It seems the sole reason for the city of Munich to exist is to make Berlin people feel better about themselves. Whenever a conversation changes topic to the city of Munich, elite German people, without fail, will suddenly become very agitated, especially if they are die-hard Berlin-Mitte fans. At this point, prepare yourself for a thirty-minute lecture on how conservative, clueless, and backwards Munich is, compared to the cradle of creativity, individuality, and edginess, that is Berlin.

As it lies in the nature of rants, they reveal more about the sketchy self-esteem and fragile psyche of the ranter than about the subject matter at hand. To a neutral observer, it can be quite a revelation to learn that Berlin, the self-proclaimed capital of art, counter-culture, and affordable wooden-floored Altbau apartments, constantly feels challenged to validate its assumed superiority against a hinterland town that’s just a quarter the size, and advertises itself as being the stomping grounds for a pack of never-heard-of German D-List celebrities. It probably is clever to never ask your Berlin friends for an explanation why the self-proclaimed cultural center of the world obsesses about being cooler than Munich instead of working on catching up with proper metropolises - you would force your German acquaintances to speak very defensively and chances are you won’t be on the guest list for Ricardo Villalobos’ next gig. Rather, use your insight about this weakness wisely to reaffirm their image of you being an individual who’s not afraid to “think different”: Whenever possible, drop a snarky remark about “that aweful, backwards town in Bavaria that’s full of capitalists.” Generously ignore the fact that Munich is loved all over the world for being exactly that — a mid-size town with money and a charming lack of misguided ambition to compete with larger cities, like Berlin.

Because it is next to impossible to hear an unbiased opinion about Munich, you could be tempted to go there to do some researching by yourself. Shhh, not so loud! They can hear us you know. You must not tell anyone about your plan. If you do accidentally let your tongue slip, not all may be lost. But always be prepared to come up with an acceptable explanation for your trip. One excuse could be: “I have been asked to go to Munich to spin some indie electronica at a vernissage. God, what did I do to deserve this ordeal?”, which will earn you a lot of pity points and your German acquaintances might pay for your drinks that night. Second, and recommended, option: Say you were asked to visit Munich as part of a performance art project, which involves you ironically embracing the trademark Munich lifestyle, complete with spikey, geled up hair, popped collar polo shirt, a white VW Golf Convertible, and visit to a Bayern Munich match, all while filming it with a half-broken Super-8 camera you bought at a Berlin flea market, to later show it at a spontaneous guerilla exhibition in a pop-up gallery in the trendy part of Neukölln.

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The German people’s relationship with the internet has always been a conflicted one. Even though no German person of the right type would ever describe themselves as conservative, once there’s too much change in too little time, like the paradigm shift the internet has brought to media consumption, then that kind of change will freak German people out.

That’s why, up to until recently, the Germans preferred to use the internet more like a new channel on their television sets, and accordingly, most German websites consisted of gratuitous “Flash” animations of flying type and logos to a backdrop of futuristic, bleepy electronica. The major goal of creating a website for German people was to get the “design” right down to the single pixel, until it was a match for the static dullness of a lifestyle mag.

With the advent of the “Web 2.0,” Germans eventually got bored with watching animated type flying towards them, and their internet use finally picked up steam. Soon, they were using Google, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter like everyone else. If one can trust the ads, German people are nowadays able to relax and use the internet the way it was meant to: Lying on an IKEA rug in their sanierte Altbau apartment, on their stomachs, with a Laptop in front of them, having a Latte Macchiato that has a cute cocoa heart on top of the milk froth, with a dementedly smug smile on their faces caused by all that sweet convenience the internet brings to their lives. 

As it was established before, German people quickly feel uncomfortable when there is nothing to be offended or worried about. If they currently have no personal reason to be offended or worried about anything, they will go to a bookstore to buy a book written by what they consider to be a much more intelligent person, who happens to be altruistic and kind enough to lecture them about recent developments that they should better be offended or worried about, and that person, more often than not, is Frank Schirrmacher.

Frank Schirrmacher is a weathered journalist, essayist, and co-publisher of Germany’s well read “Frankfurter Allgemeine” newspaper, who recently has made himself a name to be the go-to guy if you’re in need for a bestselling book in the ubersuccessful German literary genre named “Betroffenheitsliteratur”. Because of his impeccable approach to journalism, Frank Schirrmacher won’t simply publish whatever confused, based-on-false-premises theory comes to his mind, but also go to great lengths to support that confused, based-on-false-premises theory by quoting from an endless stream of stark statistics and studies he researched.

