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.