Culture Shock #41: Germans don't know how to bake chocolate chip cookies

To be clear here, I don't mean all cookies. Germans have a wild and insatiable lust for baking and consuming Christmas cookies, and I gotta give it to them, these Christmas cookies are divine. The mere assortment is astounding - the coconut macarons, the almond shortbread, the marmalade sandwiches. The variety of shape and texture and color. Plus, the admirable tradition of baking these cookies up to a month in advance only to seal them in jars and WAIT UNTIL CHRISTMAS TO TAKE A SINGLE BITE. If you were wondering where Germans learn discipline, there's your answer. 

Given this well-documented (and well-taste-tested, may I add) German Christmas Cookie Ferver, I couldn't believe my eyes when I witnessed a work colleague of mine nearly butcher an entire batch of good old fashioned U.S. American chocolate chip cookies. Allow me to set the scene. 

My work colleague (let's call her Caroline) is in the youth center kitchen with a group of five kiddos. Today's baking challenge is chocolate chip cookies. Caroline pre-made the batter, all the kids have to do is form the cookies on the trays. I waltz in, eager to observe, maybe even join in on this sacred and deeply nostalgic practice. I cringe heavily as I watch Caroline plunge her dry hands into the batter and attempt to form a sphere. It doesn't work. You, dear reader, knew it wouldn't work, of course it wouldn't work, the batter is sticky, it clings to her palms and fingers, no sphere in sight. 

"Have you tried wetting your hands before forming the spheres?" I suggest diplomatically, while a churning pit of disbelief brews in my stomach. This is basic chocolate chip cookie stuff: Wet your damn hands. But I gave Caroline the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she was flustered by all the sticky children and simply forgot. 

"Uh, no, why?" Caroline asked. Ah. So she doesn't know the trick. Now I'm suspicious. What else doesn't she know?

I walked over to the sink and wet my hands, then stuck them in the batter. Formed a sphere. Caroline's eyes widened as big as the children's. "Ohhhhh," she said. "Everyone go wet your hands!"

Spheres appeared left and right. Children slapped them onto trays. Too close to each other. Wayyyyy too close to each other. 

"Yo-" I didn't want to, I shouldn't have butt in, but this was unbearable, I couldn't be a bystander to the butchering of perfectly decent chocolate chip cookie batter. "Leave some space in between each sphere! They're going to grow in the oven."

The kids spread out the spheres. Things were back on track. The cookies saved. I could leave now. I turn to go, then hear a "clink." I turn back to see Caroline fetching a glass from the shelf. Bringing the glass towards the trays of cookies. What is she doing? Then she presses the base of the glass on top of a perfect sphere of cookie dough, flattening it into a disc.

OKAY WHAT IN THE EVER-LOVING HELL.

I rush back to the trays, to the children, to Caroline. 

"What are you doing?" I asked, panicked. 

"Flattening the cookies? You know what they're supposed to look like, right?"

"Ummm, yes. But you don't have to flatten them. They flatten in the oven."

"You said they grow in the oven."

"They do grow in the oven. They grow and they flatten."

"How do they grow and flatten?"

"I dunno. They just do."

"It doesn't make sense. Do they grow or do they flatten in the oven?"

"THEY GROW AND FLATTEN. THEY GET BIGGER AND THEY GET FLATTER."

This conversation went on for a bit, until I finally pulled the U.S. American card and Caroline decided to trust me. As you readers already know, the cookies grew and flattened. Later that day, Caroline thanked me for my support in the kitchen. Which was kind of her, seeing as I acted like a complete dick the entire time, and in front of the children, too. Caroline's questions were completely valid ones. How can a cookie grow and flatten simultaneously in the oven? We're used to dough rising, expanding when exposed to heat. A dough that flattens in the oven is usually a sign of utter failure. By this logic, Caroline assumed that we must physically flatten the cookie dough for the cookies to come out flat. The problem was, Caroline's logical thinking clashed gloriously with my many years of lived experience baking chocolate chip cookies at home. If she could've peered inside my brain during our lively discussion, she would've seen black plastic take-out tupperware containers full of cookie dough spheres in my family's freezer, ready to be popped into the toaster oven at a moment's notice. No flattening necessary. 

So many takeaways from this story, hmmmm, which shall I highlight? The value of cross-cultural exchange in the kitchen? The importance of considering logic and lived experience? The critical act of modeling clear and honest communication in front of children? While I find these to be riveting inquiries of thought, I think I prefer to land on the quieter, more personal moral embedded in this tale. Chocolate chip cookies matter to me more than I realized. 

