6 weird German things

Ever since I moved to Germany in March 2017 I have been an astute observer of local customs. These six quintessentially German weird things have made their way onto my Facebook wall, and here they are compiled for your reading pleasure. Most of them turn out to be related to buses.

1. Bus seating rituals

When someone sits down next to an occupied seat on a bus, the person on the inside will often immediately start a conversation about when they are planning to get off. If it then turns out that the person on the inside is getting off first, the two people will often permute. This whole process seems less efficient than the person on the inside simply saying "Excuse me, I want to get out" when it's time for them to do so.

2. Opening times for the bottle bank

Bitte beachten Sie die Einwurfzeiten!

Using the bottle bank on a Saturday? VERBOTEN. Using it at 2pm? VERBOTEN. Using it at 8pm? VERBOTEN. Using it at 7 in the ****ing morning? Yeah, sure, go right ahead.

3. Oh deer

"der Rentier" vs. "das Rentier". When the WWF started sending me emails about "Rentier under threat", I was a bit confused about why they wanted to protect pensioners/people living off their capital. Turns out that morphology, pronunciation, and gender are important. Who knew?

4. The vanishing bus

Fährt vom Pfingstsonntag bis zum letzten Tag in den Sommerferien.

A bus that only exists between Pentecost and the last day of the Baden-Württemberg summer holidays. Guess I’ll take the next one, then.

5. The Gutenberg gap

Your IP Address in Germany is Blocked

No access to Project Gutenberg in Germany. :'(

6. Stop the Germany, I Want to Get Off

By and large, Germans are awful at letting people get off the bus before they try to get on. They just stand in front of the door in a confused mass until someone asks them to move. I can only assume this is related to either a) the congenital inability of anyone without Great British DNA to queue properly, b) an apparently widespread German paranoia that minor things in daily life will go TERRIBLY WRONG, or c) both.

Then again, Konstanz bus drivers are psychopaths. They will quite happily lower the bus to ground level so that someone in a zimmer frame can trundle on comfortably, then close the door and stamp on the accelerator while that person is still looking for a seat.