His latest book, which is likely to become another bestseller, deals with the “dangers of the internet.” To Frank, the internet is at least 99% bad and a health risk for those little neurons who live inside that spongey stuff inside your skull called “brain,” so he highly recommends to go buy his book and read that until your brain turns numb from all the dull statistics and references to obscure studies. Admittedly, that will save you from having your brain turned into elephant poo by the internet because you can have a really, really intellectual German person do it for you instead. It’s the same tactical approach to health as cutting off your hand to keep your fingernails from growing.

Granted, asking a middle-aged newspaper publisher to teach you about the dangers of the internet is a bit like hiring Silvio Berlusconi as an Au Pair to watch over your teenage daughter when you’re absent. But let’s give him the benefit of doubt and look at some of Frank Schirrmacher’s key theses:

1. The internet will turn a person’s brain into a messy puddle of grey goo.

   It could be argued that the human brain, in terms of texture, isn’t too far away from being a ball of grey, gooey mud anyway, but while definitely not the first person to warn humankind of the grey goo problem, Frank Schirrmacher is the first person to cleverly “mash it up” with another beloved theory of German people: Health-related esotericism. But fear not, just wear the free, foldable tin foil hat you can find in tomorrow’s issue of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 

2. Google’s "robots" will soon know everything you think, say, and do, and will someday use this knowledge to your disadvantage.

   He might be on to something here. How so? Well, haven’t you seen Forbidden Planet? Man, that Robby The Robot dude sure f***d things up in the end, right? You know, that part when he didn’t shoot the monster because he was all like, “beep beep, error error, I was programmed not to shoot humans”, because, somehow, he didn’t have his Google sorted out, and therefore, with his big, stupid lightbulb-for-a-brain brain, figured that the monster was part human, so he wasn’t allowed to shoot it, which caused, like, real harm to his human space friends? See, that’s what happens once you trust those damn robots.

3. Some evil, all-encompassing internet entity, probably Google, is hard at work collecting all information about you (yes, especially you), which, any given day now, will enable a big German news website to have ads that are, by the wonders of cutting edge computer technology, targeted to specific demographics, like 25 year olds. Isn’t that shocking?

   The 90s called, they want their technology-related Big Brother doomsday scenarios back. Fortunately, due to the alertness of its co-publisher Frank Schirrmacher, there still is a news website that is definitely free of such tricky, targeted advertising, or, for that matter, any competitive or up-to-date content at all: His newspaper’s online version, found at www.faz.net.

4. The ubiquity of Email, SMSs (sic), Facebook and “Tweeds” will inevitability lead to the complete loss of your attention span, and skill to concentrate.

   Yep. He literally used the word “Tweeds”. Repeatedly. You’ll have to decide for yourself if you can get over that show stopper, or rather wrap the book up at the first occurrence of “Tweeds” and send it back to Amazon. You know, they have that no-questions-asked money-back guarantee.

Apparently, looking to middle aged men working in the old school media who’re afraid of losing their status won’t be of much help to a person who is desperate to get a grasp on this mysterious network of computers called the “internet” people have lately started talking about so much. If only there was a person in Germany who Germans could accept as the real internet pundit. You know, someone who is exactly as freaky, ke-razy and edgy as this new internet thing itself, and not afraid to show that edginess, craziness, and aversion to anything mainstream by sporting a pretentious hairstyle. You know, like, like…yeah, that’s it: A mohawk. If you see such a person, make him the figurehead of the “German internet user club” and follow him blindly, never questioning his expertise. Your concept of the internet will then, and only then, be in sync with that of a German person.

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Who roots for the underdog? Well, German people definitely do — and they won’t be satisfied until the whole world joins them. What’s not to like? Supporting the underdog against an overpowering opponent is a nice gesture and nobody in their right mind would opt to live in a cold-hearted society solely ruled by survival-of-the-fittest. Predictably, elite German people are especially partial to underdogs. In fact, they are so proficient in determining what side to stand on and then passive-aggressively forcing this view on you, they will be completely disappointed should you be so rude and ignore their brazenly worded offer to do your thinking for you. It goes without saying that any sign of being impartial to the underdog, or even rooting for the overdog, will destroy your progress with the Germans for good, and no amount of showing up as the “exotic overseas friend” at a trendy bar will make up for it.

In order to be accepted by elite German people, you will be expected to join them on whatever side they, or more likely, someone they admire have determined to be the underdog. It cannot be stressed enough how important it is to not take any chances in this serious matter. Do not, at any rate, apply what you learned about irony and join the other side of the argument in jest — German people won’t consider this to be at all funny or quirky, because to them, the determination to always root for the underdog maybe be the most important, non-debatable character traits of all. Once they have drawn the line, it is understood that the underdog is exempt from criticism or relativization, and a very convenient way to show others your political correctness.

