The Honesty Policy

Germany, as you might imagine, is a very organized and efficient place. This is apparent from several angles. It’s a rich, industrialized, prosperous Western democracy. It’s the largest economy in Europe. The world’s top exporter. Founding member of the European Community and present-day backbone of the European Union. If we do word associations and I say “German engineering,” the following probably come to mind: Precision. Quality. Audi. Mercedes. BMW. Reliability. High performance. Luxury. For a western European country, Germany definitely stands apart from its peers. Playing on common stereotypes when it comes to business – but remembering that some truth exists in every joke – the Spanish are notorious for their “siesta” culture of two hour lunches and lazy afternoons; the French are affixed with a socialist reputation that leads to a labor strike on every other day that ends in a “y”; and the Italians certainly carry a dodgy aura of corrupt business stemming from the Sicilian Cosa Nostra to just two weeks ago when the Prime Minister, again on trial for bribery, told reporters that he had spent millions of euros in his life on “judges” before correcting himself to say “lawyers.” But when you think German business you probably think of a very polished blond-haired, blue-eyed guy in a three piece suite and thick rimmed glasses named “Helmut” or “Dieter.” Even the German language is very direct. It doesn’t charm or lull you like Spanish, Italian, or French. Rather, it is sharp, choppy, unromantic, straight to the point and has an “all business” tone of efficiency and organization.

I often observe the little things about German culture that put this organized structure in place and make the system go round. In noticeable ways, there is a huge sense of trust, honesty, and courtesy that permeates everyday life. The metro as a basic example of honesty. In every German city with a subway, metro, or lightrail (which is most of them) not a one “requires” you to buy a ticket before getting on board. Of course, the rule is you have to buy a ticket. But there is no turnstile to swipe a card and pass through in order to board a train. New York, DC, Spain and France, yes. In Germany anyone can take the escalator down and board the train without paying. If a conductor passes thru the metro asking for tickets and you don’t have one, well, you’re out of luck. Rarely do conductors pass thru looking for tickets, however, based on what I observe and gather from my conversations with Germans, even rarer are the instances when people board without buying a ticket. It’s an honesty policy to abide by the system. And one that works.

The German autobahn is a great example of social trust and courtesy, in several ways. (I have pleeeeeenty of time to think this through given all the road travel involved with work.) The first example is an obedience to speed limits. As mentioned in my last post, there are many many posted speed limits on the autobahn because of highway construction, tunnels, sinuous bridges, etc. On all the other stretches you go as fast as your heart and motor desire. Everyone…and I mean everyone….strictly abides by the speed limit when it is posted. Drivers here don’t just take a posted speed limit to mean a general warning to slow down. When the speed limit drops from unlimited to 80 km/hr , everyone’s speedometers will drop to exactly 80 and you’ll notice the same distance in your mirror between you and the car behind you when you first entered the 80 km/hr zone. In the US there’s always that 10-15 mph leeway (depending on your driving philosophy) of how much over the speed limit you can go and still not worry about getting ticketed. Plus with radars and a sharp eye for cop cars, speed limits these days in the US are really just a recommendation for most people as long as you’re not going forty over. In Germany there are no highway patrol cars monitoring speed. They don’t exist. Speed is enforced by cameras and there are even signs on the road telling WHERE cameras are. So you figure that when there is a speed limit, most people would only slow down where there is a camera present. Definitely not the case. The sign says 80, everyone goes 80 regardless of whether or not there is a speed camera. I see it as a reciprocity and trust between the authorities and the drivers. The roads are set so that drivers can go as fast as they want. Drivers appreciate that freedom and in turn, pay it back by strictly abiding to speed limits when they appear.

The second example is a collective warning system for speed safety. Construction can obviously cause bottlnecks and long stretches of traffic which abruptly jump out at you when you’re racing at 120 miles per hour. Whenever there is a line of traffic immediately following a long, unposted speed limit stretch, it’s autobahn courtesy to put your hazard lights on to warn drivers behind you of the abrupt speed change. Simple, courteous, and completely sensible. But when does that gesture happen in the US where most people have in their mind “go ahead, hit me from behind and I’ll sue you” mentality?

Third is an organized etiquette for highway driving. The autobahn is like one big orchestra of cars. Every car/instrument does its own thing, but everyone harmoniously blends together to establish a common rhythm. You will never see anyone not just overtaking on the right side, but passing and driving faster on the right side than someone on the left. If you are driving on a 3 lane autobahn in the right lane and see in the faint distance a car up ahead in the middle lane that you eventually catch up to, you will never pass the middle lane car even if you have both been in different lanes for long stretches. Instead, you will go all the way to the left lane to pass the car in the middle lane. Forget about overtaking on the right side. That would never occur. There is probably a lot gets lost in the description of this. It’s much better to see it in action. But if you aren’t coming to Germany anytime soon then the next tine you are on a highway in the US, keep a look out for how many times you see a car passing (not overtaking) another car from the right side. It’s a steadfast and organized obedience to the system here, again, which I see as a respect for the freedom that drivers have to go as fast as they want.

