28. LOVE YOUR CAR

It’s very time consuming for German men to have to keep pulling their penises out for comparison against the other men they meet. It also tends to be rather distracting for the other people who are present. So they’ve evolved other ways to rank themselves, the favourite being cars. When my girlfriend told her father she had a new English boyfriend, his first question, before my name, age, job, interests, etc., was ‹What kind of car does he drive?› Germans are serious about their cars. They’re also pretty good at making them. Possibly those two things are related, but since I can’t think of any jokes in the linking of them, I’ll conveniently ignore that and just move to a reminder that if, like me, you know nothing more about cars than that they’re like bicycles but have two more wheels, you won’t fit in here. Research. Do an internship at BMW or Porsche. Watch Formula 1. Study the schematics for engines. Buy winter tyres for your car. I don’t care if you don’t have a car. Buy them anyway. Make a little effort, people …

35

29. KLUGSCHEISSEN

As a marketer, I was always told: Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. In Germany, it’s the opposite: Never let a good story get in the way of the truth. For Germans, truth is sacred and prayed to from the altar of fact.

Therefore, it’s also very important to correct other people when they say somefhing incorrect, no matter how small and utterly inconsequential it might be. They are wrong. You are aware of this. It’s your duty to inform them. This, the Germans call klugscheißen (‹smart shitting›, literally translated). Germans being whip-smart fact-lovers are world champions at the Klugscheiß.

If someone were to say, ‹Yeah, we were just in China at the end of October, we spent a week in Hong Kong and then in Shanghai,› they’d be immediately interrupted by their partner, who would correct them by saying, ‹It wasn’t October, we flew out on November

1st at 10:37 a.m. From Tegel. You bought a bagel in departures, remember? With cream cheese.›

‹Okay, November 1st. Fine. My bad.›

Then someone else wanting to join the Klugscheiß party would add, ‹Actually, Hong Kong is not a part of China like Shanghai. It’s a Special Administrative Region, which affords it certain legislative freedoms.›

‹Okay, we were in Shanghai and Hong Kong, which is a Special Administrative Region

of China, affording it certain legislative privileges, for two weeks from the 1st November.› ‹Thirteen days. We were only there for thirteen days. Not two weeks.›

‹Hmmpfh. I give up.›

There are various tactics for dealing with being repeatedly klugscheißed: You can just stop saying anything ever and cite a fear of incorrectness as the reason for your vow of silence; or you can create a T-shirt that says, ‹It really doesn’t matter though, does it?›, which you can point at every time it happens; or you can accept that you can’t beat them and so should just join them, experiencing the great joy that can be found in not very delicately informing people of their minor factual incorrectness.

36

30. INTERROGATE JOKES

Germans have the unfortunate reputation of being humourless. That’s not true. German humour is like German bread: dark, dry, not to everyone’s taste, but in plentiful supply. The key difference between our two nations and their approach to funny is that Germans like their humour to make logical sense. In England there is the concept of a flippant remark. So, if it’s raining heavily, you can say ‹Nice weather for ducks,› and your conversation partner will just nod, or maybe even smile. They know that what you said makes little sense and is merely a silence eradicating bit of word fluff. A simple, bonding witticism to pass the time. It’s not important whether it makes sense. It does not require further thought. Until now, little Ausländer. Now it matters. Oh yeah. It matters a lot. To you. You’re German now. Don’t judge the joke primarily by how funny it is. That’s for amateurs. You’re going pro. Judge the joke firstly by how feasible it is. An offhand witticism at ducks liking rain should become a fifteen minute long analysis about the implausibility that ducks feel either one way or the other for any type of weather. Don’t just laugh at the silly things the Irishman does, enquire as to where the Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman met? Why would they board a plane with only one parachute? Is that even legal? How did they arrange a meeting with the Pope? Exactly why would a bear walk into a bar?

To be truly German you must subject even the shortest quip or joke to vigorous further questioning as if it were the prime suspect in a violent murder of sense and reason.

37

31. DON’T LIGHT YOUR CIGARETTES FROM A CANDLE

As a writer, I make money when people buy things I’ve scribbled all over. Like this book for example. Thanks for buying that, really kind of you. Sadly, there’s not that many of you book-buyers left. Not since some happy idiot invented motion picture, and things suddenly had to writhe around in front of us to be worthy of our attention. Then the Internet came along and told everyone that everything should be free. Then global time sink Facebook arrived and swallowed whatever spare time was left from a populace now too busy, too distracted to sit in a room quietly reading some old bits of dead tree. These days being a writer is mostly just an elaborate exercise in financial futility.

Does anyone care? No. Do Germans care? No. Should they care? No.

Yet there is one amusing and endangered minority that the Germans do try to protect. The humble sailor. Next time you find yourself in your local Raucherkneipe, try lighting your cigarette from a candle. There’s a good chance someone will make a kind of disapproving oooohhhh sound, tut or generally shake their heads in a disapproving manner. Because you just bankrupted another sailor. Nice one, asshole. The story of this amusing superstition is as follows: In the good old days of yesteryear, sailors were off plundering and trading and generally making nautical nuisances of themselves. Except in the lean winter months when, struggling for sailing jobs, they started selling matches to earn a living. So popular German logic dictates, by lighting a cigarette from a candle you are not using the matches of a sailor, and so depriving them of their living. Rendering them destitute. Some even say a sailor dies instantly the moment someone lights a cigarette from a candle. This is without factual merit and I suspect is a rumour started by sailors themselves.

Germans still believe that sailors should be exempt from the challenges of commerce. Until that changes, it will never be fine to light your cigarettes from a candle.

P. S. Did you know that every time you watch a YouTube clip a novelist dies? 100 % true. Step away from that cute cat video, murderer.

38