Furthermore, German people take some pride in being a very committed people; and indeed, this character trait also applies to their stance on underdogs. Once they acknowledge someone or something to be the underdog, German people will stick to their view until the end of days, broad-mindedly ignoring any new facts to the contrary that might turn up. Even when it is apparent that the table has completely turned and their beloved underdog has long become the overdog, German people are usually too entangled in their dogma to notice it. This sometimes makes it hard for a newbie Auslander, applying  common sense, to correctly determine who the underdog is.

In order to blend in with the Germans, and more importantly, to dodge embarrassing small talk moments, it is important to at the least know the three most beloved underdogs of German people: Cyclists, Palestinians, and the football club FC St. Pauli.

With cyclists being dealt with in another article and the Israel-Palestine conflict being a topic this blog wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole, let’s take a look at the football club FC St. Pauli.

FC St.Pauli is an out-and-out mediocre football club based in the “cult” red light district of Hamburg. The club’s main claim to fame is its “pirate” image. The reasoning runs like this: Hamburg is located 100 kilometers from the north sea, plus the club has a quirky logo featuring a white-on-black skull and bones. There you go — they’re just like pirates, yeah? What’s that? You aren’t quite convinced of their underdog status yet? What are you, a moron? Eh? EH? All right, let’s not get into a fight just yet and lay it out for you:

FC St.Pauli has a very large base of supporters all around the world, despite playing mostly in the 2nd or 3rd league. Elite German people are required to have a critical stance towards the commercialization of football. That’s why they can relate so well to FC St. Pauli. Like them, FC St. Pauli seems to be eternally broke and constantly has to come up with quirky ways to make money, ie playing ironic exhibition matches against allegedly evil football clubs like FC Bayern Munich. Moreover, elite German people love give off an air of non-commitment, because in terms of coolness, it gives them an edge over anyone who puts a real effort into becoming good at something. To them, FC St. Pauli’s dabbling around in the minor leagues is akin to a political statement to never become like one of those awfully zealous yuppie football clubs.

People who already are a fan of another club, or even don’t care much for football love every little aspect of FC St. Pauli. Ask them why, and they will give you a 20-minute lecture why FC St.Pauli is “ze totaler Kult”, and why you should totally buy one of those cool, ironic St.Pauli “Retter” T-shirts. Both home and away, there will always be plenty of supporters present to cheer their team on. Moreover, judging from the ubiquity of FC St. Pauli merchandise being worn in the elite parts of any German town, the club should do pretty well financially. How popular is FC St.Pauli? It is so popular that, during a match, even players from the opponent teams are suffering from a conflict of loyalties because they’re secretly rooting for FC St. Pauli.

Granted, to the untrained eye, FC St. Pauli may not look like an underdog at all. Nonetheless, when a much weaker and smaller team with less supporters plays St.Pauli, German people will still consider St.Pauli to be the underdog in this pairing. Why, you ask? Because, you know, isn’t St. Pauli just wonderfully edgy with its pirate flag, uberdiverse fan-base, and that small, kitschy Disneyland of counter-culture of an arena with its proximity to that infamous Reeperbahn red-light district, which by the way has some really edgy bars and clubs where everybody goes for beers after the match, and how it every year manages to rise up against those evil, capitalist football clubs with their suspicious ambitiousness? How can you not be rooting for the good guys?

Every time St.Pauli is defeated, which happens a lot, the fans will soon claim there must have been some kind of conspiracy or bribing involved, because “the man” is trying to hold St.Pauli down. That man can be anyone with a suit on, like Hamburg’s mayor, the Bundesliga president, or Rupert Murdoch. On the other hand, once St.Pauli wins, it is always an uberheroic victory against all odds, made possible by the uniquely strong union between the club and its fans. Basically, there’s more pathos at a FC St. Pauli match than at an American veteran’s Pearl Harbour memorial celebration. A situation in which the St.Pauli players aren’t the good guys just isn’t imaginable. If you typed “FC St.Pauli is not an underdog” into Microsoft Word, a red squiggly line would appear underneath.

Use your new knowledge wisely. If you are looking for a convenient way to score some sympathy points with your German acquaintances, just proclaim you are a fan of FC St.Pauli, and that you are determined to support it in its never ending, incredibly courageous struggle against capitalism, fascism, and becoming good at football.

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Saturday’s “Der Tagesspiegel” (Berlin’s biggest newspaper) has a story about Ich werde ein Berliner. Dinge mentioned:

Movie theaters Vacations Bionade Confused dark-haired girls Altbau apartments Christmas

Grab a copy of this fine piece of journalism at your Kiosk of choice or just go to their website to read it online right now. Sad side note: If it wasn’t for Robbie “abducted by aliens” Williams and his uberspontaneous surprise gig in Berlin today, the Ich Werde Ein Berliner piece might have received an even more prominent placement…Damn you, Williams!