Time and Space: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

This post grew organically out of my list of "Reverse Culture Shocks", a list I carefully tended to over the 2.5 weeks I spent back in the U.S.. Looking back over this list, I began to notice a pattern in the kinds of observations I was making. I took lots of notes about the concept of Time in the U.S. ("We spend so much time in the car", "Why is everyone always in a rush?") and Space in the U.S. ("Parking lots are huge", "Cafés are huge", "Cars are huge", "Streets are huge"). These observations felt too juicy to shove into a numbered list. They seemed worth mulling over, consolidating, and diving deeply into. In other words, I thought I'd give my observations about U.S. American Time and Space the time and space they deserve. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Therefore, in this blog post, I attempt to conduct a cross-cultural comparison of the slippery and illusive concepts of Time and Space in the U.S. and Germany. I assure you my explorations are rudimentary and non-exhaustive. Please enjoy.

Time in the U.S. is always slipping away. There is never enough of it to go around and people get their cardio in chasing after it. "Too much to do, too little time" is the national mantra. Traffic. Everyone is always running late because everything takes too long and everything takes too long because everyone is always running late. Traffic. Because everyone is always running late and everything takes too long, you are never fully present where you are, your foot already halfway out the door, your mind struggling to process where you just were and where you have to be next. Traffic. At the end of the day, you'll slump down onto your couch, breathing ragged, heart pounding, thinking to yourself..."what the FUCK happened today?".

Time in Germany (and I suspect, most of Europe, though I'll hold off on making generalizations about an entire continent for now) ebbs and flows. You'll pedal a hard 10 minutes across town to arrive punctually at your weekly work meeting, to which your colleague brought a spiced cake. Another colleague starts making coffee and tea to go with the cake, as tradition mandates. You sit in a circle with your colleagues, eating cake, drinking coffee, and go through the weekly agenda, ticking off each point, delegating tasks, sharing updates, discussing specific cases, problem-solving and brainstorming as a group. The meeting lasts three hours, and they're a highly productive three hours. Afterwards, everyone takes a well-deserved break, a brisk walk outdoors, some people make lunch, some people go home for the day. Enough work. It's time to rest. 

Time in the U.S. gives new meaning to the phrase "fun on a budget." A highly-anticipated anniversary dinner reservation lasts a total of 75 minutes, the server brings the check as you're taking your second bite of dessert. The week of vacation time you've been saving up for the entire year goes by in the blink of an eye. One weekend, you decide you want to get out of the city, see some nature, so you and a work colleague drive to a nearby lake, 90 minutes away. You finally make it to the lake, walk a quarter's way around it, checking your watch periodically, and after an hour has past, you suggest to turn back. The lake is too big, the drive back is long, and you have to finish up some work you're behind on before Monday.

Time in Germany is fluid, stretching and bending with the seasons, filling every container it's granted, spanning large. Sundays are the widest days, brimming with time. Shops are closed. No loud noises - no vacuuming, no throwing old glass into huge recycling bins on the streets, no doing laundry. On Sundays, your boss is not allowed to contact you. Sundays are for sleeping in. Breakfast with the roomates at 1pm, getting creative with whatever scrounged-up leftover ingredients we have in the fridge and pantry. Sundays are for hikes. Hours in the forest, along rivers, lungs full of mountain air, not a building in sight. On Sundays, "nothing" is done, and I mean "done" as an active verb, "nothing" being the sacred direct object. Today, we do nothing. 

Space in the U.S. spans as large as German Sunday Time. Cafés large enough to accomodate 50 single remote workers and their laptops, outlets peppering the walls and floors. Streets, paving the daily hour-long U.S. American pilgrimage to and from work, wide enough to accomodate hundreds of thousands of millions of lifted trucks. Forests razed down to make way for new parking garages, gargantuan, grey, fugly monuments of progress. U.S. American personal space, that's big too. We give one another a wide berth, protecting our freedom to mind our own business. Eyes trained downward, tracking the tips of our shoes, the cracks of the sidewalk. 

