The Bakery: A Cultural Classroom

I strolled to the local bakery Saturday morning.  The usual malingerers camped in silence over coffee and a book, or stared idly out the windows, or admired the particularly curvaceous backsides of customers at the counter. But, when the idlers noticed me, they looked up from their white porcelain cups, greeted me with soft smiles and a polite “Morgen.” Sometimes they murmur, ‘mosha,’ or ‘moiya.’

 

Zwielkuchen, onion cakes in front, a typical fall treat.

The wonderful faces of the bakery clerks immediately brightened as I checked in for my usual double espresso and a fresh roll.  O---, a cute older clerk, with a blond ponytail that jumps like a twitching teenager when she walks, came from around the counter, stepped close, shook my hand and stared into my eyes.  For a sec I thought she’d used super glue on her fingers and we’d be stuck together ‘til dead do us part.  Can’t complain about early skin on skin. As for the staring, you have to remember that staring is a part of the German culture.  As children, I’m sure the school’s morning rule is:  first one to stop staring gets flogged.

You drive through a neighborhood and pedestrians stop and stare with the gaping intensity of well-aimed cannon.  I always smile and wave to complete strangers, just to give them pause to think they might know me after all.  And if it’s a wife who’s walking with her spouse and staring, I wink and wave and lick my lips.

When Germans toast, they raise their glasses and shout Prost!  They MUST also stare into each other’s eyes, or risk a year of bad sex.  Now, I know you’re thinking…hey, at this point in my life, and with my current hands-on life style, even bad sex...

Previously, I gave you a few ‘good morning’ options.  Language is constantly changing and being abbreviated, a lesson high school language teachers, in their slave like devotion to complete sentences, apparently never learned, mainly because few are native speakers of the language they’re teaching, or because the French they learned in 1960 does not take into account ripped jeans, green hair, tattoos, and the mandatory ‘like’ now populating every casual remark.  So now I’m going to like give you a few like for-instances.

For example, no German uses the word Fraulein to describe a young woman anymore. Everything is Frau these days, which can mean woman or wife.  I know American women would wince if a husband introduced them as “my woman.’  You might also hear’ junge Frau’ for a young woman, as opposed to ‘Jungfrau’, meaning virgin.  Another word seldom used.

But, before you get your knickers twisted and go braless (which I heartily recommend, by the way), I hasten to add it’s the same for men.  My Mann can mean both my man and my husband.

Even the word, yes (ja), is seldom used.  Instead, you’ll hear (as I did this morning from a tall, slender, very beautiful woman) the vulgar sounding yaw!   This is not to say that I’m entirely put off by vulgar women, but I do have my standards, though often cloaked in the dark corners of my libido.

You might be interested to know, even in the heat of summer, which is to say only as warm as April in Georgia, German women do not go braless.  This is unfortunate.

And speaking of sartorial arrangements, what of the other sex, the hairy legged destroyers of virtue?  German men frequently go for three quarter length to half-length jeans.  Only place I’ve seen that on Y chromosomes in the states is on toddlers being hand towed by impatient mothers.

So, I sat and joined the other malingerers, sipping my coffee, reading my book and reflecting on all I’d learned on this bright morning.  Wait a sec….O is headed my way again….and she’s staring…

Off to the German Bakery

Making my morning trek to the bakery, I often listen to French lessons on my iPhone.  Why French?  Lots of explaining to do, but to continue:

So, this very odd American strolls down the street casting out a string of very random phrases in French. Nobody seems to be with him and no one dares approach to ask.

I don’t understand what you mean.

You don’t understand what I mean?

Do you understand what I mean?

I am excited to understand what you mean.

I didn’t understand yesterday, but will try to understand what you mean today.

Understanding what you mean is very important to me.

Does this mean you understand me?

Can you understand me when I tell you what I mean?

Some people only stare and Germans are among the world’s best starers.  Others gather their children protectively.  Those walking their dogs cross the street and readjust the leashes.  I smile.  They clutch their children closer.

The German bakery (Bäckeri), just fifteen minutes away, is my German wakeup.  I chat with random people, know most of the staff, read a book, drink a couple of coffees, and munch a redolent roll just retrieved from an industrial oven that billows out steam and fresh bread aroma when a bakery clerk cracks open the door.

D--- is a beautiful woman, in her mid twenties and pregnant with their second child.  She works swing shifts, modified to allow one parent to take their son to the kindergarten.  Yes, Germans use the same word, which in German means Children’s Garden.  Oh, that it were so in every school everywhere.

D---’s husband is a metal worker and the money is good.  Her back aches some.  Her baby is doing fine, but she sometimes has morning sickness.  I pull a trashcan over and she smiles.

The apprentice program is still a bulwark of jobs in Germany.  Electricians, carpenters, bakery clerks, plumbers, as well as office workers all serve an apprenticeship of some length. For bakery clerks it’s a couple of months, long enough to impart sufficiency in every phrase of the operation. And it’s a big operation, with not only more than half a dozen satellite outlets, but also trucks leaving for deliveries to shops and restaurants and grocery stores in a steady flow of morning traffic.

Some of the ladies here have been here for years. Pleasing smiles and welcoming attitudes are ingrained.  Every customer is respected and the customers are varied. Some workers in well-worn work clothes come in for a coffee and roll to go (to take with, in German), others want a sandwich.  One woman, whom I believe works at a nearby kindergarten, strolls out with a huge sack of rolls every early morning.  If you get there at 0730, you’ll have missed her.

Interesting how the clerks ask the questions in a different way than we do in English.

Instead of “Who’s next?”  They say, “Who comes?”

Instead of “Anything else?” or  “Is that it?” the Germans say, “Another wish?”