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Between Woodstock and the 1980s, the United States had been the favorite ego proxy for elite German people. However, by the time the 1980s came to a close, the association with American pop culture was taken over by “boring” and “mainstream” people like MBAs, lawyers, and bankers, and suddenly elite German people were forced to gather all the creativity they could muster and look for another, more obscure country to have a contrived relation to and again be able to feel superior to those irritating “Normalos.” Elite German people were never able to forgive the professional German people this expulsion from paradise and therefore still have hard feelings towards them.

Except for India’s 15 minutes of fame due to Bollywood movies, the number one country had been Japan - a dependable source of obscure and edgy culture for white people all over the world to misconceive, steal, and exaggerate, and German people were no exception. The unique selling point of Japan had always been its obscurity. Unlike the over-explored USA, elite German people could rest assured that Japan provided them with a multitude of quirky and edgy cultural tidbits to safely impress their peers with. Questioning or challenging the German person’s half-baked expertise wasn’t an easy task as Japan always had been sufficiently arduous and expensive to travel to. More importantly, the self-proclaimed Japan pundit was kept safe by the social conventions of the German elite: Publicly doubting iffy trivia such as “Dude, no Japanese person actually eats the ginger served with sushi — that’s soooo not authentic, you know” would paint the naysayer as being “simply jealous” and complicated.

If you are now thinking, “Great, so I’ll be able to impress my German acquaintances by telling them about all those totally C-R-A-Z-Y and unbelievable things that happened during my stay as an English teacher in Tokyo”, the following will surely disappoint you:

You’re way too late, dude. Elite German people have once again been forced to deny any interest in Japan, the former paradise of obscurity. With the internet becoming increasingly ubiquitous thanks to new technology like the iPhone, any member of the plebs can now easily fact-check the expert German person’s every statement in an instant. Because nearly 100% of elite German peoples perceptions of Japan are of course irreversibly distorted by their western upbringing, keeping up an interpretative authority would require a true interest in the culture reaching beyond food, quirky encounters, and artsy underground movies. As elite German people must always exude an aura of non-commitment, they usually shy away of anything that requires an actual effort or might be seen as non-ironic geekery.

The demise of Japan as the number one source of superiority-by-obscurity is actually applauded by the most advanced Germans. Many aspects of Japanese culture were never really compatible with these peoples’ worldview — heck, it even ridiculed some of the most highly regarded concepts of elite German people:

• Giving a frig what Greenpeace thinks about whaling and justifying it by such lame concepts as “cultural differences”. That’s right — in some cases, Germans will make an exception from their usually ubertolerant approach of cultural differences.
• Quickly embracing and adapting new technologies instead of aiming for an ironically retro lifestyle with 70s TV-Sets made of leather and Leica cameras that weigh in at 6kg.
• Putting up vending machines with used schoolgirl’s knickers for dirty old men to buy. Ok, those probably never existed, but don’t bore your German acquaintances with such a pesky obsession with details.
• Being, at best, indifferent to the social security of 30- and 40-somethings who freelance in “design”, and glorifying uncool and probably reactionary ideals such as “hard work” and “making lots of money in the corporate world” instead.
• Reckless and abundant wrapping of items in plastic and putting these in another plastic bag, only to put them, you guessed it, in another plastic bag. All that evil plastic! The thought alone will make elite German people shiver with disgust
• Sweeping ignorance of Takeshi Miike, who is the most important Japanese movie director ever, at least according to elite German people.
• Having no qualms with downright evil concepts such as capitalism, conservatism, or shark-fin soup.

It is easy to see why the elite German peoples’ relationship to Japan has always been a troubled one. Luck has it German people just recently discovered a new, emerging player in the global marketplace to pretentiously associate themselves with: China.

The transition to China as the new superpower of obscure subculture to pamper the western ego with is a really exciting time for elite German people. Most importantly, China can still be considered a communist country. Since the assimilation of east Germany and the sellout of Cuba, elite German people have never given up hope for communism to return and provide them with more products that have an amateurish yet irresistible “planned-economy” charm, and therefore are a powerful symbol against capitalism and can charmingly stress one’s personal individuality.

“Wait a minute,” you might say, “German people hate China for its politics toward Tibet”. Well, not necessarily. Elite German people love to take sides in foreign country’s political issues. Talking about these at parties, rallying against them on a sunny Saturday afternoon, and then soon forgetting about the whole mess is an important aspect of the political life of every elite German person. Hence a completely faultless political track record would actually be detrimental to China’s rise to the top. There would be no reason to be offended. German people hate it when they have no reason to be offended.

But the most attractive feat of China is its censorship of the internet. Elite German people can rest assured that their bold exaggerations about their experiences in China cannot easily be falsified by, well, basically anyone who knows how to use Google.

