Germans need a safe environment to loosen up. In front of strangers, they work hard to avoid making mistakes and to not embarrass themselves. Their inability to let their guard down makes them look cold or really boring.
A long time ago, I fell in love with a German guy and moved to Germany because of him. Christian was THE love of my life. We were together for five years and I also needed five years to recover after he broke up with me (read: dating again). Five years is long when you’re in your twenties, right? Therefore, when I was NOT dating, I organized many, many, many parties in our former apartment. Sixty people in 600 square feet? Not a big deal. Homemade finger food and cocktails? Easy. Dancing into the wee hours? Yeeeesss!
My parties were famous in our French-German community, not because of the food or booze but because we danced! You have no idea how boring German parties are. Wait, at least my regular readers know that I have dual French-German citizenship and am not insulting Germans for the sake of it. I lived there for over 20 years!
But, the most annoying part in my German life was always the German birthday parties. Let me explain.
Avoid boring German birthday parties
Once you’re invited to a birthday party in Germany, you can expect beer or wine, chips and crackers, or even smaller things to eat. People will sit for hours on a couch, a chair, or sometimes, on a beer crate (Germans are environmentally friendly and buy beer in glass bottles, packed in a crate of 20 bottles).
Consider yourself lucky if you’re engaged in some deep and factual conversations about the pros and cons of the newest Mercedes… it also works with any other German carmaker. Small talk could also be about the latest soccer game scores, and if you don’t like soccer, you reduce your chances of conversation dramatically. Then, ask about vacation destinations for next summer because Germans love to organize vacations months, if not years, in advance. That’s it basically. With these three topics, you’re covered for small talk in Germany… Okay, the weather is also a good one.
At a German birthday party, do not expect physical activities other than getting up to get another beer or to go to the bathroom in order to get your fluid intake and output in balance. You get the idea; German birthday parties bored me to death. I called them Geburtstag Sitzparty, or birthday seat-party.
For more details, you can also check out my post “Small talk with Germans, a pain in the …?”
Why is there no dancing at German parties?
Something I heard a lot from Christian at the beginning of our relationship was, “Ich möchte mich nicht blamieren” (I don’t want to embarrass myself!). It took time before he loosened up a bit and started dancing at parties I would schlep him to.
To be taken seriously is paramount for many Germans, thus getting a German to dance in front of strangers, defined as persons outside of family and friends, can be quite a challenge. Combined with the importance they place on avoiding mistakes, they won’t dance if they feel they are not good enough at it.
I remember a French-German couple from my wild salsa dancing nights. She was a gifted dancer with smooth and gracious moves, while his dancing skills were focused on perfecting a variety of techniques. You guessed it — she was French, he was German.
In this article in Bento, Professor Jarzebowski explains that Germans make a strict separation between their family life and their life outside of their comfort zone. Someone may be comfortable dancing at home but not at all in front of strangers at a birthday party.
Germans need an excuse to loosen up
In Germany, rules, regulations, and laws are serious business followed by almost everyone. Germans are formal and predictable. In France, I heard several times that “everything which is not forbidden is allowed,” while in Germany, “everything which is not allowed is forbidden.” It certainly holds true in many situations.
In real life, Germans allow themselves to loosen up at certain events throughout the year. New Year’s Eve, Carnival, Oktoberfest, or regional wine festivals make it easier to socialize with Germans. Leaving their comfort zone is a challenge for many, and remember that they don’t have a big small talk culture. But, to sit and drink at the same table is bonding. My husband and I loved the Weinfest (wine festival) in and around our little town on the Rhine River. We always connected to strangers who took great pride in our praise of the Riesling wines we drank.
Christian was kind, polite, and honest. He was also very organized and reliable. Does that sound German? Sure, and he was also very German in his way of getting drunk. He and his friends, Jens and Andreas (crazy, I even remember their names) would meet at a smelly chips shop once a week, usually Wednesday nights, and drink a few beers. In this safe environment, he never got drunk enough to be sick or out of control. He would also safely ride the bus home. I told you so. Predictable.
Some final words
Not all stereotypes are true. Not all Germans are boring or cold, and of course you can enjoy birthday parties in Germany without dancing all night.
A few months ago, which was 25 years after we broke up, Christian wrote me an email. The nostalgia that I could read between the lines flattered my ego, but I didn’t answer him. What should I say? That I’ve lived another life without him? At the very first party I threw, I met a French guy who invited me to dance to Billy Idol‘s “Hot in the City”. Yes, I remember the song. I didn’t go on to date this man until 2006, but since then, my life has never been boring.
Photo credit by Fotolia
So truuuuueee ahah
Love this!
It’s nice to read the experience of someone who actually lived in Germany for so many years.
I don’t think any good arises from discussing stereotypes like these, because by doing so you’re allowing them to perpetuate. If it’s not OK to stereotype black people, or women, or gays, then it shouldn’t be OK to stereotype someone’s national origins. It causes people to pre-judge others and predict how they’re going to behave, and this can be used in an exclusionary way.
God, you’re boring!
I mean, this “Proud German” person.
Hi Catherine, I happen to come across your story accidentally. I had to laugh while reading it and it brought back my past when I fell in love with a German while I was in my late teens and moved to Germany from India for him. We had a two year distance relationship and wanted him to move to Mumbai which is where I come from. Back then we both were entering university (he wanted to do engineering and I economics) we have great engineering colleges out here but it was not good enough or perfect enough I guess as the German universities. And later in life I realized that he like most Germans are couch potatoes and never willing to take big risk. Being young and in love, I moved to Stuttgart without the consent of my parents. My parents were preparing to send me to the LSE in London and they were not really happy with me moving to a country just for a man. For a young and defiant person, it did not make sense for me and I moved to Stuttgart and entered a masters program in the University in Stuttgart and my boyfriend engineering. It’s in those 5 years with him, that I realized what a terrible mistake I had made: from a big metropolitan city to Stuttgart (what can I say), from an upper middle-class and rather open-minded family to a highly conservative Bavarian family (his parents are from Bavaria) who unlike my parents never visited any other place besides their regular Tuscany holidays. I threw many generous parties back then and i would be surprised how people would just stand around with their bottles of beer and would not dance. I would have to pull them to the dance floors. The only ones dancing were my friends from Italy, Venezuela and Japan. As you mentioned it, my boyfriend too felt embarrassed to dance and if he did he looked more like a robot on the dance floor while trying to perfect his engineering dance steps. That’s just a small example, but you can imagine why it did not last. After our 5 years of relationship and after defying my parents on moving to Germany instead of London( they were never against our relationship but they were concerned about me being in Germany that did not have a very good reputation among foreigners back in the late 90s), I just could not face my parents after the break up (I guess it was my ego even though my parents did not have any problem that we divorced a year after marrying). I felt ashamed and it was my first big failure. Hence, I stayed on, finished studying (and continued partying till I met my husband six years later) and worked later in corporates with a position that required a lot of traveling which was good because it helped to divert from the sadness and a sense of betrayal that I felt. Now 16years later, I’m happily married to a wonderful person with two great children. I live in Munich now and how life turns out my ex lives just down the road but I rarely or hardly see him. The last time we ran into each other was four months ago after a gap of not seeing each other for 13 years. And it made me wonder why didn’t i see it back then. Cheers and merry Christmas Doanna
Your story sounds very familiar! Thank you so much for sharing and frohe Festtage, Doanna.
Wow nice and eye opening