Karambolage

Karambolage is the German word for collision. Carambolage the French one. It is also the name of a TV-program that is broadcasted on Arte every Sunday around 8pm. Arte is the result of a French and German collaboration and it is a greaaaaaat TV-channel. Two little books in French and in German were also made out of the program as well as some DVDs.
So what is it about? Both the TV-Program and the books deal with cultural differences between France
and Germany, particularly about small things, what is really specific to each. Therefore, the name.

It is fun to read (also helpful sometimes) and in my opinion a very fascinating thing to realize that the simplest daily habits, that we just consider as "normal" are actually so culture-related. I am still surprised and every time I come across one of these things, I try to remember it in order to be able to post it here. So far, here are a few things I came across:

- The way the table is settled: fork tips up; it is the other way around in France. A permanent source of discussion with Boyfriend till the agreement: my apartment is like the embassy, it is French territory. Also, when in a restaurant, to signalize you are done eating, you need to put your cutlery on the side, on your plate.

- People here openly read YOUR magazine /book /newspaper while sitting next to you in the metro. Very very rude to my eyes, but really fine here.

- The yellow square representing the "smoking area" at the station is taken literally: people smoking will not put one foot out of this ridiculous square, behaving like it is electrified.
- Your plate will be taken away from you, as soon as you are done with your dish. No, it does not matter if the others aren't done, it is just the way they do.

- The Germans aren't kidding about stopping when the light is red for the pedestrians or having lights on your bike. The same way they aren't kidding about anything we, French vilains people, consider as "suggestions" more than "real" laws. As Stephen Clarke says in his book Talk to the snail: "I am French thus i am right, and i know better what is better for me".

- The "Kirchensteuer", that is to say, the "church taxes". They are taken out of any salary you perceive IF you declared being religious while you did your "anmeldung" (mandatory inscription) in the city. So if you are catholic and want to stop paying it, you need to lie and say you are not catholic (which is a sin of course), so you just pay and complain about it. To me, this tax is really really weird as the whole Republic is based on the separation of State and Church... but while in Rome, do as the Romans do.

- The "Eikocher": in a totally different field, I was stunned to discover that the Germans use a machine to boil eggs. You just can not have eggs if you don’t have the machine. Like using the saucepan and boiling water is not precise enough and is risky (you could break an egg). So they have the whole material, stunning to French me.

- When in a bar or a restaurant, you need to tell the waitress/waiter before paying, how much tipp he or she gets. In France, where we do not like to talk about money, you leave it on the table. Here you have to announce it out loud, so if your meal costs 8,9 Euro and you want to give a bit more than 10%, when you are announced the price to pay, you answer "let s do 10". It is a question of habit.

- The "PfandAutomat": almost every damn bottle that you buy has a refund on it: you pay more than what the product cost, and you get this difference back only if you bring the bottle back to the shop or to the pfand automat. System I got familiarized with in Sweden actually but still very funny. You put the bottle in the machine that will analyse barcode, weight and material and give you your money back or better said a tickets on which the value of all the bottles you left is written. As these "Pfandautomat" are typically found at the next supermarket, you can either get cash, or use the refund to pay your groceries (or a part of it).

- The fact that it is allowed to drink in public e.g. drink a beer in the metro on your way to a club... still weird to me as in France, drinking in public (street, bus, etc) can cost you a night at the police station.