It is highly recommended for you, dear Auslander, to not waste any more time and make good use of the mystery still surrounding China. It is a surefire way to impress German people. Now is the time to lay some foundation to your claim to expertise on all things Chinese. If you are one of those poor losers who work in a proper company or don’t have the funds to spend three weeks in Shanghai, here are some talking points to add to your daily routine. Just ask your German acquaintances to join you for dinner at that interesting new Chinese restaurant you recently discovered, and try a few of the following proclamations while keeping a stern and straight face:

“This Sichuan restaurant is okay, I guess, but back in China, we were real fiends of the Cantonese cuisine. I guess you guys will get it here in a few years time.”

“The lack of a proper Yumcha place in Kreuzberg is a real shame. Oops, I guess around you guys I should use the more layman term ‘Dim-Sum’…isn’t that what you still call it over here?”

“Back in Shanghai, I was invited to DJ some electronic music at this totally intense night-club full of Russian oil barons and their model girlfriends. A strange scene, yeah, but also a total surreal experience. You should have been there.”

“I brought back a huge stack of DVDs of never-heard-of-movies by these really obscure but genius Chinese directors. One part of me wants to tell you about them, but then I kinda also want to protect these great, authentic people from the Western eye and ultimately become spoiled by Hollywood…let me ponder this thought a little longer, just ask me again later and I might let you in on the secret.”

Don’t worry about sounding like a preposterous idiot. Your German acquaintances will be so embarrassed by their lack of experience they will be thankful for any bit of information they can get from you which they will then use to impress their even less cosmopolitan peers with as soon as you are not around.

A word of warning: You might have noticed that the attention of elite German person works like that of multinational corporations. Once they have seen enough of a certain country’s underground movies, they start to get bored by the whole culture and will soon abandon that country. Anything that would require a bigger effort than watching some DVDs and now and then visiting an ethnic restaurant isn’t necessary and deemed non-spontaneous.

Don’t ever speak out this inconvenient truth, as it would make you look nerdy in a non-ironic way, and you would lose all the respect gained through your cursory expertise on a foreign country’s subcultural banalities.

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From Monday to Wednesday, your German acquaintances will actively seek out an opportunity to get you in a setting which is 1) so boring they can casually start a conversation and 2) where you are forced to listen because there is nothing else to do. A good example for such a setting would be a train ride, lunch, or waiting in line at the “Genius Bar.”

The ritual always starts the same way: Out of the blue, one of your German acquaintances will cleverly construct a segue from some trivial observation, like:

German person: “Oh, I see you are taking medicine, did you catch a cold?”

You: “Yeah, I guess, but nothing too strong though, it’s just Aspirine.”

German person: “Ha! I bet it’s not as STRONG as Jürgen’s WEEKEND medicine…right, Jürgen? He he he…”

Then, the German person will give that Jürgen a slight, tongue-in-cheek bump with his elbow, accompanied by a husky cackle and followed by an exchange of smug, knowing glances between your German acquaintances. Feeling intrigued yet? Good, because that is the whole point of this ritual. It doesn’t stop there, though. The German person acting as the “emcee” will now pose a few vaguely phrased questions to keep the chitchat going as long as possible:

German person: “By the way, Ralf, did you get THAT SMS yet, you know, from your new BEST FRIEND? He he he…”

Ralf: “No, not yet, maybe THAT FRIEND got cold feet?”

German person: “He he, maybe, so should I call THAT OTHER person we were talking about THE OTHER DAY to see if she can help with THAT THING?”

Ralf: “No, thanks, I guess I got too damn drunk on our new favorite cocktail with you-know-who…let us just leave IT at THAT, if you know what I mean? He he he…”

German person: “I don’t think DRUNK is the right word for it, but whatever you say. He he he…”

Jürgen: “Speaking of drunk, did I tell you about this crazy THING that happened to me on the way to the after party at that SECRET LOCATION?”

Emcee: “You mean THAT AFTER PARTY? Because somewhere in between I lost count of how many AFTER PARTIES we went to, especially after we met X at Y and did Z…”

This is the point where, at the very latest, you are expected to be so completely intrigued and impressed by your German acquaintances’ increasingly obscure allusions, that you can’t take anymore and finally burst into their chitchat, anxiously yelling out “Okay already, stop fooling around and just tell me about last weekend!”

Halt, Auslander! Think again. You will have to understand first that this conversation apparently does not serve to actually exchange information about past activities — after all, your German acquaintances have spent the previous weekend together. No, the scene unfolding before your eyes is nothing short of a highly advanced form of conversational combat with the objective to assess whether there is a person in the room who may have had an even wilder weekend. By teasing that person with an endless stream of juicy innuendo, German people try to force their prey to make that crucial error and ask a question about their weekend. Once they get you to admit any amount of interest in their wild weekend story, they have sufficient indication to estimate your weekend must have been less wild than theirs, and you are therefore the less interesting, more mainstream person.

