I’d like some Vaginal Massage Oil, please

Those of you who live in Germany will be familiar with the Weleda brand of toiletry and “wellness” products, even if — especially if you are foreign and/or a man — you are unfamiliar with the conditions they address and the ingredients they boast. Weleda goods can easily be picked out in your local pharmacy — for they occupy precisely that grey, or rather lavender, zone between cosmetics and medicinal products that pharmacies specialize in — through their ethereal pastel colours and the wedgy font used on the packaging. The corporate design — if one may use such a mercenary term in this context – appears to derives from the movement known as Anthroposophy, the partly right-on, partly bonkers philosophy of the late free-thinker Rudolph Steiner.

I’m not sure exactly what the connection is between Weleda and Anthroposophy, but connection there most surely is. Possibly the company was founded by one of Steiner’s disciples in 1929, whose children then made it into the money-making machine it is today, co-opting the New Age trappings to appeal to today’s Pilates-practising, organic food-buying German woman (and I feel I’m not going out on too much of a limb by asserting that the majority of Weleda products are bought by women). There’s certainly something of anthroposophist crank about the macadamia-nut oils and the powdered seaweed bath remedies that the company produces. (There is a widespread German faith in the healing properties of teas and baths, which even practitioners of conventional medicine will prescribe as the cure for anything that does not require major surgery.)

Now, if there’s one stage of life when you’re going to be spending a lot of time with Weleda products, then it’s pregnancy. My wife is currently expecting (Why thank you. End of June. A girl, as far as we know.) and has turned into a major Weleda consumer. Which is fair enough — after all doctors and midwives have been recommending those pastel-coloured goods left right and centre, and the products are indeed of high quality, the German consumer’s grail.

Recently my wife — who is of Indian descent — held an Indian equivalent of a baby shower. In response to several emails from prospective showerers, I made it clear that presents for the baby were considered bad luck within the Indian tradition, and that the mother should be the sole recipient of presents, which should be of the “pampering” variety.

Now, the equation “pregnant” plus “pampering” has only one solution within the German psyche, and so it came as no surprise that S. was bombarded with Weleda products on the day of her party. As the afternoon wore on, the row of little boxes on our living-room table got longer and longer.

There was only one problem, as the post-party inventory of the gifts revealed. Our generous friends, through no fault of their own, had given S. precisely the wrong Weleda products — Wheatgerm Body Scrub, say, rather than the ever-useful Pregnancy Care Oil. Don’t be so churlish, I hear you say. Just be grateful you got anything at all; after all, present-giving is not aimed at the fulfilment of your practical needs.

That’s all very well, I counter, but the fact remains that S. gets through litres of Pregnancy Massage Oil in trying to keep her ever-growing tum supple, and it’s not cheap. So why put up with the wrong Weleda products when one is desperately in need of certain other boxed wellness?

And so it came to pass that I was dispatched to the local shopping centre on a mission to exchange the Weleda gifts at the pharmacy. This made me nervous, because it involved a certain amount of conflict and deceit, both phenomena which I instinctively shy away from. I reassured myself with the thought that the products were in perfect condition and had in all likelihood been purchased in said pharmacy.

As I entered the shop, I rehearsed the cover story which S. had given me. I had bought the products for her myself, but — hapless man as I am — had got the wrong things. Not only that, I — being a hapless man and all — had also managed to misplace the receipt.

For once, there was no long queue, so I went straight up to the counter, fumbling in my rucksack for the twin Weleda products in their plastic Rossmann’s bag. (I had hoped to find a bag from that particular pharmacy, for added authenticity, but had failed.)

I gave my story to the young pharmacist behind the counter, a fresh-faced lass in her mid-twenties, hoping that my obviously non-native German would mask the non-verbal signs of lying. In my favour I had, of course, the fact that Germans seldom lie to each other and therefore are easily deceived.

I finished my tale by explaining that, silly me, I couldn’t find the receipt.

“Oh,” said the pharmacist. “No receipt. That’s going to be difficult.”

Now, to the untrained ear, that might sound like a simple rejection of my request to exchange the products. But the seasoned observer of Germans knows that such a statement is merely the opening salvo in a process of negotiation which could easily turn out to the consumers favour — the Teutonic equivalent of the bazaar merchant’s “You’re offering me 10 dollars for that beautiful carpet, are you trying to ruin me?”

