popular here, yes? And you'd be right, he is popular, but for reasons that I cannot explain, they changed his name. Yes, Mr. CLEAN wasn't good enough. They abandoned the easy literal translation route, in which "Mr Clean" would be "Herr Sauber." Instead, he is "Meister Proper." What? Why? That makes no sense. Mr. Clean has no manners. No man with manners would just APPEAR in the middle of your kitchen without so much as a "hello" or "can I come in." "Mr" yes, "proper" no. Oh, but I forgot, it's "Meister." Of what, I do not know, but it is clean that he is the master of something. Perhaps it's of all he surveys. Either way, the assumption behind this marketing change is that this switch from "Mr" to "Master" would make Clean more appealing to Germans. I am new here, but that fact scares me.

And the TV is "unique." I have not been able to confirm this yet, but I believe that "Home Improvement" dubbed in German violates at least half a dozen UN resolutions. On top of that, the dubbing is really good. The time spent on it, the time you'd need to sinc up German's multi-syllabic vowel free verbs and English had to have been extreme. And the sound of the voices even match. Where, I ask, did they find a German who sounds like Richard Karn? I don't know, but they did it. Deutschland: 1, rest of the international dubbing community: 0.

But they love nature shows. They love them. One was about undersea life, in which they paid a little too much attention to the hunt aspect of the natural life to really set me at ease. I half expected David Attenbourgh to float past the corner of the screen followed by lions and hyenas. The other one I spent time watching was about the animals native to Munich's "Englischer Garten," the squirrels in particular. That was good programming. I could watch that for hours. And they were red squirrels, so therefore a little exotic. Very nice.

But I would have to say that behind old American sit-coms, the great love of this country is the infomerical. They're everywhere, and they advertise such practical things as "The Miracle Knife III," and my personal favorite, the "Dampfreiniger," or steam purifier. The first thing I saw on German TV was a man in vacuum sealed jeans steaming the inside of his toilet with steam. Yeah, I know. They sold over 500 units in less than 5 minutes. Think about that for a minute. God, I love arbitrary sterotypes. It's OK if you hate me for it, I certainly do.

And I say "ja" to everything now, regardless of what language I happen to be speaking in. It kind of creeps me out. And no one stops for pedestrians. Ever. It just isn't done. Maybe it wastes gas, I don't know.

But things are good, the people are different, but not all that different than any other group of people I've talked to. They have their "quirks," but it's nothing insurmountable. It will be hard to get to know people, though. My natural "I don't want to bother you" reflex combined with the outer German social shell is going to suck like no one's business, but oh well. I have a year. OK, that's about it for now. Will be more later.

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