What’s the big deal, you ask? Among other criteria, elite German people like to measure another person’s level of interestingness by the quantity and quality of their wild weekend experiences, and will quickly feel uncomfortable if there is an individual around whose previous weekend’s wildness factor remains undetermined. Through the copious use of allusions, they can keep the potential adversary guessing and give their own weekend a mystical, larger-than-life pretense. German people love these win-win situations.

How can you free yourself from this pinch? The best advice is to not respond to the teasing allusions at all, but keep a poker face until your German acquaintances lose interest and their conversation fizzles out. If you are able to keep it up long enough, one of your German acquaintances will finally turn to you and indignantly ask “So, what did you do on the weekend?” This means you have successfully broken their will to come up with more allusions and now have the upper hand. Play it carefully. From here on, the recommended way to answer depends on location. If you aren’t based in Berlin, an easy victory can be scored by just casually dropping the “Berlin” nuke:

“Oh me? I went to Berlin for the weekend…”

This will render any further explanations unnecessary, as it is understood among elite German people that a weekend in Berlin is a) impossible to trump in terms of wildness and decadence and b) asking about details would make them appear like backwater doucherockets.

If you happen to live in Berlin, things are not so straight-forward. As it is unlikely you will be able to exceed a Berlin person’s machiavellian determination to spend a wild and edgy weekend, the only way out is to say a white lie and tell a story how you went home to see your family in a spurt of spontaneous homesickness.

As basically all elite Berlin people come from rural areas in south-western Germany, and often foster huge self-doubts about leaving their families back in the outskirts of Stuttgart, this is the only way to earn some empathy from your German acquaintances and keep intact your reputation as an edgy Auslander who may be beneficial to hang around with.

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In order to get your news fix like a German person would, a few easy steps are necessary. Start off by deleting all your bookmarks to international news websites. That’s right: No more BBC, no more New York Times, and of course no more CNN for you. Those will not be of much help anyway as German people take some pride in being gratuitously conspicuous about anything coming from mainstream news organizations.

You might be tempted to just go ahead and buy the most popular newspaper in Germany, namely Bild. Weak thinking, Auslander. Elite German people have a very delicate and complicated relationship withBild and the rainbow press as a whole. Contrary to, well, any given country, where one day people understood that the best way to handle the (non-)problem of tabloids and the filthy hacks who make them is simply being ignorant and shrug them off as just another plague of modern life, German people so far can’t seem to take their minds off the evils of tabloid journalism for more than 2 minutes. This quirk can be used to your advantage: Even after 40+ years of persistent pointing out the apparent flaws and evils of Bild and its clones by generation after generation of elite German people, you can still safely take this easy shortcut to instantly become recognized as a non-mainstream intellectual who is thinking outside the box by simply listing some of the evils of tabloid journalism.

Erm, you say, what were those again? Here are some hints: Blatant lying, being excessively conservative, controlling the public opinion, and unashamed use of ugly typefaces. This last point is really gaining momentum as all German people are now dabbling around with illegal copies of Photoshop and therefore are experts all matters “design.”

Don’t worry that you might be called out for restating the obvious. Granted, tabloids are crap and whenever one is published, somewhere in the world a puppy cries. Furthermore, the people who write for them surely must have thrown all ideals of journalism overboard and would happily sell their own children for a good story. Feeling sleepy yet? Better brace yourself, because criticizing tabloids and perpetrating conspiracy theories concerning the rainbow press just doesn’t seem to ever get old for elite German people. Quite the contrary: Frequent public repetition of the evils of tabloid journalism and Bild in particular will reinforce their image of you as being an edgy intellectual who’s not afraid to stand up to “the man”.

A word of warning: Sometimes you will discover an abandoned copy ofBild or a similar tabloid on a German train, bus, or at a non-organic cafe, and might be tempted to pick it up to find out why exactly elite German people make such a big deal of it. Resist that urge by all means. Being caught reading Bild or worse, citing from it in public means irreversible instant social death in Germany. No prisoners will be taken. If you still can’t see the friendship-busting potential a tabloid newspaper possesses, it might be helpful to think of a copy of Bild as a carrier of the Ebola virus. Handle accordingly.

No reason to despair, though. Luck has it that there exists one major source in Germany which all elite German people can agree on and is totally different from a tabloid: Enter Spiegel Online.

“Online what” you ask? In good German tradition, the explanation isn’t very straightforward. Let’s try anyway. Essentially, it is the internet spawn of the uberuberimportant weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, which in turn could be described as the German version of Newsweek. With its perfect blend of breaking news, numerous pictorials of questionable relevance, and inane-yet-wordy ramblings about all things adolescent, Spiegel Online has connected to the elite German mind to a degree that wasn’t deemed possible before. Accordingly, the service has won many German awards for excellence in online news. That really sealed the deal for German people, who will happily take any award at face value, because it spares them the considerable effort of making up their own mind.