“Well,” I said — and this is by no means the recommended response — “does that mean it’s impossible?”

Clearly she could not give a yes or no answer to that question at this stage, as that would effectively have ended the haggling process. Instead, she contented herself with opening up the boxes and inspecting the contents suspiciously. I was relieved to see the instruction leaflets were still in their virginal position, folded over the top of the bottles. She asked me if the products were unused. “Yes, yes,” I said eagerly, glad to be able to make a true statement.

At this point I was fairly confident that I was home and dry, but the Young Pharmacist had one final line of defence. “Of course, you won’t be able to get your money back without a receipt,” she said. “You’ll have to exchange the goods for something else.”

“Sure, sure, that’s fine,” I said, this having been my objective all along. With that, the Young Pharmacist was forced to concede defeat.

Now the ball was in my court. With everything going so well, I was keen to conclude the transaction as quickly as possible and get out of there before something went wrong. So, instead of looking around the shop for the Weleda products I had been ordered to get in exchange — what if the Young Pharmacist wandered off and I then had to deal with another woman who was less understanding about the no-receipt issue? – I decided to just tell the Young Pharmacist straight out what I needed.

“I’d like some Damm-Massageöl, please.”

The Young Pharmacist looked taken aback, as if I had just asked for Vaginal Massage Oil. Which in fact, I had. (Well, Perineum Massage Oil, if we’re going to be picky, but I feel the word “perineum,” hiding behind its Latinate mask of decency, does not sufficiently convey the essence of “Damm.”)

My lack of embarrassment was partly due to the language barrier — the word “Damm” sounds pretty innocuous to me. In addition, I have recently spent extended periods of time hanging around with midwives, who had stressed the benefits of massaging said Damm as a means of preparing for birth when they weren’t explaining the opening of cervixes in exhaustive detail, which had rendered me entirely comfortable with discussing female anatomy. The Young Pharmacist’s discomfort, it occurred to me, might also have something to do with the fact I had perhaps not made it sufficiently clear that I was getting products on behalf of my pregnant wife.

“It should be on the shelves over there,” the Young Pharmacist finally managed to say, pointing at the Weleda display, positioned — of course — in pride of place at the front of the shop.

Aware of the importance of not losing my pharmacist, I scoured the shelves quickly, eventually locating the Damm-Massageöl discretely positioned at the very end of one shelf. I grabbed a box and another bottle of the ubiquitous Pregnancy Care Oil and scooted back to the counter.

As the Young Pharmacist checked the price of the Damm-Massageöl, I thought about explaining that it was for my wife but realised it was now too late for any explanations of that kind. My best hope was to get out of the shop as quickly as I could.

The Young Pharmacist explained that these two products came to EUR 1.98 more than the original two Weleda products. Cheapskate friends, I thought, but was happy to grant the shop assistant her small victory.

“I’ll be sure to be more careful with the receipt this time,” I commented jocularly as she handed me the slip. A foolhardy flourish, I admit, but I was heady from the success of my transaction. Then I was out the door, with my new Weleda products safely stowed in my bag.

Sick in Paris

Heavens! Is that the date? I have just realized that three months have gone by without me making a single post. Fortunately now I am lucky enough to not only be on holiday in Paris, but to be ill, which means I need to find things to do to keep me occupied while I convalesce in our somewhat dingy holiday flat.

Yesterday my boss happened to be in Paris for a meeting with a company with which we have a partnership. I had earlier decided that I would tag along, figuring that I was in Paris anyway and it might be useful for me to meet the partners too. However I naturally hadn’t banked on having a stomach infection. I went through that familiar dilemma of “do I feel bad enough to cancel X?” and decided that I would be okay, factoring in the perking-up phenomenon that occurs when one has to put on a public face.

And yes, as soon as I met my boss and had to perform, I immediately felt fine. I felt okay through lunch, which for vegetarian me consisted of a salad of the sort that one suspected may have laid one low in the first place. Before we got ready to leave, I went downstairs to the toilet, which was — befitting the retro decor — the much-loved two-footprints-and-a-hole variant of legend. I thought about attempting a Big Job — there were grumblings in the engine room — but considered the logistics of attempting to use a French toilet while wearing a suit, and the terrible repercussions an accident would have, and opted for a Small Job instead.

Fortunately I survived the mercifully short meeting (in the brave-faced post-meeting evaluation, my boss and I both shyed away from mentioning that he had come all the way from London for a 40-minute rendezvous) sans stomach cramps.

