Living in Germany: The good, the bad and the weird

Cyclists in Bonn get their own little traffic lights. How cute is that?

There are many things about living in Germany that strike me as weird or wonderful. Here are a few of them.

Naked swimming
Public swimming pools in Bonn are pretty much like public swimming pools in the rest of the world. Except that public swimming pools in Bonn have naked days. The first Sunday of every month is known as Adam and Eve day and wearing a swimsuit is not an option. Go nude or go home.

Panic shopping on Saturday evening
Nothing is open in Bonn on Sunday. All of the shops and all of the supermarkets shut down on Saturday evening and don't open again until Monday morning. So every Saturday evening, just before the stores close, a mad rush of people charge into the supermarkets to stock up on food and drinks for the rest of the weekend. Most supermarkets only have three check-out counters so the lines are long and the aisles are crowded and if you don't get there early enough all of the fresh stuff is long gone by 7 p.m.

White asparagus. What's the point?
White asparagus is mysteriously popular in Germany. When it's in season, grocery stores, restaurants and markets are bursting at the seams with white asparagus. Green asparagus is nowhere to be found. I have no idea why white asparagus is so popular and green asparagus so elusive. White asparagus doesn't taste as good as green asparagus and it's less nutritious (white asparagus is grown under thick mulch. Deprived of sunlight, it can't produce chlorophyll, which is why it is white not green).

Padded coffee
Just like white asparagus, coffee pads are mysteriously popular in Germany. Germans class up their coffee by putting in into a pad and selling a machine whose sole purpose is to brew said pad. I had never heard of coffee pads until I moved to Germany. My apartment came with a coffee-pad machine and my German landlord (a huge, raving fan of coffee pads) taught me how to use it, telling me I'd never go back to freshly ground coffee again. Coffee pads aren't as delicious as fresh coffee but they get the job done quickly and the coffee isn't as bad as you'd think it would be.

Brewing up some coffee pads in my funky coffee-pad machine

Waiting for the little green man
Jaywalking is verboten. People wait for the lights to change, even in the middle of the night with no cars around for miles. If you must jaywalk, make sure there is no one watching you. Otherwise, prepare to get a nasty look or publicly scolded in German. Which, based on personal experience, is way scarier than getting yelled at in English.

Clarity-frei street signs
I don't understand this sign. What does "frei" mean? Does it mean you can bike freely down this street even though it's a one-way street? Or does it mean this street is free of bikes because it's a one-way street? Adding to my confusion is the fact that I got scolded (twice) by a police officer for riding my bike the wrong way down a one-way street. The street in question wasn't marked with a bike-frei sign, which I had originally interpreted to mean no biking (like lactose-frei milk, I assumed the "frei" in bike frei meant "without"). So I figured cyclists were free to ride down any street without a bike-frei sign. But now that I've gotten into trouble with the law for riding freely down a street without a bike-frei sign, I'm having second thoughts. Now I'm starting to think bike frei means to bike freely in any direction. But I'm still not sure. Feel "frei" to clarify in the comments section.

Free of bikes or bike freely? Your guess is as good as mine

Cheese overload
I am officially sick of cheese. I don't want to eat it. I don't want to smell it. I don't want to see it. Even writing about it is making me feel queasy. Eating out in Germany usually means ordering something baked with cheese, covered with cheese, sprinkled with cheese or carved out of cheese. What's with all the cheese? (The bread, on the other hand remains melt-in-your-mouth delicious. I will never get sick of German bread.)

Tap water is taboo
I have never seen so many people guzzle so much sparkling water in my life. Forget beer. Sparking water and Apfelschorle are what everyone really drinks here. If you order water at a restaurant, the waiter will ask if you want sparkling or flat. Flat water does not mean tap water, it means bottled water that isn't bubbly. Don't even bother asking for tap water. No one drinks it, no one orders it and the waiter will probably fight you on it. It's not worth the hassle.

The multi-person beer-drinking bicycle-riding machine
I don't know what the German word is for this contraption. Let's just call it the multi-person beer-drinking bicycle-riding machine. These things are all over the road in Dusseldorf and Berlin. As far as I can tell, a driver (presumably sober but who knows?) steers the thing through traffic while everyone else drinks beer and pedals. It's just like drinking at a bar but with way more people checking you out. (It's illegal for me to ride my bike the wrong way down a one-way street but it's legal for these guys to block traffic with their giant, boozy, 10-seater bicycle?)

Calorie-neutral drinking

Telling time the old-fashioned way
I live across the street from a church that rings its bells four times an hour. They ring on the hour and they ring at a quarter past. They ring on the half-hour mark and again at a quarter to. Sometimes all the bells ring at once in a loud, clanging frenzy for several minutes straight. This happens absurdly early on Sunday morning and carries on most of the afternoon. Is all of this bell ringing really necessary? What's the point? Especially the time-telling function. Is there anyone out there who actually relies on church bells to know what time it is?

Thirty-one flavours of yogurt
Germany has more flavours of yogurt than ice cream. They have the usual flavours, like blueberry, strawberry and mixed berry. But they also have funky flavours, like pear chunks and chocolate flakes, mixed grains, coconut and figs. If you can think of a flavour, there's a yogurt for that.

Huge pillows
Why are the pillows so big? Germans don't have extra-big heads so why do they need extra-big pillows that take up one-third of the bed? These aren't decorative pillows. These are the pillows you're supposed to lay your head on when you go to sleep.

A Canadian-sized pillow on top of a German-sized pillow

Doners: not just a snack after binge drinking
There are doner shops everywhere in Germany. In Canada, I've only seen people eating doners on the street at 3 a.m. after stumbling out of a bar. Here, people eat them for lunch and dinner while sober.

Sidewalk rage is the new road rage
It's not easy being a pedestrian in Bonn. Especially when the sidewalks are overrun with cars. The roads are narrow and the sidewalks are wide, which probably explains why it is perfectly legal for drivers to park their cars all over the sidewalk. This is great for drivers but not so great for the pedestrians and cyclists who have to maneuver around these monstrosities. Cars and sidewalks go together like alcohol and rollercoasters.

Kind of like plaque constricting the flow of blood through an artery

Doors that lock automatically
Here's a lesson I learned the hard way: apartment doors lock automatically when you close them. I'm not talking about the front door of the building but the door to each individual apartment (like a hotel room). This is something the landlord doesn't tell you. Why would he? Everybody knows the doors lock automatically. Except for those of us who come from countries where the doors only lock if you put the key in the hole and turn the deadbolt yourself. Anyway, I found out the door locked automatically when I closed it with my keys still inside the apartment. It was bad enough that I locked myself out, it was even worse that it happened on a long weekend when my landlord was on vacation in the south of France. (It took a few hours but I managed to reach my landlord, who then coerced an intern to go to his office, get his spare key and drive out to my apartment and unlock the door. I have been paranoid about locking myself out ever since.)

Trains that run on time? Not in Germany
Contrary to popular belief, trains in Germany do not run on time all the time. They run on time maybe half the time. The other half of the time, the trains are delayed anywhere from five to 45 minutes (or cancelled altogether). I'm not sure why Germany has a reputation for fast and efficient public transit. I have taken the bus three times in Bonn. The first time the bus driver screamed at me after I didn't pay my fare properly. The second time the bus was 15 minutes late. The third time the bus was one hour late. There has not, and never will be, a fourth time.

Vibrator vending machines
Vending machines that sell tampons and condoms in public washrooms are par for the course. But in Germany, the washroom vending machines go one step further by adding vibrators to the menu. I wonder what they sell in the men's room?

Everything you need for a fun night out