The Germans

This trip to Germany has changed my opinion about Germans totally. I used to think of them as cold, strict, and very serious people but I found that they’re really very nice and friendly. The owner of the hotel at which we were staying once gave us a ride to a nearby store to get something (of course this wasn’t a part of her daily tasks, she just volunteered). She was really nice and talked with us about her husband and kids. It was really a warm chat. You know we’re used to say “السلام عليكم” whenever we enter a place or pass by a group of people even if we don’t know them. I’ve always found this as a sign of warm feelings and tight bounds among us, Egyptians & Arabs in general. Here they just do the same but of course in German. Actually I found this a little bit strange because you know the idea about foreigners is that they don’t care about each other and each one is just concerned with himself/ herself only. Anyway, I think that this idea applies more to USA citizens than European ones (I shall make sure of this when I visit USAJ). Some of the few German words I managed to catch, only because I hear them more than once everyday, are: "Guten Morgen-Good Morning” and “tschuss-Goodbye”. You might not find the Germans friendly to you as they’re among themselves but I believe that this is only because of the language barrier. A very few people can speak English; mainly those who need it in their daily activities like the hotel owners and the managers at the factory we were visiting. The funny thing is that, whenever you ask someone if he/she can speak English, the usual answer is “a little bit”, the expression actually gives you the feeling that the speaker’s English must be really good then you find yourself communicating with signs!. I’ve been running into Germans a lot lately (of course I mean here in Egypt not in Germany) and I like them more and more. I hope that before my next trip to Germany (I’m talking as if I’ve a diplomatic passport and am going to travel around the world; at least I hope so but I don’t care that much about the diplomatic passport my ordinary one would be just fineJ) I would have learnt a good deal of the German language so that I can communicate better and get to know these nice people better.

13/10/2008