{"id":1659,"date":"2021-04-14T06:12:21","date_gmt":"2021-04-14T06:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uberlin.co.uk\/february-22-2013-uberlin\/"},"modified":"2021-04-14T06:12:21","modified_gmt":"2021-04-14T06:12:21","slug":"february-22-2013-uberlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uberlin.co.uk\/february-22-2013-uberlin\/","title":{"rendered":"February 22, 2013 – \u00fcberlin"},"content":{"rendered":"
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February 22, 2013<\/abbr><\/h5>\n
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\u201cWie, bitte?\u201d Ranting back at Exberliner<\/a><\/h3>\n

by Guest Blogger<\/span><\/h4>\n
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Lauren Oyler responds to an <\/em>Exberliner rant about the lack of German fluency among Berlin’s expat community.<\/em><\/p>\n

I moved to Berlin for myriad reasons, all of which are, seven months later, still difficult to articulate. I had spent two weeks here in May 2011, and while I was certainly technically aware that the city is the capital of Germany, the things I associated it with were tangentially German at best. Instead of sausage and Sp\u00e4tzle<\/em>, I remembered picnics at an abandoned airport; the first bicycle that didn\u2019t give me flashbacks to the traumatic handlebar accident at age eight; a laid back, noncompetitive atmosphere in which you can live happily on little income and people are generally accepting of whatever weird artsy soul-searching you\u2019re there to do. Obviously not everyone in Berlin does these things, but not everyone in New York wants to be an actor, either. Both are massive cities with many different realities.<\/p>\n

I came back in August of last year, and before I did, countless sources \u2014 and the existence of several English-language newspapers, blogs and other publications \u2014 told me my lack of German skills would be no big deal. This is true and, apparently, infuriating, particularly so for the people who landed here before me.<\/p>\n

Julie Colthorpe, who wrote \u201cSorry, no German!\u201d<\/a> in this month\u2019s Exberliner<\/em>,\u00a0came to Berlin 12 years ago and longs for the days when expats would get kicked out of supermarkets for confusing their datives and accusatives. Calling out an unnamed but obvious brunch-serving Australian restaurant in Neuk\u00f6lln, she argues that all-English businesses and expats with no German skills have no place in the city. Although her complaints weren\u2019t directed towards me \u2014 I dutifully brave the umlaut to save myself from accidentally ordering anything pickled \u2014 I feel attacked nevertheless. I\u2019m American, I live in Neuk\u00f6lln, and German fluency is almost as fathomable to me as paying more than 1.30\u20ac for a beer. I\u2019ve been to Melbourne Canteen and breathed a sigh of relief when I realized I didn\u2019t have to furrow my eyebrows in despair at the thought of trying to convey a dropped fork.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Colthorpe\u2019s clearly proud of her German, so it\u2019s likely she\u2019s unaware that getting a blunt \u201cWIE, BITTE?\u201d in response to a valiant attempt at communication is a cultural tradition alive and well here in the capital city. Add to this the sense that your best accent only comes out when you\u2019re drunk or transforming into your parodic German alter ego, Frau Schadenfreude, and you understand why expats everywhere struggle to learn the languages of the countries they live in. It\u2019s scary and hard. Here, you can avoid that if you want to, but people \u2014 usually non-native German speakers \u2014 will scold you for it.<\/p>\n

Should English speakers take the bait, be ashamed? As Colthorpe says, a German-only restaurant would fail in Melbourne (or New York, or Vancouver)\u2026 but not because English speakers are too stupid to grapple with caf\u00e9-level German \u2014 or even because they would be unwilling to do so in a reasonable circumstance. But knowing German in Australia will do you about as much good as a first-edition copy of Jane Eyre\u00a0<\/em>\u2014 nice if you\u2019re into that kind of thing, but otherwise kind of useless. It\u2019s a paradox, sure, that being constantly abused for speaking little to no German can make a potential Berliner less willing to stick around and learn it, but the harsh economic reality is this: it\u2019s just not necessary.<\/p>\n

\"by<\/a><\/p>\n

by Josh Bauman<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

English, on the other hand, kind of is. A series of historical events \u2014 uncontrolled by the well-meaning people at Melbourne Canteen, \u00fcberlin and any given Sameheads party \u2014 has made English the lingua franca among the people in Berlin who are here because it\u2019s Berlin<\/em>, not because it\u2019s Germany. Colthorpe says she spent her New Year\u2019s Eve with a group of people from Italy, France, Spain, Russia, America, and Germany, and instead of appreciating the cosmopolitanism, cooperation and progress that has allowed them to share any<\/em> common language, she cries \u201cHIPSTER BULLSHIT!\u201d in the face of more than a half-century of diplomacy. If only we could have shown her piece to someone living in 1941. The irony that it\u2019s published in an English-language magazine that caters to the exact audience she risks alienating is apparently completely lost on her; even funnier is that Exberliner<\/em> suggested going to the Melbourne Canteen in its January 2013 issue (\u201cWhere to go in Neuk\u00f6lln,\u201d pg. 50).<\/p>\n

The exclusively-English-speaking expat population may indeed be \u201cmissing out\u201d on one kind of Berlin experience, but anyone who can read a Wikipedia entry and memorize some definite articles is not some kind of Culture Crusader making the world a better place, one well-pronounced \u201cCH\u201d-sound at a time. The idea that culture consists of an immutable combination of foods, sayings, and historical anecdotes is a perfect definition for those who want to assimilate for the chance to say they have. Expat culture is a part of Berlin\u2019s culture. You can\u2019t praise the city\u2019s international draw in one breath and condemn expatriates as tourist scum the next. If you\u2019re disturbed by the Melbourne Canteen, you\u2019ll have to get over it.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think learning German is pointless, and as I improve, however slowly, I feel better about whatever it is I\u2019m doing here. More than once I\u2019ve been embarrassed when an American or British friend forgoes even the barest minimum of effort, skipping the regretful-but-polite, \u201cSprechen Sie Englisch, bitte?\u201d in favor of an unfathomably lazy, \u201cCan I get a Berliner?\u201d That sucks. It\u2019s rude to go into a German restaurant, bar, caf\u00e9 or terrifying governmental bureau and speak English to the people there because, despite the way Colthorpe writes about it, the vast majority of cafes, bars, restaurants, and performance\/coworking\/women\u2019s-only gym spaces in Berlin function fully in Deutsch.<\/p>\n

No one\u2019s forcing anyone to go to The Bird, and we all know too well how interchangeable the bars in Neuk\u00f6lln are; if you find one unpleasantly Anglophonic, go to the one next door. Enclaves of English \u2014 and French, and German and etc. \u2014 exist in any semi-significant city; that\u2019s called globalisation. It\u2019s not going away, and a misguided rant about one of its fairly harmless symptoms accomplishes nothing but animosity. Explicitly English businesses hurt no one, and Colthorpe\u2019s piece is as unthinking, boring, and selfish as an American who lives in Germany for six months without bothering to learn how to order a multi-grain roll. You\u2019d think the constipation would eventually drive her to Google Translate, but that\u2019s her Kreuz<\/em> to Berg<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For more from Lauren, check out her website laurenoyler.com<\/a>\u00a0or follow her on\u00a0Twitter:\u00a0@laurenoyler<\/a>. For tips on learning German, read “Ask \u00fcberlin – Do I need to learn German?”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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