Finally, deviating from the autobahn, I went to a really really cool bar in Berlin last weekend. It is a wine bar in a yuppie neighborhood with a cozy and inviting lounge atmosphere that reminded me of Tryst in Adams Morgan for the DC people. Sounds normal right? But the twist of the bar is that, other than the 2 euros you pay for a glass, it is an open bar (quality wines too I might add) and when you leave you put the money that you think you owe into a big pot. There is even a food buffet! This goes on every night of the week, every week of the month. Game over. Done. Have a good night. The place is gonna go out of business because it’s gonna attract so many freeloaders looking for a free place to drink, right? Not quite. I don’t know how long the bar has been around but they’re in business (and doing well) because that pot looked quite happy throughout the night. That stems from a character of honesty and trust that it is typical in Germany. The bar trusts its customers to pay a respectable price, the customers respect that trust, and it gets channeled into a sense of duty to uphold it. Of course, it also helps that real estate is very cheap in Berlin so bars aren’t forced to mark up prices super high. So they can settle for a lower gross margin per customer because the place has less bills to pay. I wonder such a place would work in New York, DC, LA, or Chicago – places where happy hour goers scour the internet for the cheapest drinks and if lucky, stumble upon the one hour on Wednesday evenings from 9-10 when there is an open bar and are sure to be on line by 8:30 since there will be too many people afterwards.

It’s through these stories that I see Germany in a nutshell and the societal characteristics it has in place that drive many of its collective successes as a country. Trust breeds honesty and courtesy. Honesty and courtesy generate organization and efficiency.

And for those who of course know me to be a frequent Embassy Suites Manager’s Happy Hour patron, I ended up paying a very generous bill at the end of the night.

Mental shift

I learned how to drive all over again yesterday. I’ve had my license since September 1, 1999 and have been behind the wheel on numerous joyrides up and down the east coast and different parts of the US….but always with the convenience and luxury of an automatic car. Yesterday I had my first ever experience driving a stick shift. And dam, what a time and place to learn.

My first lesson in driving manual threw me in the deep end of the pool and forced me to swim right away. After cruising around on German countryside back roads learning the gears shifts I found myself on the autobahn of all places twenty minutes later topping out at 170 km/hr and dodging Porsches and BMWs flying by even faster. As I’ve mentioned about work, there’s a lot of travel time on the road and because of my stick shift deficiency my coworker has been doing all the driving up to this point. He’s going to China next week for a conference and I have to do some meetings on my own. So if Naki wants to go to the meetings Naki has to drive to the meetings. We had a 5 ½ hour road trip from Munich to Berlin so figured that there’s no better time to learn.

Learning to drive stick after working only automatics up to now was a mind twisting, muscle memory challenging, paranoiac activity. Driving, as with any action that has had lifelong repetition such as speaking or reading, is automatic and instinctive. I don’t have to think about it. I just drive. But you throw a new step in there that alters the normal motions of driving, and I now have to think through and be mindful of actions that would otherwise come naturally. So not only am I learning a new step and being conscious of all the actions that come with it, but the typically routine aspects of driving normally controlled by instinctive feel such as signaling, checking blindspots, and keeping my speed are coming to mind as well. It was a whirlwind of things that I haven’t consciously thought about since I first learned to drive. So in a way, I was re-learning how to drive.

The autobahn isn’t the free-for-all that it is made out to be in terms of racing speeds that cars top out at. There are tons of posted speed limits ranging from 80km/hr to 130km/hr because of all the construction going on throughout the country. There is roadwork EVERYWHERE in Germany. You wanna jump out of an economic recession like Germany? Easy, just create jobs by doing roadwork construction every 10 miles of every national highway. So because of all the construction, only a small minority of the time are cars able to go above 130km/hr. Go figure, driving to Berlin yesterday we hit an inappropriate amount of traffic. For those that drive stick you might understand that for a new learner a real tough part is driving in first gear thru stop-and-go traffic. High speed driving is fine because you just leave it in 5^th gear the whole time. But it’s a tricky art to gently balance the gas and clutch when taking off from a complete stop. I have no shame in admitting that I stalled the car about 20 times in the crawling traffic. My heart rate raced up each time I did, paranoid of hitting another car and causing an even bigger pile up. Then when we finally did get going my worry switched to making sure I shifted to the right gear and what I needed to do in case I didn’t. The “easy” part, like I said was cruising in fifth gear. But therein also lies a difficulty because when you’re overtaking a car, I’m not used to seeing another car charge up the left lane at the equivalent of 110 miles per hour. The heavy rain didn’t make things and more relaxing either. I drove for a good 3 hours and then handed the wheel over to my co-worker Jeroen who finished the rest of the trip to Berlin.