Looking for things to do to fill the rest of the afternoon — he had to catch the Eurostar around 8, while I was due to meet S back at the flat at 7 and didn’t have any keys to get in beforehand — we decided to call our company’s Paris representative and see if he fancied meeting up.

He was around and had time to spare for us — in fact he didn’t seem to be under much pressure to get any kind of work done — so we spent a pleasant enough couple of hours reclining on the suite in his office, a stone’s throw from that park next to the Louvre, drinking coffee, eating the chocolates his secretary had bought and putting the world to rights. Little did they suspect that diabolical churnings were taking place in my intestines and that I was just waiting for a conversational lull to avail myself of the toilet facilities, whose location I had earlier made a grateful mental note of.

The End

Today was, as the observant reader may have noticed, a Sunday. It never fails to surprise me how depressed and lost a Sunday can make me feel, even now that I’m in my mid-thirties and am often tempted to think I have life Figured Out. You would think that, several hundred Sundays later, I would no longer experience the same existential angst and melancholy that Sundays used to induce during my teens and early 20s. But yes.

Why is this? Why is Sunday so haunted by the Saturnine creatures you would expect to plague, well, Saturday?

Even though Sunday is supposed to be the first day of the week, as my parents used to drum into me when I was a young and impressionable Catholic (although writing this, it seems odd that Sunday should represent the start of the week, when it of course marks the day God rested after the six days of creation), it still feels like the end of something. Things are complete for another week; for a while we cannot kid ourselves that we are just beginning all kinds of great endeavours with only excitement and future achievements to look forward to.

I for one cannot experience any period of time coming to an end without feeling a bit glum: every ending reminds me of the Great Ending that awaits all of us. Before I got my current job, I recently attended a conference in Munich on commercial real estate, a topic which genuinely holds little interest for me. But how sad I felt when the conference was over and I was heading to the airport to fly back to Berlin!

Of course today’s Sunday was particularly blue because my wife, S, is away on vacation so I spent the day alone, with no chum to browse flea markets or frequent cafés with.

I also felt sad today because it marked the end of the Berlinale. Quite why an annual film festival coming to an end should affect me so much, I can’t say. Probably it was because this was the first year that I really got into it, knew which films were on, and waited with anticipation to hear which film had won the Golden Bear. I was disappointed that my favourite, the touching Brazilian movie “O Ano em Que Meus Pais Sairam de Ferias,” did not win it, and felt slighted somehow, in the way that you identify with a work of art that you liked. I hadn’t seen the winning film.

I think I also felt regret that I had not seen more films in the festival — I only ended up seeing six, plus a couple on DVD — in the same way you might regret not having done more when your holiday comes to an end. The Chinese film I saw this evening, “Luo Ye Gui Gen” (“Getting Home”) — and which was my last film of the festival — had a suitably elegiac tone: a man tries to bring the body of his dead friend home to his family so he can be buried in his birthplace. (The fact that the destination is revealed early on to be the Three Gorges tips the viewer off that not everything is going to end as planned.)

For me, one of the best parts of the festival was seeing two Berlin cinemas I had never been inside before, the Delphi Filmpalast and the Zoo Palast, both just off the Ku’Damm. Normally they show — typically for Germany, unfortunately — dubbed versions, which is why I had never set foot inside either before. But I was struck by how cool both of them were, with their fantastic 1950s architecture and opulent designs. The bar in the Delphi Filmpalast has a sort of carved wooden mural depicting what appeared to be some kind of mountain landscape (I couldn’t quite work out what it represented exactly), while the carpet in the main cinema at the Zoo Palast has a stylised filmreel design. You don’t get touches like those nowadays.

All in a name

Tonight — and you had better savour that concrete detail, because it’s the last you’re going to get out of me in this post, for fear of incriminating myself — I went to a reading at an Unnamed Venue here in Berlin by a Famous Writer (FW). I was somewhat on tenterhooks because of a tenuous connection I have to said FW, which I was hoping might come out over the course of the evening: my wife, S, was at a certain Prestigious University at the same time as FW and they share a Mutual Acquaintance.