M--- is a longtime counter clerk and she always asks about my family.  “How’s your wife?”

“My wife?  I’m not married.”  I pat the seat beside me.  M--- gives me a reluctant smile or grimace.  Hard to tell.  With a dismissive wave, she goes back to work.  But, she does come back later and steps much closer.

Mostly it’s the people that keep me coming back, but it’s also a very nice and comfortable spot to observe the changing of the seasons based solely on what customers are wearing.  They’re in scarves and jackets now and the parade of folks is as interesting as their sartorial styles.  Open toed sandals have given way to clunkier footwear. The young mothers push one well-wrapped babe in a stroller and eye a toddler making a mess of the glass on the display counters.  Retired men and women sit at one of the three tables and chat while they sip milk coffee and pack in enough sweet rolls to supply Mrs. Betty Buns’ obesity club.  The older wives come in, dressed to the nines, the way American women used to dress before our culture gave up the ghost.

But, German youth have spent enough time immersed in American TV culture that they also sport ripped jeans, untied sneakers, an array of tattoos and hair colors formerly reserved for rodeo clowns.

From my experience, German bakeries serve as the same kind of social leveler as pubs do in England.  Everyone is welcome and everyone comes by, even if a strange American comes through the door spouting unrelated sentences in French.

Are You Roger?

            I sat in a small bakery, sipping my coffee, reading the paper.  Well, not really the paper.  I mean it is technically a newspaper, but it’s online.  So, I was actually reading my iPad.

            I often do that over a morning coffee and yes, this is my favorite place.  Matter of fact, I only go to another bakery, or to….my god, Starbucks…if every other place on earth, or at least within walking distance, is closed.  This is a pretty big city, so that happens only as often as I have a date.  Can’t remember the last time for either one.

            It’s called Sam’s Bakery and maybe Sam owns it, but I don’t know.  Never met Sam.  His waitresses’ names are Rosy, Jacqueline, Judy, and Sophie.  They’re not all here at the same time, not all the same age, and not all the same breast size.  Yes, I notice those things.  But, just so you don’t think I’m some sort of perv, I don’t know the actual cup sizes.

            At that moment, a woman sat down in my booth.  Never happened before.  Not old, not young, but younger than my forty-five years.  Nice looking in a fresh, wholesome kind of way, with wavy mouse brown hair, and brown eyes.  No dipping neckline.  Nothing like that.  She wasn’t smiling.

            I was taken by surprise and didn’t say anything, just sat staring.  I live alone and I’m not used to women approaching me.  Can’t remember the last time for that either.

            “You’re Roger, right?”  The voice was girlish, with a kind of whispering sweetness.

            “Yes,” I said.  How did she know that?  “How do you know that?”

            “From the ad.”

            Now I was confused.  I’d sold an old bicycle a few months ago and a radio and three books, none of which were valuable.  Besides, they were long ago sold.  Maybe she read my confusion as distrust.

            “You must get a lot of responses.  That’s quite an ad.  My name is Mabel.  Well, that’s not my real name.  My screen name is Helena.”  Barely a pause before she rambled on, “I don’t suppose Roger is your real name either, but you’re just as I pictured you.  A father figure.  A little bit of a traditional dresser.  I hope you don’t mind me saying that.  I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that and it might make everything more real.”

            She didn’t like my Khakis and white shirt and beige Cardigan?  I keep the top button buttoned.   “This is how I always dress.”

            “Oh,” she said, “I like your voice.  Very masculine.”

            The two waitresses, Rosy and Judy, kept looking in my direction. 

            “You said your name is Mabel, but not really?”

            “Well, women don’t usually give their right name, right?”

            “My right name is Roger.”

            “See, that’s different.”

            “How?”

            “Well for one thing, you’re not wearing a wedding ring.  I am.”

            “Maybe I forgot to put it back on after I shaved.”

            “Oh, that’s clever.  You like to keep secrets.  I love a little mystery.”

            “How’s this for a mystery?  I have no idea who you are.”

            She started to say, she’d told me, but changed her mind.  “I like that idea.”

            “What idea?”

            “Playing the role. Strangers meeting.”

            “It’s the ideal role, we being strangers and all.”

            She laughed, a good throaty laugh.  “I like what you said you’d do to me.”

            “What did I say?”

            “The parts about making me do things.  Awful things.  While you watched.”

            You need to know, I don’t drink.  Nor do I put random ads online.  Nor do I know this woman, or what in God’s green earth she is talking about.  She looked like a normal housewife.  Not bad looking, but nothing glamorous.

            “Did I say that?”

            “You know you did, Roger.”  A sly smile crept in.

            “Did I tell you the part about the cockroaches?”

            She looked blank. “Or the spider webs across … well, you know. Drinking frog poo?  Eight ball in the side pocket?  Anvil tossing?  The horse-leg barbecue?”

            I expected her to bolt, but she didn’t.  The smile came back.  “You’re such a kidder, Roger.  You silly man.  Humor drives me wild.  Is there a men’s room here?”

I pointed.

“I’ll go in first,” she said.  “But, hurry, I don’t like to get cold.”  She scooted out of the booth and flew across the length of the bakery.

            I took another sip of my coffee.

            Another man came in, stopped at the door and looked around.  It’s a small bakery, as I said.  Finding a place to sit is not as difficult as waiting for a supercilious maître d’ and pressing a twenty dollar bill in his greedy hand. 

The guy wore a black raincoat and his dark, thinning hair was slicked back.  A little portly.  His eyes darted.

            Finally, Judy walked over to him.  “Are you Mabel?” he asked.

            “She’s in the men’s room,” I said.