Wednesday 27 November 2013

sternschnuppen

The Christmas season is a bit on the advance but is generally, neatly bookmarked by Advent. I notice that some stores slowly introduce seasonal items—chocolates and such, earlier and earlier but refrain from decking out the rest of the festoonery until some else, usually sponsored by the community, dares and then all the shops go really all-out, pharmacies, kiosks, hotel and restaurants very house-proud of their show-window displays.

I'm a little bit embarrassed by my little string of coloured lights laid along the window sill that I don't think are even visible from the outside, whereas I can see little twinkling displays across the street. My apartment building, however, is completely blacked-out—to the last flat and I think I'd be insensitive to do otherwise. I had the chance to visit the “Shooting Star” market of the city in the early afternoon. It had a nice atmosphere, but I found I was missing the crowd and bustle and not knowing what ornaments and crafts that one is missing before being compelled to move along—plus the illumination, which was meek under the overcast skies. I was having fun but decided to visit another Schaufenster, show-window, in the city museum's new exhibition, Germany for Anfänger—Deutschland for Beginners. A few galleries illustrated German identities and cultures, I sort of a tongue-in-cheek, self-critical manner, in twenty-six letters, no umlauts.
It addressed stereotypes and what's true about German mannerisms, D for Dialects—which are a source of pride through also of ridicule, or B for Brauchtum—customs, which can be tacky, tawdry traditions as well, and so on with a lot of deference to the Grundgesetz (the Basic, Constitutional Law) interspersed. Importantly, there was also Y (Upsilon) for Yabancı işçi (guest-workers in English and Ausländische Arbeitskräfte auf Deutsch) for integration, change and the Multikulti. Significantly, the etiquette for each letter was rendered in German, English and Turkish. My favourite display was O für Ordnung—order, with a collection of officious-looking stamps and traffic-signs and a lengthy narrative about rules for patches of gardens, children at play to include taxation of the rain-water that runs off ones roof, met both with disdain and comfort.