You can compare the experience to learning a new language and forcing yourself to rethink any word or phrase you want to say. That analogy works. But I compare the learning curve to another example. It’s like someone using Excel for the first time. In both cases you can expect to make mistakes, but are paranoid about avoiding one thing at all costs. For an Excel beginner (and I’m talking pre-pre-pre basic knowledge), their main paranoia is to not screw up the spreadsheet – not hit the wrong button and lose all the information. They could panic if a column width adjusts or a row is accidentally hidden or some text overlaps into another cell. None of make the spreadsheet particularly attractive or professional, but everything is still there. For me driving stick for the first time on the autobahn, my main paranoia that I wanted to avoid at all costs was to not stall the car or have a fast deceleration at the wrong gears that ultimately resulted in the car coming to a complete dead stop. Anything other than that – as long as the car keeps moving and doesn’t hit another car – hey, chalk it up as a learning day at the office.

I have a two and a half hour drive ahead of me on Tuesday. Stay tuned for how that turns out.

Sachsenhausen

As I’ve “tweeted” about before, I am on the road a lot going from city to city. But the schedule has worked out so I have been back in Berlin for most of my weekends. A typical weekend in Berlin usually consists of walking around the city with my camera taking random snapshots of street life, architecture, and any interesting images with my trusty little point and shoot; grabbing drinks with coworkers in a lively part of the city at night; brunch at one of the millions of moderately priced buffets; and then taking in a culture or historically related activity during the other free day. Three weekends ago my cultural activity was one of the more memorable ones. I met up with the same company that organized the free walking tours of Berlin, but this time went on a tour of Sachsenhausen concentration camp in the town of Oranienburg just north or Berlin.

A visit to a concentration camp means something different to every person and each of us go for our own reasons. Many go to commemorate a struggle that forms an integral part of family identity. Many go as fans of history to learn lessons of the past that are as inspiring as they are horrific. Regardless of the reason, there’s no denying the educational value of a visit. I really commend New Europe, the company that organized this tour and the free walking tour of Berlin. If you ever find yourself in a European city where New Europe offers tours, I strongly urge you to go on one. Their standard city walking tours are free and the excursion trips such as this one cost minimal money but you get maximum reward for your euro. The guides are friendly, engaging, articulate, funny (when the venue and moment is appropriate of course) and above all, extremely learned about the subject matter of the tour.

Sachsenhausen was a labor camp. Among concentration camps, there were death camps where prisoners went for the sole purpose of being executed, and labor camps which provided the slave labor for the heavy industry, artillery, and capital goods for the German war machine. Sachsenhausen was actually the “model” camp that was used for the design of most of the labor camps that were subsequently built. It was “active” from 1936-April 21, 1945 and the clock above the main entrance is still frozen on the hour and minute when the Allied troops arrived and liberated it. Sachsenhausen was among the camps evacuated in 1944-45 for the Nazi organized death marches. As it became clearer that the Germany was going to lose WWII, the Nazis evacuated the concentration camps and burnt a lot of infrastructure to destroy any corroborating evidence of the Holocaust. The Allies were approaching from the West, the Soviets from the East, so the Nazis evacuated prisoners and forced them to march north to the Baltic Sea where anyone left alive from the journey were put on boats and sunk.

While the camp was “freed” in 1945 from German control, it was still used by the Soviets until the early 1950s for much of the same purpose – to incarcerate political dissidents, prisoners, and anyone deemed threatening to the ruling party. It was closed down in 1951 but most of the infrastructure and monuments that are left in place are deliberate signs of Soviet propaganda.

Depending on your take, ironically or appropriately, the same buildings at Sachsenhausen that were the barracks and dorms for the camp officers during the war today serve as the national headquarters for the German police force. Ironic for many because why the hell would you perpetuate the same function for a building from such a dark chapter in a country’s history? Appropriate for others (including Germany’s government) because it is precisely the identical location effect that serves as a reminder for German police every day on the limits of their power and the correct way to enforce the law.