Space in Germany cramps in cities, explodes beyond. Tables practically overlapping in cafes, your jacket on the back of your chair gets frisky with the jacket on your neighbor's chair. Three grocery stores within walking distance from your apartment, two drug stores, two bakeries, a school. The forest a ten minute walk, the river five. Your favorite farmer's market around the corner, your second favorite a quick bike ride away. Your daily commute 12 minutes on wheels, 10 minutes if you're feeling particularly motivated. Bustling city center, a plaza, a church. People bump into you and don't say sorry, people stare (people are always staring). "Get in line!" A German grandmother yells at you after you mistakenly step up to the farmer's market stand and reach for a squash. German grandmothers are the best at being in your business. It's their right, as respected pillars of the community, to tell you what you're doing wrong, and tell you how to do it better, preferably loudly in front of everybody. 

I realize this post comes across fairly biased, fairly pro-German, pro-European conceptualizations of space and time. I didn't write this post with any particular agenda, but now that I read this post over again, it's occuring to me that the German relationship to time and space feels more human, in a lot of ways. The humane work hours and conditions. The mandated, communal Sunday rest. Easy access to nature, to fresh and local produce, to delicious and affordable bread. Even the German grandmothers don't bother me like they used to. Nagging is more communal than chronically ignoring each other. More human, too. 

Back in the Homeland: My Reverse Culture Shocks

Alright, everyone, here it is, at long last. I spent 2.5 weeks back in the U.S. for the first time in over a year and took careful notes during my visit. I noted things that struck me as odd, things I forgot about, things I'd never really questioned or paid any attention to until I got some distance from it all. It was a somewhat bizarre experience, whipping out my phone to open my Notes app at all hours of the day and night. Receiving quizzical looks from my family members ("What now?") and then hurridly explaining that I forgot about sales tax. Needless to say, some of these reverse culture shocks will be more riveting than others. In any case, I hope this list makes you, readers, think twice about your daily "normal." Or just makes you laugh. Either way is a win for me.

Without further ado, I present my list of "Reverse Culture Shocks". 

1. Top sheets! Lord is it nice not having to strip a duvet cover off of a comforter every two (....three...four...?) weeks to shove in the laundry. Not to mention having to figure out how to get the fucker back on the comforter. It's my biweekly (monthly) Sunday workout. 

2. Why do grocery stores in the U.S. spray vegetables with a light mist of water at irregular time intervals? Seems like a waste of water to me. 

3. Apples in the U.S. are freakishly shiny. If I'm not mistaken, they actually get waxed. Feel free to fact check me on that, but apples in Germany are appropriately dull in finish. 

4. I forgot that waiters bring the bill to your table so quickly, sometimes before you've even finished dessert. When I lived in the U.S., I found this swiftness and efficiency highly functional, even considerate. Thank god I don't have to chase down a waiter and ask for the bill, wasting a precious five minutes that will make me late to my next appointment. This time around, I found it incredibly rude! How dare the waiter rush us like that! Mealtime is sacred and should last at least 2.5 hours. 

5. FREE WATER WITH ICE CUBES. FREE WATER WITH ICE CUBES. FREE WATER WITH ICE CUBES.

6. I noticed a lot more food waste in the U.S.. I regularly saw people in restaurants give their half-eaten plates to servers to be taken away. In Germany, not finishing the food on your plate is a highly taboo practice. It is expected that you lick your plate CLEAN, especially if you're out to eat. 

7. People are so goddamn loud in the U.S.. Why is everyone shouting?? Why are there cars and trains and planes everywhere all the time?? Why are stores and bars and restaurants open 24/7?? Shhhhhhh. Go home and take a bubble bath.

8. In the U.S., you are a consumer first. There are ads everywhere. Billboards along the streets. On public transportation. In bathroom stalls. It was exhausting being constantly exposed to so much capitalist stimulus. 

9.  So many U.S. American flags. So much patriotism. Germany would never....again. 

10. I forgot about paper napkins and Ziploc bags. I literally forgot about them. They used to be staples on my grocery shopping lists, then I moved to Germany and promptly forgot I ever needed them. Who needs ziploc bags when reusable tupperware exists? And why do we need paper napkins anyway? God invented the tongue for a reason.

11. JEWS! I MISSED JEWS! I missed people who know Jews still exist! I've never been so happy to see tacky Chanukkah decorations in a Walgreens. 

12. It is socially acceptable to take photos in public without asking permission of the people you are photographing. I never thought twice about this practice until I moved to Germany and starting hearing the words "data privacy" a lot more often...What do yall think? Is it creepy? 