Now, my wife is away on a Buddhist retreat at the moment with no phone or email access, so I couldn’t ask her just exactly what her direct connection to FW was. I seem to remember that the last time I asked her, she said FW wouldn’t necessarily remember who she was, but she might. Or something. Anyway, I was eager for this connection to come out so that I would strike up a friendship with FW: “Why, you’re S’s husband! How the hell is she? You two simply must come round for dinner!”

The problem was how to bring this information out into the open. The obvious expedient of saying my wife was a friend of MA was not going to work, because FW is reported to not like MA very much, for reasons which S explained to me at some point but which I have now forgotten. Anyway, I clearly did not want S and myself tarred with the MA brush, not at such a fragile early stage of what was sure to be a beautiful friendship with FW.

As I sat there listening to an Obscure Journalist with an orange face asking FW stupid questions, I wondered how to broach the topic. Should I stand up in the Q&A session and ask FW how she enjoyed PU, random though that question would be? (Oh, but how we would look back on that question and laugh once we had become firm friends!) Should I just bring up the topic of MA and explain that we didn’t like him either? (But we do like him, so that would be a lie.) I consoled myself with the thought that I at least had an excuse to talk to FW after the reading: getting her to sign the two books I had bought earlier at the book table. I decided I would keep the book S had read (B1) for myself and give the other (B2) to S as a present — with dedication from FW, of course.

Then it struck me: there was my solution! The dedication would be the shibboleth. S has a very unusual name — she is possibly the only person in Europe to have it — and FW would be sure to react when she heard it, if she did in fact know S from PU. (“W-what did you say? S? Why, it can’t be — is it the same S from PU?” Or words to that effect.) Genius!

So after the reading I stood nervously in the very long book-signing line. When I finally got to the front, I handed B1 to FW. “Is it for you?” she asked. I explained it was, but that the other was for my wife (thereby cleverly laying the ground for my coup de grace), and said my first name. (I had actually already announced my name during the Q&A session when I asked a question — not about PU — but I thought I would preempt FW’s embarrassment at not being able to remember my name.)

Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned round to see the man who had sold me the books at the book table earlier. He pointed at a green badge on his sweater with an eager smile. The badge had my name on it. It wasn’t clear if it was his name too or why he was wearing the badge exactly. Now, this — unlike my planned S name stratagem — was not particularly amazing because I do in fact have an extremely common name. “Small world,” I said, trying to sound like Sean Connery in the James Bond movie where he says that to a henchman who has just announced that he, too, has a brother, and turned back to FW.

FW had in the meantime moved on to B2. Here was the crunch moment: “What’s your wife’s name?” Mouth dry, I told her S’s name, spelling it out for her just to make things completely clear.

No reaction. She continued writing the dedication.

“That’s a pretty name,” she said, in a voice which sounded — could it be? Was she wondering, where have I heard that name before? — thoughtful. “Is it German?”

“Actually it’s Non-European Nationality,” I was forced to admit. And then I knew: our incipient friendship was doomed. Not only did she not know S, but I had embarrassed her by pointing out that she had said S’s NEN name was “pretty,” which you are not supposed to do because that’s practically racist.

Oh well. Her husband is giving a reading next week — maybe I’ll try to make friends with him. He’s F too.

The Year I Went to the Berlinale

I have finally managed to not miss the Berlinale, Berlin’s annual film festival which takes place every February, also known as the coldest part of the oft-cold Berlin winter (the timing has always been a mystery to me, in terms of inducing people to visit the city, but maybe it makes sense in that it’s a wonderful time of the year to stay inside for hours at a time).

Anyway, like I said, I normally manage to completely miss the Berlinale, not seeing a single film through inability to get organized/work deadlines/not understanding how the system functions. But this year I have a press pass and that has made a huge difference. I have seen four films so far this weekend: Crossing The Line (a fascinating documentary about American defectors to North Korea), O Ano em Que Meus Pais Sairam de Ferias (The Year My Parents Went on Vacation), Goodbye Bafana, and Letters from Iwo Jima. I have greatly enjoyed all of them, thereby restoring my faith in the Berlinale. The first year I was in Berlin I attended and saw some of the worst films of my life — another reason I never went again.

