Cycling and Recycling
Assimilating into German culture means embracing hyper-efficiency, weirdness, and feeling like you’re getting trolled as a tourist. We arrived in Hannover on Friday rush hour… Being in a busy train station (Hauptbahnhof) in peak traffic, with petulant luggage, after a very very long trip stinking like pollcats straight outta Sontra (well maybe not straight) is A LOT…
It’s more of a lot when you exit the station after a very long stressful journey and are assaulted by some of the worst Death Metal ever to grace anywhere. For context it was about 4:30, very sunny, vendors were selling strawberries and penis asparagus, and there was a general, yeah I’m gonna do it, sense of “Friday Feels”. Contrasting Friday Feels with Death Metal feels like a great metaphor for how weird and fucked up Germany is. In a great way. Minus the amateur Death Metal (which we can always do without).
One of the first things we noticed was how many recycling vending machines there are, and how many people spend time collecting recycling from bins to cash in at these machines. The deal is that trash goes in, and money comes out. It blows my mind. If we could do this in South Africa people would be robbing recycling like cash in transit heists. What’s weird though is at these machines it says, “Donate your recycling”. Jono thought this was clever marketing wording to get people to be more socially responsible, but my hunch was that the Germans could be as bad as some of my former students with Microsoft Word synonyms.
People are lank active here. Even pensioners cruise around the Maschsee (big ass lake) with Zimmerframes and walkers. Everyone is out running, walking, and riding bikes. Parks are full, and citizens do a lot of work to make it nice. We can’t even get people to donate a few bucks to establish a UIP in Hilton, but in Germany there are loads of people gardening in public parks and planting seasonal vegetables. And the municipality has big budget here, so, the “Why should I do it, the municipality should do it” argument falls a bit flat. Anyway, it was lank inspiring to see all ages enjoying the spaces, respecting them, and being very active.
Speaking of being very active. It was suggested that Cate, Jono, and myself go for a nice bike ride to explore. My anxiety piqued quite a lot. I haven’t ridden a bike since I was at Laddsworth and it was my brother’s blue BMX that was many sizes too small for my girth. Plus, my mother only let me ride a bike around a windy dryer so while I can “ride”, I’ve only really gone in circles.
Imagine my delight when I had to ride a bike, with right-hand side rules, in a straight line, amongst other humans who are infinitely more dextrous and savvy than me. Apparently, the scenery was lovely. When people say, “It’s just like riding a bike,” there’s an element of truth, but it will take me a bit longer to move from a spinning bike that stays still and doesn’t wobble or try to throw you off because you don’t know it’s a back braker. Yeah that was a jol. Especially cos I was going down a slope (when I tell the story later I’ll say hill).
Seriously though… Hannover gets a five-star review for nature and green shit. The forests are amazing and we even saw trees that had been cut down by beavers to use in their next building project. Those little beaver gnashers are quite incredible… There have also been numerous environmental interventions like creating bug and hedgehog hotels. Shit not. You had me at beavers and hedgehogs. Take my money.
One of the things I love most about travelling is going to foreign supermarkets. I really think that Rodney from the Quarry Spar should capitalise on what a tourist hotspot grocery stores can be. And I think he could come up with a lot of fun games to confuse tourists. Yesterday I mentioned how we are sorely ignorant about how German works. There’s an assumption that it’s a bit like Afrikaans and you can “get by”. Trust me, you can’t get by. It’s not intuitive and you will make a lot of mistakes. Fortunately, mistakes make better stories than nailing it so I’m not about to sign up to another Duolingo course. Fuck that, I go rogue… Full baby eagle soaring gracelessly into the unknown… With an interesting array of results.
Jono and I discovered Edeke and I can confirm that it is a banger– minus the fact it was long weekend and shops are closed on Jesus/God days so it was packed with last minute shoppers. Plus, we got “that” trolley. Jono and I always end up with the dodgy trolley with the wonky wheel, which is usually fine, but when you’re a foreigner the Germans take it personally and think you have it out for them. There was a general cologne of eu de judge because of how we were controlling our trolley. It looked like we were dicking around with an ungainly runaway feral, while everyone else had reined there’s in like fucking show ponies at a dressage event.
So much weird shit to report on regarding this shopping excursion. The Edeke centre looks a bit like Makro, but with more flowers and fewer stoners. Because of the long weekend there was a whole bazaar outside with people singing and dancing, beer tents, pretzels, the whole scene. However, of all the nice places to go why would you pick this spot? There’s literally forest and lakes for days but the shitty carpark was crammed. They must know something we don’t. Or maybe it’s just that German thing?
Our first mission was to figure out the recycling vending machine. Trash goes in and bucks come out. Except it’s in German. We were so chuffed to see nearly 8 Euros appear on the screen, ready to reclaim. And because it was the highlighted choice, using our expert intuition, we selected “Spenden”.
“Hell yes, we want to spend this shit in the shop!” We pocketed the voucher.
Next up was navigating the selection of very nice looking food and the obvious weird shit that floats my boat. I spent a lot of time in the aisle with the jarred peas, carrots, and sausages. Jarred food often reminds me of museum exhibits and formaldehyde. Why the fuck would you buy shit like this? Apparently, the Germans go gangbusters for this because the selection of these jarred treats was bigger than the crisp section. Like double. Almost no options for crisps (and you should see the flavours… lank weird). BUT if you’re looking for jarred sausages you can have them sliced, diced, grated, tiny, large, curried… If you dream it, you can have it. But why would you want to?
Chips are called “Golden Longs”.
German bread is the best porn movie you’ve ever seen. It’s just Sharon Stone level.
There were also a lot of eggs at varying prices. Usually I opt for the more expensive eggs that come with labels such as organic, free range, and so on. In Germany, I go for eggs that are labelled the cheapest. After unpacking the shopping at home I noticed the off piste egg packaging and then opened the box. It took a while for my brain to process what had happened because I’m not sure what kind of maniac stores boiled eggs out of the fridge, not to mention sells this Easter “favourite” long after Easter. So that was the end of the promise of scrambled eggs. “We’re having boiled eggs kids! And you can choose whatever colour you want!” Talk about a less kiff version of our mini cereal assortments we would take on holiday to Banana Beach.
After we secured our haul of groceries we went to pay and were very proud that we remembered to produce our recycling cash back. We were bibbing at the idea of nearly 8 Euros worth of free groceries.
“My English is not very good, but how you say this…
Um…
You’ve donated it.”
Germany really is one of the greatest places on earth.
Next Time: The adventure continues… I might even tell you the closely guarded secret of how to get a SIM card in Germany.