It is important to differentiate between Spiegel Online (the website) and Der Spiegel (the magazine). Whenever the latter is mentioned, German people will launch into a lengthy rant about how, back in the old days, it used to be a haven for investigative journalism, but now is more irritating than Rupert Murdoch in a jockstrap because it was taken over by radical neoliberals to perpetrate their pro-capitalist, pro-American agenda.

Inexplicably, this critical stance doesn’t keep German people from visiting Spiegel Online religiously, often several times per hour. Sometimes they will send an email to all their friends or, less frequent, work colleagues containing just a link to some new interesting bit they found there. Receipt of such an email means it is crunch time for you: Immediately follow that link and read the story a couple of times to memorize as much as you can. You will need this knowledge later, as elite German people love to assess strangers for their political correctness and ability to adapt to their world-view by engaging them in what may sound like naive small talk about current affairs, but really is a make-or-break situation similar to a job interview at a Sierra Leone diamond mine: Get a tiny detail wrong once, and stay locked out forever, maybe losing a few limbs in the process. To further stiffen the competition, German people love to surprise you by posing the following question without any prior warning:

“Have you read Spiegel Online yet?”

This can only mean some crucial news item has recently been posted toSpiegel Online, and you, in the now following spontaneous trivia quiz, are expected to be able to figure out what exactly is being referred to. As an inexperienced newcomer to Germany you will probably pick the very first thing from the top of the Spiegel Online page, i.e. “New worries about Taliban resurgence in northern Pakistan” or “Unexpectedly steep increase in industry orders for the second fiscal quarter.” BEEP. Wrong answer.

Elite German people, even younger ones, are too widely traveled to ever be bothered much by such mundane things as global politics, international terrorism, or the macroeconomic cycle. In order to blend in with your German acquaintances, you must transcend these worldly levels and understand the true issues affecting elite German people today.

Fortunately, Spiegel Online’s very start page is loaded with hints. The trick is to scroll down just a little bit from that boring “Kim Jong-il launches nuclear warhead” story to the section below, the truly interesting stuff. These sections are given super-quirky names like “Uni-Spiegel”, “Ehrensenf”, or “Mein erstes Mal”. The beauty ofSpiegel Online lies in the fact that stories like “Julia from Berlin-Mitte is too broke to treat her friends at Berghain to more than two cocktails”or “Anna from Hamburg-Schanzenviertel finds out that working in the phone-sex business can wear a person down”, instead of being buried in the back pages out of sheer embarrassment, are given the place and space they deserve, right below of “moon-sized asteroid hits Earth tomorrow at 9am.” These are the kind of news that really put a dent into the elite German person’s universe and appearing constantly wowed by such adolescent fare will really tighten the bond between you and your German acquaintances.

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Back home, you might have achieved good results taking your guests to that great, little-known restaurant you discovered the other day. Applying this knowledge to German people would be one of the worst gaffes you could possibly make. For German people, eating at a proper, leave alone expensive restaurant, is tantamount to a pure waste of time, money, and opportunities to stay outside in the nude at 15 degrees Celsius. You should get accustomed to the fact that in Germany, the non-casual acquisition of food is a particularly delicate, if not controversial, topic.

German people draw a huge part of their self-esteem from doing everything as casually and spontaneously as possible, often to an extent where the casualness and spontaneity starts to bear all traits of a fully-fledged ritual. One of those crucial rituals a foreigner can use to gain respect from their German acquaintances is a barbecue party. As you might have noticed, German people are fully-fledged barbecue fiends who do not mind having a Barbecue party every day of the week from February to November. Chances are you will soon be invited to join your German acquaintances for a barbecue party on a hot summer day, or in any other weather condition actually.

“Easy enough” you might be tempted to say, “barbecues are fun, what could possibly stand in the way of having a good time?” In a word: A lot. What foreigners in Germany often fail to compute is the highly evolved rule set attached to any social event. As a rule of thumb, the more often your German friends proclaim the spontaneous and casual character of a come-together, the more pitfalls are there to avoid.

Sure, you could just go ahead, be carefree, do what you please, hence be actually casual about the barbecue, but that sort of behavior will neither gain you any respect from your German acquaintances nor will it fortify their image of you being “made of the same stuff” as them.

So how do you barbecue the German way? First, make sure to choose the right location. Find the trashiest, most crowded public park in your city, and don’t be turned off by the thick cloud of smoke from the hundred other barbecue parties there. German people will see those as an affirmation for this location’s popularity among their peers. German people can really thrive when being close to a lot of other Germans doing the same thing. Watch the history channel if you need proof for this.