My favourite of the four has been O Ano…, which is a Brazilian movie set in 1970, during the military dictatorship and also the World Cup (which — and I think I’m not giving away too much of the plot here — Brazil won). Having lived in Brazil, it all seemed very familiar to me — the 1950s Bauhaus-influenced architecture, the tiled kitchens, the snack bars — and made me miss the country. And it made Brazil in the 1970s look great, notwithstanding the police state — the fashions, the music, a time when there was less rampant violent crime (well, in the movies at least). Oddly enough, I feel this incredible nostalgia for this Brazil I never knew, not the 1990s Brazil which I really experienced, but the Brazil of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the heyday of Brazilian pop music and a time of great ventures such as building Brasilia in the desert. I developed an affection for Brazil through its music, and a deeper knowledge of that music is one of the main things I am grateful for having gained during my two years living there. But then listening to it makes me miss this imagined and idealised Brazil where this wonderful music was created. I don’t feel the least desire to have lived in the UK or even the US during the 1950s or 1960s, but what wouldn’t I give to have hung out in Copacabana with Tom Jobim in the glory days of bossa nova?

That crazy casbah sound

I woke up this morning from an unsettling dream. I dreamt I was at some kind of family party (my brother was there, as was my late aunt — I was pleased to see her looking so well in my dream and glad that she was alive) with the usual kind of lowest-common-denominator mobile disco DJ playing records.

He put on “Rock the Casbah” by the Clash and I was suddenly seized by a wave of that nostalgia one experiences when a DJ puts on a record that means something to you when you are drunk. I remembered dancing to the song at a disco or party somewhere years before with a long-past ex-girlfriend (apologies to my wife, if she’s reading this) but couldn’t quite place the memory. The combination of the half-forgotten memory and the lost love (my lost youth was probably in there somewhere too) was unbearably poignant and I got up and started dancing — with my brother — throwing myself into it as a way of lessening, or perhaps embracing, the pain.

Upon awakening, I thought about the powerful and unsettling feeling of nostalgia which the Clash song had invoked in me and which was still keen. Then I thought, hang on, that song doesn’t actually have any strong associations for me (at least, none that I can remember while awake, and I don’t think I tend to forget which songs are emotionally connotated for me). Now, I’m used to my brain inventing events, songs and music, even pieces of literature which I’m dreaming. But to invest a song with memories and associations it doesn’t have for me in real life? What’s that about?

Sunday hair day

I got my hair cut yesterday. The astute reader with a knowledge of German opening hours may notice something unusual in that sentence and ask — as my mother did when I explained why I had to cut our phone chat short — if I was really getting my hair cut on a Sunday.

Yes, is the short answer, and the reason was I’ve been so busy with my new job that I simply haven’t found the time to get my hair cut since I started in early December. Which — and again, Astute Reader is probably one step ahead of me here — is two months hence, and we all know that one should get one’s hair cut every six weeks. (Well, at least that’s what my father always told me. Despite being bald, he seemed to have a broad knowledge of the tonsurial world — he also once told me a hair-related joke: What’s the difference between a good and a bad haircut? Two weeks. Like many of the jokes my father would tell me when I was growing up, the aim here appears less to be humor rather than the imparting of some deeper, koan-like wisdom.)

So you can appreciate my head was beginning to look rather shaggy. I knew if I didn’t act soon I wouldn’t be able to get my hair cut until after the Berlinale, which begins this Thursday and merits a neat head of hair. Sunday morning I had a brainwave. I really need to get a haircut, I thought. Shops in main railway stations in Germany are open on Sundays. These two pieces of information collided in my head and formed a dovetail joint: there must be hairdressers in railway stations which are open on Sundays. Perfect, I thought. Then I don’t need to feel guilty about not going to the place around the corner which I’ve gone to the last four or five times (I find going to the hairdresser such an embarrassing experience — mainly because of having to speak to the hairdresser — that I tend to switch salons as soon as the staff get to know me. Yes, this is eccentric, I admit) because it’s not open today. And of course I don’t have time to go during the week, what with my New Job and everything.

A quick consultation with Uncle Google revealed that there was indeed a hairdresser in the Hauptbahnhof which was open until — unbelievable! — 10 p.m. This was good, but I decided to roll the dice once more, and yes, there turned out to also be a hairdresser in Friedrichstraße station, which is closer to our flat. I put everything on black and clicked again, and — joy of joys! — there was also a hairdresser at Alexanderplatz station, a mere seven minutes away on the underground. Ah, but it belonged to an apparently upmarket chain — surely it would be expensive. I shouldn’t get my hopes up. But when I phoned up to inquire about the price — there are certain things people don’t tell Uncle G. — I found it was a bargain-basement 10 euros. I made an appointment without further ado.

