Planet Germany.
One British family bungles being German.
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Image: Cathy Dobson |
Cathy Dobson’s warm and funny book Planet Germany is the kind of read that you find yourself thinking about days after you’ve read it. Expats and half-Germans; indeed anyone who has some connection or interest in Deutschland, or of living abroad, will find something here that enlightens and amuses you.
Cathy’s delightful stories about family life in Meerbusch take us through all the joys of a year in the life of this family in their rambling farmhouse on the outskirts of Düsseldorf.
If you are looking to moving to Germany this book might help to unravel some of the images you have heard of in the Land of Efficiency and Bratwurst. You can read of traditions and festivities that are both charming and mind-numbing. Or you can be the fly-on- the-wall at a children’s birthday party that turns into a competitive nightmare with the equivalent to the ‘ladies who lunch’. If you have lived abroad yourself I know that you will recognise some of the situations of hilarious alienation.
You can do little but laugh in disbelief at some of the absurd scenarios of German bureaucracy.There’s an incredible chapter describing how cheap and straightforward it was not for Cathy and her English hubby to marry here. I read the story of the ‘expired’ birth certificates to my German partner who shook his head at the craziness of it all. Even Germans think that their birth certificates are valid for life. You can discover in Cathy’s book that this you’ll this is just not the case ...
Despite all of these obstacles Cathy’s family love life in Germany. They wholeheartedly embrace the seasons, Altbier and the warmth of the Rheinländer and all in all I am left with the impression that they cannot imagine living anywhere else.
Abstract from the book:
Call the Bin Police!
Our local town council in Germany provides every home with an array of colour-coded bins for rubbish.
There's a yellow one for recyclable packaging, a brown one for garden waste, a paper container, a glass container, there are public collection points for items which pollute - batteries, oil, old paint tins. There’s an old clothes donation point. As a final resort there is finally a real black dustbin for anything that you can't work out what to do with. The authorities send you a complex colour coded calendar requiring a degree in mathematics, or possibly psychology, to work out when each bin will be emptied.
Thanks to the town council, I have abandoned the idea of a front garden. Instead I have a colour-coded wheelie-bin park. We have two yellow bins, two black bins and a brown one.
Owning bins doesn't come cheap though. You pay per litre of bin-space... a modest rate for the yellow and brown (which are green...if you follow me) but a whopping financial penalty for the non-recyclable black.
I recently noticed that we were only managing to half-fill one of our black bins and never used the brown. So I pop down to the local council to see if I can't rationalise our bin collection.
The council lady looks me up in their computer system.
"You have one two hundred and forty litre black bin, a one hundred and twenty litre black bin, a pair of two hundred and forty litre yellow bins and a two hundred and forty litre brown bin," she informs me. "You have five people in the household... with an allowance of seventy litres black-bin waste per head. This is correct?"
"But we're not producing anywhere near seventy litres per head," I protest.
She peers at me over her glasses as though I might be planning an open-cast landfill tip in the garden pond.
"I'd like to just keep the one hundred and twenty litre black bin, and I also want to get rid of the brown one," I explain, rather more hesitantly, under the intensity of her withering stare.
"It is forbidden to put brown-bin waste in the black or yellow bins."
"Yes I know that. We have a compost heap."
"And it is forbidden to put black bin waste in the yellow bin."
"Do I look like I'm plotting to sneak out in the dead of night and deliberately put dead cadmium batteries in the plastics container?"
She looks at me long and hard. Presumably I've read her thoughts exactly.
"Right. With five family members, it is not permitted to reduce to one hundred and twenty litres. I will permit you to have two hundred litres of black bin space. We will also remove the brown bin. And we will instruct the dustbin inspectors to conduct the spot checks on your waste. Sign here please."
And that is that. I can't wait to see Officer Gorgeous and his highly trained squad of bin-police rummaging through my old Schnitzel wrappers. (Cathy Dobson)