Hug a German Today

    Why o why do so many Germans embrace conformity – or rather run scared of independent thought and action?  The answer is obvious: because they don’t get enough cuddles.



    Take yesterday morning.  I popped into Lidl to buy a jar of gherkins (I never touched them before moving to Berlin, now I scoff them every lunchtime with my sesambrot and teewurst).  As I planned to be in and out of the supermarket in a minute, I didn’t take a shopping cart.  But when I reached the till the teller admonished me.  ‘You don’t have a cart,’ she observed.
    ‘I only need these pickles, and I have a bag,’ I replied, showing her my eco-friendly Oxford Book Festival canvas shopping bag.  ‘This bag works in England.’
    ‘Next time you must have a trolley,’ said the teller, taking my money, moving on.  But then the woman behind me in the queue started clicking her tongue.  In complete earnestness she ticked me off, saying, ‘Young man, you have no trolley.’
    ‘Perhaps you should call the police,’ I suggested, trying to stir a modicum of humour into her soul.
    ‘We are simply informing you of the correct procedure,’ chipped in the teller, the two of them ganging up on me.
    I left it at that but what worried me was that, despite the exchange, the Lidl ladies never questioned either the rule or their behaviour.  I had to use a trolley and no concession was to be made for not having one.

    As with the pickles and teewurst, I’ve adapted to German ways over these last months.  I now walk my dog on a lead.  I cross only on the green light.  I deposit different coloured glass bottles in the correct bottle bank.  I wouldn’t dream of riding ‘black’ on the U-Bahn (especially after Mrs. Cat was caught and fined for not having stamped her ticket.  She’d forgotten and the oversight earned her a € 40 fine).  But none of these concessions undermine my independence or – put more simply – my enjoyment of simple, spontaneous, ‘happy-making’ decisions.

    Regular readers will remember my first encounter with German anti-individualism.  Twenty-five years ago in Berlin I joined a group of pedestrians waiting to cross a main road.  After a moment I looked to the left.  Then I looked to the right.  The streets were free of traffic.  I asked a fellow pedestrian why he was waiting and he told me, ‘The light is red.’
    ‘But there are no cars coming,’ I pointed out.
    ‘The light is red.’
    Get A Life I thought, and strode across the deserted street.  But – this is the shocking bit -- I was stopped from mounting the opposite pavement by another small crowd of pedestrians.  They literally closed ranks and blocked my path.  No words were spoken between them.  It was an instinctual, communal response.  Simply put, I was abandoned for not conforming with the crowd.  It’s an incident that haunts me to this day because I believe, if I’d been flattened like a bug under a new Mercedes, that few of the group would have questioned their actions.

    Goethe once wrote, ‘Germany is nothing, but every individual German is much, and yet the Germans imagine the reverse to be true’.  Why o why must this still be the case?  It can’t STILL be down to the effect of the Thirty Years’ War or 1920s inflation which destroyed the middle class.

    The point is that people who suppress their innocent, individual impulses, and impose collective discipline on others, sap much joy out of life.  Goodness knows that our days are difficult enough.  Must we also create antagonism – either within ourselves or through conflict with another – and squash our sense of fun?

    It seems to me that this is a matter of national importance. Germans need to have more fun, especially as we crash headlong into a recession.  After lengthy deliberation (I ate three whole gherkins while thinking about this) I’ve realised that the answer is to declare a national Cuddle-a-German Day (Deutscher Kuscheltag).  Once a year, in every city and town in this land, from Bremen to Munich, Aurich to Zwickau, Germans will be permitted to approach strangers, catch their eye, smile (for Berliners especially this will be the most difficult part) and then share a brief and disarming embrace.

    This being Germany the rules need to be clear; first, the person embraced must be a stranger; second, the embrace must be spontaneous; third, participants must be sincere and sober (i.e. this isn't a drunken I'm-not-responsible-for-my-actions Karneval); fourth, there’s no going back to his/her place afterwards.  These cuddles are not to be premeditated or used to further either ones love life or career.  They exist solely for themselves, for the moment, to put a smile on someone’s face.  For example: A likes the look of B, A embraces B, B’s sense of self-esteem increases on learning that he/she is liked; B now feels confident enough to embrace C, and so on.  And best of all, on Deutscher Kuscheltag if you don’t agree with the rules you are permitted – nay, encouraged -- to change them.

    So let’s all embrace a German today.  I’m starting right now by going back to Lidl – with a smile on my lips and without a shopping trolley.  The world can become a happier place, all because of a pickle.