Martina did a fine job and mercifully refrained from trying to make conversation apart from the usual “Where do you usually get your hair cut?” which always makes me feel a traitor to the old place. And does the hairdresser know when she asks this question that one day she too will be betrayed in turn?

She seemed to have a quiet sense of humour and was apparently amused by how the hair on one side of my head appeared to have grown more than on the other, showing a capacity for restrained wonder which I found pleasing.

My favourite part was when I hung up my coat upon entering and found there were three mannequin heads, complete with wigs, sitting abandoned on a shelf above the coat rack. It seemed very back stage.

Ljubljana/Laibach

The other night I went to the Podewil arts centre to see part of the Transmediale experimental music and visual arts festival, determined not to let another arts festival go by completely missed. I met my friend Martin there, hung over after a night in White Trash Fast Food with the boss of the record label he is signed to. Martin brought along a Slovenian friend and collaborator, also called Martin. And Slovenian Martin brought along a Slovenian friend of his, a rather chatty and intense psychology student called Peter. (Do all Slovenian men have common British first names? I am not sure.)

Peter immediately started firing small talk questions at me, apparently determined to get through the formalities of where I was from, how long I had been in Berlin, and what I was doing, as quickly as possible, but with a speed motivated by enthusiasm rather than pushiness.

At some point I inevitably asked him what kind of psychology he was interested in. “Cognitive psychology,” he replied. “But my main interest is lucid dreaming.” He gave me some tips on how to induce lucid dreaming, including looking for “dream signs” — things that give away that a dream is a dream — in dreams, writing them down when you awake, and then looking out for them in other dreams.

We continued to wander around the sound installations, as Martin gave Martin helpful suggestions for his SMS-voicing robot project. I brought the boys to the installation I had found most interesting when scoping out the building earlier (I had been the first to arrive). You stood in the middle of a dark room as different electronic sounds appeared to swoop around your head, watching a screen on which the paths of the sounds were depicted graphically. Martin got talking to the artist, asking technical questions about what kind of software he used to get the stereo effects. I listened in, as one of my favorite things is observing two people who are expert on the same subject meet and converse.

After a long discussion of the installation, the artist got round to, again inevitably, asking the four of us where we were from. Despite having lived in Germany and the US, he appeared to have never heard of Ljubljana and said he would have to look it up on Wikipedia the next day. Peter, who perhaps was familiar with the German tendency to continue to refer to Eastern European cities by their now non-PC German names (Gdansk will always be Danzig to German ears, Kaliningrad Koenigsberg), helpfully explained that Ljubljana was known as Laibach in German.

I suddenly remembered that I had had a semi-lucid dream earlier in the week, where I had hung out with members of Einstuerzende Neubauten and watched a film/performance (it was both, in the way of dreams) of the Slovenian cult rock band Laibach. This seemed significant somehow. I wondered if I should tell Peter, but decided he would probably not understand.

Charity case

There is an Oxfam shop located conveniently near our flat. I was quite surprised when I saw my first Oxfam shop in Germany. I hadn’t realised that Oxfam, our beloved British charity, was actually an international franchise, that the perpetual underdog of the British high street was taking on charity shops abroad and prospering. Oxfam opening up branches abroad has a very slightly sordid taste, to my mind, even if I do realise that it is uncharitable — pardon the pun — of me to say so; somehow you don’t want your local charity to become a global brand, with a recognition factor and corporate identity akin to Marks and Spencers or Harrods.

The reason I call its location convenient is that S and I have been throwing out a lot of our possessions for the last … well, for the last as long as I can remember. Compressing our two households into what was then “my” flat (and which was barely big enough to accommodate my household) meant that we were left with a huge surplus of stuff. The curious thing is, no matter how many trips I make to Oxfam with our donations, there always seems to be more stuff which I need to take there.

I worry about etiquette. Somehow I feel there is an upper limit to how many visits you can make to Oxfam within a given period of time. Even if you are being charitable, the workers will still think you are weird if you come in with donations too often. I feel twice a month is probably about as many visits as you can realistically get away with. On occasion I may have exceeded this threshold; fortunately the volunteer staff rotates so they didn’t realise how often I was coming in.

