Expatsplaining the German Capital
E-Book, Englisch, 216 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-947106-83-7
Verlag: SATYR Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Jacinta Nandi was born 1980 in east London and moved to Berlin aged 20. She writes in German and English and has published four books in German, most recently »Die schlechteste Hausfrau der Welt«. She writes and blogs for »Exberliner«, Berlin's English-language magazine. She is the mother of two boys and lives with them in sleepy Lichtenrade. German Version: Jacinta Nandi wurde 1980 in Ost-London geboren. Sie lebt seit 2000 in Berlin, schreibt auf Deutsch und auf Englisch. Auf Deutsch hat sie für die »taz« von 2013 bis 2014 als »Die gute Ausländerin« geschrieben, 2013 das Buch »Fish & Chips und Spreewaldgurken« mit Jakob Hein veröffentlicht und 2015 ihren autobiografischen Roman »Nichts gegen blasen« (Ullstein). Im Herbst 2020 erschien ihr Buch »Die schlechteste Hausfrau der Welt« in der Edition Nautilus. Auf Englisch schreibt sie den »WTF Berlin«-Blog für das Magazin »Exberliner«. Jacinta Nandi hat zwei Kinder, und ihr Lieblingsessen ist immer noch pie and chips.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
Chapter One:
A is for …
Abendbrot: Abend means evening and Brot means bread, but if you put them together and look up the word Abendbrot in the dictionary, you might get a bit confused. They’ll try to tell you it’s dinner – or supper. But in British English, at least, it’s more like tea – AbendESSEN is dinner whereas AbendBROT is a light evening meal, normally cold, made up of bread and cheese and salami. And when I say light, I really mean LIGHT. There are anorexic fruit flies heavier than German Abendbrot. It is, quite literally, the Perfect German Housewife’s best kept secret. Abendbrot: The German Housewife’s Best-Kept Secret
I am a bad housewife in more ways than I can count: I hate hoovering, I can’t mop, I don’t even know how to iron. When I iron something it looks more creased afterwards and has these funny black marks which I don’t think are supposed to be there. I once stacked the dishwasher so badly that my ex-boyfriend cried actual tears of actual frustration and true grief. And I think if Marie Kondo watched me folding laundry it would possibly break her. But when it comes to German Abendbrot, I am the Perfect German Housewife. I have that shit down. So, I’m babysitting my lovely friend Florence’s kid when my equally lovely little friend Lola comes over. Lockdown has been lifted, but I still want her to sit on the balcony. I know she’s been partying loads. Lola is so tiny and perfect – I swear, she is the only person on the planet who actually lost weight over lockdown – and now she looks so perfect and petite and tiny, like a tiny miniature porcelain chimney sweep. “They change the rules every day,” she says mournfully, placing two bottles of Sekt on the table. “It’s cold on your balcony, let’s just open the balcony doors, then your kitchen is kind of part of the balcony. Oh, I am so confused about the Corona stuff. Are you confused? It’s so confusing!” “It is confusing, isn’t it,” I say. “It’s exhausting and confusing!” she says. “I don’t even know what is allowed or not anymore! Are we allowed to shake strangers’ hands? Have sex with our old pre-Corona fuck buddies? Smoke crack together if we disinfect the pipe first? What about ketamine? Is ketamine illegal now?” “I think, even in non-Corona times, ketamine is not strictly speaking legal. But yeah, it’s all so confusing! I think they need to make up some simple rules and let us know what they are and then we can stick to them. I’m not even sure if I should have let you come over when I’m babysitting. Listen, I’m gonna make the kids some Abendbrot, you open the Sekt, okay?” Abendbrot is probably the greatest trick the Perfect German Housewife ever played on German men/ausländische women, I think, as I get the kids’ tea ready. That is, I place two slices of grey bread, one slice of cheese and one slice of salami on the plate. Lola looks over my shoulder. “Has that kid you’re babysitting’s mum fucked your ex-boyfriend or something?” she asks, looking at the plate of food I have prepared. “What?” I say. “You obviously really hate this woman? You’re giving her kid the cheapest, stingiest, most miserable excuse for dinner known to man.” I look at Lola in surprise. “Lola!” I say. “This is Abendbrot! This is German Abendbrot! This is good, normal, German Abendbrot. This is how you German.” “Oh for fuck’s sake, you are so mean about the Germans sometimes.” “No, honestly, this is what German kids get for dinner.” “This is what people in the Bastille got for dinner, more