13. "Employees must wash hands before returning to work." Yall know these words. They're on a sign in every store and restaurant. I'm sure there's some law about it. I never ever stopped to consider these signs until I was back in the U.S. and thought to myself...why do employees need to be reminded to wash their hands? Isn't this a reasonable expectation of every grown human? I find the fact that this reminder is legally mandated mildly disturbing. 

14. People bag your groceries for you in the U.S. (if you're shopping anywhere but Aldi). I used to find this highly convenient, but now I find it strange and want to do it myself because I can do it better.

15.  You hear the phrase "How are you today?" everywhere. Before being seated at a restaurant. Checking out at the grocery store. Getting your movie tickets scanned. It slowly started pissing me off over the course of my visit. Like, don't ask me if you don't care. It's weird! I'm rarely just plain "good" and I don't want to lie all the time.

16. There are so many elevators in the U.S.. Probably because most of the buildings in the U.S. were built after the invention of the elevator. I appreciated having the option to take the elevator every once in a while, though I always heard my Grandpa's voice in the back of my head ("You know the secret to living as long as I have? Take the stairs.")

17. U.S. American websites are so beautiful. God bless decent graphics and easily-navigatable home pages. Germany desperately needs to take notes. All German websites look like the html website I coded in eighth grade. 

18. Sweet, sweet U.S. American digitalization. At this point, I think you could go your whole U.S. American life without ever making a phone call, printing something, or mailing a letter. You can order food online. You can make doctor's appointments online. You can check test results online. You can go to therapy online. Plus, there's an app for everything...God I sound ancient. 

19. U.S. Americans don't know how to pee outdoors. Now that I type this, I'm remembering that it's actually against the law. Public indecency...you know what's publically indecent? Lack of access to beautiful forests to hike around and pee in.

20. Playbills are free! I mean, included with the several hundred dollar Broadway tickets your parents bought for you. Anyway, in Germany, you have to pay for playbills, which means most theater-goers walk away from the performance without a souvenir. 

21. Sirens in the U.S. sound like "ooOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEOOOOOooo" while in Germany they sound like "errrrrrrERRRRRRerrrrrrrERRRRRR". Make sense? Good. I actually did a little googling and European sirens are actually more effective while creating less sound pollution, says science, or at least this one YouTube video I stumbled upon: https://youtube.com/watch?v=_dgYgshLAwQ. 

22. Sales tax. 

23. U.S. American washing machines don't wash clothes like German washing machines do. I can throw a white shirt with a red stain on it in a German washing machine and the stain comes out completely. I can throw a white shirt with a red stain on it in a U.S. American washing machine and the stain will spread into a big pink splotch that will render the white shirt completely unwearable. 

24. I felt perpetually underdressed in the U.S.. Which might come as a surprise to many of you, as we are used to thinking of Europeans as the highly fashionable ones. While this might be true of France or Italy, it is certainly not true of Germany. My sister ripped me a new one after they learned that I call my black cargos my "fancy pants." 

25. Laptop cafés are a distinctly U.S. American thing. It was bizarre to walk into cafés expecting cramped tables, clinking dishware, and warm chatter, only to be faced with the cold, clicking stillness of Remote Work. I fear that laptop cafés are an insult to the word "café" and they drain me of hope for humanity. 

26. Yall know the sign. The picture of a gun with a red cross through it. "No guns allowed in this building" the sign aims to communicate to passersby. It used to make me feel safe, seeing a sign like that, however meager this performative act of public safety might be. Seeing these signs after being in Germany for over a year was completely jarring. This time around, they brought me not comfort, but a sobering reminder. There are buildings in this country in which guns are allowed, even welcome. 

27. Living in Germany has gotten me in the habit of saying "with card please" at every cash register. Meaning, it is still assumed in Germany that you will pay in cash, and therefore you have to specify if you will be paying in a different manner. Out of habit, I said "with card please" at a cash register in the U.S., which got me a very strange look from the person at the cash register. The look said: "duh?".

28. U.S. Americans keep the shower running when they wash their hair, face, body, when they shave, when they sing their Broadway tunes...in Germany, it is common practice to turn the shower off periodically throughout, basically anytime you don't actively need running water. The first time I encountered this practice, I thought Germans just took the world's shortest showers ever. Or maybe they take lots of mini showers, one after another. Now, I know that it is practice designed to reduce water waste, and I do it, too. I challenge you to do the same :)