The chills didn’t really hit me until I got to the entrance of the main gate. The gate at Sachsenhausen, as at most if not all other camps, had the rusted metallic words etched onto the bars – “Arbeit Macht Frei”/”Work will set you free.” It was an obvious message of deception giving the prisoners an infinitesimal hope that hard work and obedience could possibly liberate them. The last spot that we toured at the camp proved to have an equally deceiving element to it….

The area of camp permissible to visitors, as it exists today, is basically a huge open space about two football fields long and three fields wide fenced in by a semicircular shaped perimeter of walls. There are only two remaining bunkers which used to be sleeping quarters. One is entirely preserved in its original form while the other has been transformed into a museum which houses photos, artifacts, and relevant relics. But during its peak years of operation, the camp had – I would estimate since I forget the exact number – about 200 bunkers. Concrete blocks now mark the places where bunkers used to be, which you can see in some of the pictures.

Directly across the main entrance watch tower which served as the camp’s central command and the observatory point for the camp generals stands a huge memorial dedicated to the Soviet Union’s role in the liberation of Sachsenhausen. As mentioned, the camp was used by the Soviets for about five years after the war so most of the memorials are propagandistic tools built to promote Soviet power and ideology. Being directly across from the Nazi watchtower and standing at least twice as large, the memorial was constructed to celebrate the triumph of communism over fascism.

The last spot we visited was a section of the camp called Station Z. It was the execution site. Sachsenhausen was predominantly a labor camp, but after the German invasion of Russia in 1941, Russian POWs were brought to Sachsenhausen and ordered to be executed. However, I’m sure that Station Z served as execution grounds for more than just Russian POWs. Basically Station Z was advertised as a clinic and prisoners were brought there under the lie that they would be given checkups and medical treatments. Prisoners sat in a waiting room a dozen or so at a time and were then brought into an adjacent room where they lined up against a wall. They thought that they were going thru the preliminary steps of a physical with height and weight measurements. But as they were lined up, someone from behind the wall opened up a small slotted window and shot the prisoner in the back of the head. The room was then immediately hosed down and bodies dragged out by other prisoners working at the station and then disposed of in ovens pictured below.

It was a bone chilling way to end the tour before walking back to the metro station along the identical 15 minute route thru town that prisoners made when they first arrived in Oranienburg.

Top left: ovens for disposing executed bodies; Top right: Station Z rooms; Bottom left:commemorative memoral at Station Z; Bottom right: execution site

It’s a hard to sum up such a visit so I’ll echo some thoughts similar to what my tour guide articulated very eloquently. There was a disturbing dehumanizing effect that went on at the camp. Of course it applied to the prisoners whose heads were shaven, names stripped, and any remains of dignity and individualism completely lost when they stepped foot in that camp. But it also applied to the soldiers and camp guards. They were products of an oppressive system and dehumanized thru a brainwashing effect of what the world is and how authority should be enforced. That wasn’t unique to Germany or WWII. It’s an effect and occurrence that has repeated itself for centuries, and sadly still exists in the world today. A visit to a place like Sachsenhausen shouldn’t be just a tick in a box on the list of things to do. It’s a riveting educational experience that digs deep into the values that we hold, freedoms that we have, the goodness that we strive for in our lives, and the essential lessons to be learned from dark chapters of history.

Just enough to say hey

Geez, been such a long time since I threw up an update that I almost forgot what this website looked like. I’m alive and I’m doing well but have just been on the road for the past nine or ten days gallivanting throughout all of Germany that I haven’t had time or energy to post a decent update. So I have my work cut out for me now.

Basically almost two weeks ago I went from Berlin in the very northeast diagonally across the country to the very southwest to small town called Freudenstadt which is deep in Germany’s famous Black Forest. Then from there over to Munich and stayed there for the weekend and took in some fun Oktoberfest action. From Munich I shot up to Nuremberg for a day and then over to Stuttgart that same night. After Stuttgart we rolled over to Dusseldorf then up to a cute, charming, and relatively small town called Einbeck for two days. After Einbeck it was on to Hamburg and then finally back to Berlin on Friday. You get all that? It’s a whirlwind and yes, it is as tiring as it sounds. The report that we’re doing is featuring companies across a range of industries so unfortunately our meetings aren’t centralized in any one city. But life on the road has its perks – great hotel breakfasts; exquisite samplings of regional beers; daily German lessons taught by our GPS; and pretty views of Germany’s fall colored landscapes.

More updates to come over the next few days as I post updates in bits and pieces rather than one painfully long entry. Just wanted to put up a little something for now that’s just enough to say hey.

I leave you with a mini German lesson of two very useful things to know which will avoid a lot of confusion when coming to Germany. There are plenty of signs for each one on the road and in many cities:

Gute fahrt = have a nice ride!

Schmuck = jewelry