Photo by Flux FM. Jacinta Nandi rants about German flakiness.
So this is what happens when you meet up with any nationality of person who isn’t a German, anyone, and I literally mean ANYONE, Hungarian, Mongolian, American, Thai, Russian, Spanish and/or Israeli, but of course, most of all, British:
1. You make a vague plan on Facebook chat three weeks in advance.
2. You make a slightly less vague plan on Facebook chat two weeks in advance.
3. One week to go! The vague plan is totally changed – if you were going to go swimming, you will now go to the theatre. If you wanted to go to the opera, you will now go to see James Bond at Babylon. If you were planning on hanging out in a park and drinking cider, you will now go and hang out by the canal with a bottle of Rottkäppchen.
4. Two days before said meeting: one thousand Facebook chat messages confirming that everything is “still on” and “all good” and “we’re still set for tomorrow.”
5. IT’S THE DAY OF THE VERABREDUNG! Now you switch to WhatsApp and send each other 74,000 messages deciding where to meet, when to meet, who is buying the tickets, and checking that you wouldn’t actually ACTUALLY prefer to just come over for coffee instead.
6. Twenty minutes before Verabredung: obligatory WhatsApp message explaining that you’re running late, is the person you’re meeting running late too?
7. WhatsApp, WhatsApp, WhatsApp, WhatsApp. I will meet you by the kiosk with the blow-up dolphin in the window. There’s no kiosk with a blow-up dolphin in the window? Maybe they took the blow-up dolphin out of the window of said kiosk. Okay, shall we meet at the other kiosk. You know the other kiosk. The one where we met up with Spanish Paul that time and he pretended he’d just eaten a pigeon for breakfast. Oh no maybe we should just meet on the platform after all. Oh, fuck, Schienenersatzverkehr…
8. Twenty minutes after planned Verabredung was meant to commence one final WhatsApp message deciding that you will meet directly at venue.
9. You finally meet, hurrah!
10. You are so fucking exhausted from the stress of meeting up with people with this kind of military planning – like seriously, Hitler put less effort into strategically invading France in 1940 than you just have in meeting up for drinks – that you can’t even tell if you’re actually having fun or not. You suspect you might be.
THIS IS HOW (ESPECIALLY WHITE BUT BASICALLY ALL OF ‘EM) GERMANS MEET UP:
1. In December you make a plan to meet up in January. You decide a time and a place. You remember this time and place, because it will come in handy later.
2. IN JANUARY YOU STICK TO IT. THERE ARE NO CONFIRMATION E-MAILS. THERE ARE NO SCHIENENERSATZVERKEHR-BASED DISASTERS. THERE IS NO PLAN CHANGING. You said you’d be at the Siegesäule at 3.30pm on January 8th, and by God you are.
Honestly, it’s like Germans think the cold war is still going on, the absoluteness and constancy with which they verabreden themselves, using monuments and landmarks and memory – see you there – it’s noted in my diary – and they bloody well will see you there too instead of WhatsApping you a million times to confirm and/or change plans. If you ever do send a confirmation text/WhatsApp message to a German, they get almost offended – it’s in my diary Jacinta, we’d planned it, hadn’t you planned it, hadn’t you written it down in your diary? Kind of offended, kind of bemused, a tiny bit hurt.
It’s telling, too, I always think, that there is no word in English for verabredet – I am meeting someone later. I am meant to be meeting someone later. Oh, I am going to meet up with a friend later. Wishy-washy, half-hearted, inconstant. I AM VERABREDET – and I will be there – I SAID I WILL BE THERE AND I WILL! It’s set in stone. Verabredungs are set in stone, almost in a Narnia-like way.
But this is not to say Germans can’t be flakes. If you’ve been living here for a bit, you know. You knooooooooow. You know. They can be fucking flaky sometimes. THE FLAKIEST THINGS GERMANS DO IS WHEN THEY SAY THEY ARE NOT COMING TO YOUR BIRTHDAY PARTY BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO INHALIEREN! Honestly, I have literally no idea why they don’t just lie and make up a good excuse, this is literally what the concept of lying was invented for; when you care so little about someone that you’d prefer to stay home and Inhalieren than schlep yourself to their birthday party. But still. I suppose we have to let them off here. It’s stressful enough for us, meeting up with other Ausländer. It must drive the Germans bonkers!