Of course, you can’t simply transplant a British institution like Oxfam to Germany and expect it to stay British, especially when the staff is German. And yes, I have to admit that our archetypal British charity shop has gone, in some respects at least, native. Naturally the goods on display have a certain German-ness, due, obviously, to being donated by German households: East German beer mugs, Stefan Zweig novels, Boney M albums, multi-coloured clothes. Then there is the emphasis on quality, which is the virtue Germans prefer above all others in their consumer goods. This is explicitly spelled out in the photocopied instructions, available on request, which describe what donations are acceptable (clothes appropriate to the season, as-new shoes) and which not (electrical goods, underwear). I once had part of a donation of books refused by the shop assistant, who, eyeing a tatty cover, informed me that my books were not of good enough quality for the shop. (The irony was I think I had bought some of the books in question in an Oxfam shop in the UK.)

Another peculiarity of my local Oxfam, which may or may not be related to its being in Germany, is that they have a themed window display which is changed weekly; the goods are sold at 3pm on a Monday. If the Monday happens to be a public holiday then the same display stays up until the next working Monday comes around. The theme is not always easy to discern. Sometimes it is simple to determine (Africa, Italy, Hallowe’en), other times perplexing (shoes? pots? chess?).

This deceptively simple marketing strategy turns out to be surprisingly effective; when I go out for a pre-bedtime walk on a Monday I always look forward to seeing what is in the Oxfam window. There was once a pasta machine that we wanted to buy, but when S went to the shop shortly before 3pm on the Monday in question, there was already a queue of people waiting to buy the pasta machine. They had to draw lots. S lost. Now we have a pasta machine which I bought from my friend Hannes when he left Berlin, and which we have never used.

Every Monday evening I hope to see one of the goods which we have donated in the window display, but they are never there.

Identity Crisis

I don’t think I’ll be dispelling anybody’s stereotypes about the Germans if I write that identity cards play a prominent role in daily life here. Whether you’re picking up a package at the post office, borrowing a portable CD player at Dussmann, or registering a change of address with the police, you’re not going to get very far if you don’t have some laminated photo ID handy. When I tell Germans that we don’t have ID cards in the UK, they normally react as if I have told them we don’t have indoor plumbing or currency or some other essential accoutrement of civilisation: How do you ever get by? Frankly I’ve lived outside the UK so long that I no longer remember how we manage to survive without ID cards, but I seem to remember bumbling through somehow, in the British manner, with student cards and utility bills and what not.

Not being used to carrying ID all the time meant it took me a long time to get used to carrying my passport around with me everywhere. In the beginning I was often caught out and had to make multiple trips to banks and Deutsche Telekom to get everything done. Now I carry my passport around with me everywhere, which means always taking a bag wherever you go — a passport stowed in a back trouser pocket will quickly disintegrate, as my friend James learnt to his cost.

Having your passport as your only recognised form of ID can often lead to curious situations. An acquaintance of mine renewed his UK passport by post, as is the usual procedure. He was out when the registered mail package containing his new passport was delivered, so he had to go and collect it at the post office. Except he couldn’t show any ID to pick up the package, because his ID was in the package.

I experienced an analogous situation recently. I needed to pick up my 2007 pass for the Bundestag and went to the appropriate office, where a couple of civil servants were poised over boxes of alphabetically-arranged IDs, waiting to hand them out. I gave them my 2006 pass, they searched for my new pass, and found it.

“ID please,” said the woman.

I realised that I had stupidly left my passport in the office. “Isn’t my old pass enough?” I asked, trying to sound as polite as possible. After all, they themselves had issued me the pass, which had my name and photo on it (and which had necessitated checking my passport during the issuing). Surely the ID which they themselves had given me would be enough to prove that I was the person I said I was? (I should mention that the 2007 pass was identical to the 2006 one in all respects bar year, including having the same digital photo which they had taken of me and stored on their computer.)

“We just need to see some ID,” said the civil servant, in the weary tone of one who has procedures to follow.

I searched in my wallet and found my long-expired residence permit*, which has my photo on it. I didn’t expect this to cut any ice, as it had failed to fulfill the function of ID on similar occasions in the past as it was out of date — just because the German government had been convinced I was that person when they issued the permit in 2001 didn’t mean I was still him, after all!

However this bureaucrat was happy with the residence permit and gave me my new Bundestag pass. If there’s one thing you can rely on with German bureaucracy, it’s that two civil servants will never react in the same way to a given situation.

* Just in case you thought I was being shoddy with my documentation — EU citizens no longer need residence permits in Germany.