like! At the very fucking least put the two slices of bread on top of each other and call it a fucking sandwich.” “Lola, I am a perfect German housewife, and I would never do anything as outrageously and horrifically un-German as give my kids a sandwich for dinner. Well … not when we have guests over.” Yep, Abendbrot is probably the greatest trick the Perfect German Housewife ever played on German men/ausländische women. If you grab a slice of bread, but actually go to the trouble of chopping up an onion, frying some bacon, getting some turkey ham involved. Or even smearing said bread with something vaguely healthy and interesting like hummus or peanut butter. YOU SLUT YOU LAZY SLUT YOU DISGUSTING WHORE YOU FUCKING … AUSLÄNDERIN. The brilliance of Abendbrot is, the less effort you put in, the more German and perfect it becomes. Now, for example, in my home country, England, a country famously famous for being bad at cooking, we think the mums who make easy dinners – bangers and mash, say, or beans on toast – we think THEY are the lazy housewives! Whereas the women who actually make complicated, tasty, delicious meals like lasagne or quiche are the good mothers – and proper housewives. But Germany is like opposite world and everyone (except Lola) knows that the Perfect German Housewife makes a perfect Abendbrot: two slices of bread, two slices of tired, slightly wilted cucumber (you should try to buy your cucumbers at the supermarket already on the verge of exhaustion to get the real Abendbrot feeling), one slice of cheese, one slice of salami. One thing I’d like to see: a Nigella Lawson German Abendbrot reaction video. Or how about if we forced Nigella Lawson to make a German Abendbrot herself? I think this would be literally torture for her. I reckon at the last moment she’d go crazy and start smearing the bread with organic goose fat, smashing up avocados and throwing smarties at all the kids. Abtreibung: So, Treiben is a super weird German word. It means something like drive, but not in a car, right. The drive in what’s driving you. But sometimes it just means do. The complicated thing is when you übertreiben, you’re overdoing things, but you might be exaggerating – when you untertreiben, you’re kind of playing things down – and when you abtreiben, you’re having an abortion. It sounds really dark and cruel, like you can imagine DDR doctors using old-fashioned knives and stuff. A kind of euphemism for abortion is Abbruch. The way I always think of it is: abortion is Abtreibung and Abbruch is termination. Abortions are hugely taboo in Germany, even in Berlin – slightly less taboo in East Germany and East Berlin than in the West, but still super taboo. The thing is, Germans, like the perverted weirdo weird perverts that they are, don’t actually look down on women who have abortions because they think they are sluts or that sex is dirty and disgusting and shameful and stuff. Germans actually just seem to think sex is this thing you do sometimes, kind of by accident. But the thought of a woman being enough of a disorganised hot mess to forget to take a pill at the exact same time each day horrifies them. Don’t forget that abortions are actually officially illegal in Germany, and it’s only just been made legal to “advertise” – i.e. inform people – of the fact that you carry out abortions if you are a gynaecologist. Now, while it’s true that they don’t actually prosecute women who have an abortion before the twelfth week (which I find a super early date to decide by, by the way) it being officially a crime means that it is really hard to get one, or talk about it openly. We spend a lot of time in Germany worrying about how fucked-up other countries are, and sometimes it means we don’t notice the ways in which Germany is a fucked-up place to live. The abortion stuff is super fucked-up over here. White German men assume it’s easy to get one, but they don’t want to hear any details. Abortion, Abortion!
I’m super pregnant and at a new gynaecologist on the Schönhauser Allee. People make jokes about how you can’t be a “little bit” pregnant, but it’s not true, huh? Loads of people who get a faint line on their pregnancy test end up miscarrying. And I, right now, here, right now, I AM A LOT PREGNANT. I look like a whale. I feel like a hippo. People treat me like a walrus. I waddle around like a penguin. My ankles are swollen up like soft, fleshy balloons. I feel like my bones have melted inside me. In the form the lady has given me I have to tick which pregnancy this is. This is my third pregnancy. I had two abortions before I came to Germany. I feel like lying on the form, but I worry the doctor will be able to somehow...
