Little Differences

Sometimes it’s the little differences that can make a transition more difficult, and other times, these differences can help one appreciate their new surroundings. The following is my list of some of these little variations between living in Erlangen and Chicago.

1. Regardless of whether you buy or rent a home, in Germany one has to supply his own kitchen. It’s rare to find an apartment that has a fully equipped kitchen. Usually, people buy their kitchens, and when they move, they take all the cabinets and appliances with them. Sometimes they’re willing to sell their old kitchens to the new tenants. Since our apartment was just built (note that I said apartment, not building—our apartment was built on top of an existing building), we had no choice but to purchase an entire kitchen.

This wouldn’t have been so bad, if it hadn’t taken 10 weeks for our kitchen to be installed. We ordered our kitchen in early August hoping that it would be installed before our furniture and stuff crossed the Atlantic. I guess they don’t believe in warehouses here, because we were told by our Verkäufer (salesman), Roland, at Neubert’s that it would take 10 weeks for our kitchen to be built, delivered and installed. We moved into our apartment on September 7, and our kitchen arrived on October 14. For five weeks, I made soup and spaghetti on a portable electric cook top that we borrowed from a friend and washed dishes in our bathroom sink. We had a coffee maker that we bought while still in our temporary apartment on Innere Brücker Strasse, and we bought a refrigerator two days after we moved into our permanent apartment.

The upside of all of this is that I got a red (ruby red to be exact) kitchen. We had originally ordered a kitchen with birch veneer, but then I saw a cooking show with a red kitchen and mentioned to Bob that someday I would like to have one of those. Bob said this was my chance and called Roland.

2. Apartments and houses also do not have closets. That’s right, no closets. Instead, clothes, toys, and linens are stored in schranks. Schrank is the German word for armoire, cupboard, kitchen cabinet, closet, wardrobe—all of these are simply called Schranks (it’s also a fun word to say). Because nice armoires are expensive and don’t hold enough, most people own large, portable closets, which can be purchased in most furniture stores. IKEA has a huge selection, even in the US, although I don’t know any people in the US who have an IKEA schrank. We don’t need them in the US, because we have closets and small rooms we call walk-in closets. As you can imagine, this limits one’s storage space, and therefore, it is not a good idea to accumulate a lot of clothes, unless you don’t mind a closet so packed that you can’t get anything in or out.

In general, when you move into an apartment, you get the floors, walls, windows, doors, toilets, tubs and bathroom sinks. Things, such as light fixtures, bathroom mirrors, and curtains, you have to supply yourself. On the one hand, this can make moving into a new place very expensive, but, on the other hand, when one moves again, they’re guaranteed a kitchen, schranks and accessories that reflect their personalities instead of the previous tenant’s.

3. Most household appliances in Europe are similar to those in the US, but there are slight evolutionary variances. For instance, refrigerators are smaller, and this is because everyone buys fresh food every few days. Europeans are not into long-term storage of food, hence the lack of preservatives in most food. Fruits and vegetables are sold ripe, so they spoil if not eaten right away. Bread grows stale in one or two days, and mold within a week. Meat turns gray within two days, and ham becomes slimy in less than a week.

Ovens also tend to be smaller. I don’t know the reason for this, but it doesn’t affect me because I don’t have to make large meals.

Washing machines are more complicated. Instead of picking cold, warm or hot water, I need to choose between cold, 30, 40, 50, 60 and 90 degrees C. I also have to choose the spin speed--400, 600, 800, 1000 or 1200 rpm. The dryer also makes me choose between damp, dry or extra dry. The dryers here come in two types—some vent steam like those in the US, and others use condensers similar to those in air-conditioners. The steam from the drying clothes is turned back into water, which is collected in a container that I have dump when full. They’re perfect for places where one may not have an opening to the outside.

My favorite appliance is my vacuum cleaner. I hated my Hoover in Chicago. It was heavy and noisy and had only one suction mode—very, very strong. That thing would suck up small rugs and curtains from two feet away. My vacuum here is light—no more stress on my back. It doesn’t have rotating brushes, which is a marketing rip-off, in my opinion, so it’s quiet and still able to pick up dog hair. Finally, I can adjust the amount of suction, so that I can vacuum thin rugs without having to worry that the entire rug will be eaten.

4. I mentioned in a previous blog that shops are closed on Sundays and holidays. This is not a problem--we don’t starve on Sundays because we do our shopping on Saturday. If a holiday falls on a weekday, we are aware of it because Bob has the day off and the kids have no school. We can plan ahead. But, if a holiday falls on a Saturday, this can be a problem. Twice we’ve been caught by surprise. The first time was in 2003, and All Saints’ Day, November 1, was on a Saturday. We woke up planning to shop for the weekend and realized everything was closed. That meant we had to eat out at least once (most restaurants are open on holidays), and the rest of our meals for the weekend consisted of pasta and canned or frozen vegetables.

The second time was January 6, 2007, the Epiphany (there is no separation of church and state in Germany, so most public holidays are Christian holidays). I realized it was a holiday when I was walking Oscar and heard the church bells ringing on a Saturday. We had already planned to have dinner in Pottenstein (see Bergfeuer), but again we had to be creative on Sunday.

5. No more writing checks! I hated writing checks. I never understood why I had to write out the amount in words. The number should have been enough. Here, they wouldn’t know what to do with a check. Money is transferred directly from our account to the bank account of whomever we need to pay. This can be done in two ways—through an Überweisung or a Dauerauftrag.

The Überweisung is used for one-time payments. For example, if I owe my dentist (just as in the US, dental insurance doesn’t cover everything), he would give me his bank account number and I would fill out an Überweisung from my bank, directing them to transfer the money to his account. All I need other than his bank account number is the code number for his bank. And I can do this online.

A Dauerauftrag, on the other hand, is used to pay monthly bills, such as rent, phone, electric, Alex’s kindergarten and Phil’s piano teacher. We give them our account info, or they give us theirs, and we set it up between our banks. We paid our mortgage this way in Chicago, but with utilities there were fees involved, and I don’t think Phil’s piano teacher would have agreed to give me his bank account number. When we moved to Germany the first time, we were very apprehensive about giving out our account number, but we spoke to some Americans living here and they said they had never heard of anyone using an account number to steal someone’s life savings.

The only thing I have to remember is to reverse the punctuation. In the US, we write 2200 dollars as $2,200.00. Here the comma and period are reversed, so 2200 Euros is written 2.200,00 Euros. I filled out an Ueberweisung to our moving company for 2,200.00 Euros, and ended up paying them 2 Euros and 20 cents.