Next, it is time to think about your wardrobe for the “big event”. Remember, your choice of clothing must give you that causal and carefree air. An ironic T-Shirt, a trucker hat, and plimsolls are a safe look. Add some cheapo sunglasses and a “Jack Wolfskin” rucksack in an awful colorway, and you’re golden. A word about pants – if you wear shorts, make sure they are vintage military cargo shorts, as normal “Dad-type” plain shorts are a huge fashion faux-pas for elite-type Germans. Yep, its cargo pockets that make the crucial difference.

If you are a female, the same basic dress code applies to you, but make sure to dilute any signs of femininity. A “down-to-earth, yet quirky tomboy” look is preferable, so wear baggy men’s clothes and get some dirt on yourself on the way to the event, like you had to fix your bike chain on the way. Bonus points if you bring a soccer ball or a vintage 80’s boom box to play everybody’s latest DJ mix on. Don’t worry; every German person always carries their latest DJ mix on them in amultitude of media formats.

If you were chosen to provide the grill, the mandatory way to buy it is at a petrol station no earlier than one hour prior to the event. Even if you know the exact date since weeks, preparing for the barbecue party days in advance will raise serious doubt in your German acquaintances about your commitment to compulsory spontaneity and unflinching quirkiness, and in turn this will diminish your chances to get invited ever again.

The petrol station will also serve as your supermarket for any grill items you are planning to consume. What’s that? You already bought some premium steaks at that butcher around the way? OMG! With those steaks you will stick out like, well, a foreigner! Throw them in the trash immediately. In order to blend in with the German people, you need to have a bulletproof concept about which kind of grill item will best reflect your spirituality, character, creativity, and stance on the evils of mass consumption. If you are clueless, here is a quick overview of popular German grill items and their inherent symbolism:

• Steaks: Steaks are usually not sold at Aldidl or a petrol station, and therefore will give away the fact that you made an effort to acquire your grill item. Plus, they are usually a bit on the expensive side, so your German acquaintances will wonder if you may be pro-capitalist. Avoid steaks altogether.
• Tofu: Many German people eat vegetarian only. It is an easy and well-tested way to stay in the center of the conversation for a few minutes, and accordingly vegetarian German people are usually slightly more popular than their peers. Even if you’re a meathead, by grilling Tofu, you can display your sympathy for their vegetarian cause in a pretentious way, which is the only way they will respect and won’t be bothered by at all. If you are having trouble locating Tofu in a German supermarket, check for the meat section. Yes, you heard right. In Germany, Tofu doesn’t come in “those boring and mainstream” four by six inch blocks, but rather in form of popular German meat items such as sausages, cutlets, or burger patties. For German vegetarian people, this is a win-win situation: They can feel special for not eating meat products, while still enjoying the fun and quirky shapes these come in.
• Vegetables: Until the day German people invent a way to grill white asparagus, you shouldn’t bother bringing vegetables of any sort to a barbecue. Your German acquaintances might see you as a try-hard from then on.
• Sausages: Always a safe thing to put on a grill with Germans watching. As an average German can tell apart about 690 varieties of sausage by the age of eleven, it is important to understand what sausage represents you best. For instance, an Italian “Salsiccia” (Thanks, Leo!) will make you look like a gourmet snob who’s too cool to shop at Aldidl and trying to hard to be different. Then again, a pack of cheap, factory-made sausages bought at the petrol station can make you appear totally carefree and easy-going - but be careful of crossing over into the murky “wrong type of German” terrain.

The safest bet is to buy the most normal-looking Bratwurst you can find. Recently, elite German people discovered that the only way left to 1-up other German people in terms of quirkiness and edginess is to do a perfectly normal thing in the most pretentious and narcissistic manner possible and then pretend they just invented it.

Hence, buying a normal Bratwurst at a German petrol station has the power to persuade your German acquaintances that you are an Auslander who can tell their Wolfgang Tillmanns from their Jonathan Meese. Seeing you eat a plain Bratwurst will heighten their trust in you to serve nicely as their “artistic friend from overseas”.

Arriving at the location, you will instantly notice that most German males will have taken off their T-Shirts. As you probably already learned from German movies and television, German people love being in the nude, and any minute they are required by society to be dressed, to them feels like an unbearable intervention into their personal freedom by “the man”. This might be one reason for the slightly bad mood German people are usually in – because once they do go nude, their mood lightens in an exaggerated way.

You should seize this opportunity to study an elite German person’s body. Make a mental note of the ironic tattoos and their quirky locations in order to recreate them later on yourself. In order to get your body shape approved by your German acquaintances, and to not blow all your chances to ever experience a Teutonic romance, it is important to always keep it in a narrow “corridor of careful carelessness”, which means being neither muscular nor chubby.

Still baffled? As we learned earlier, German people seem to be perpetually stuck in the early 90s. Just like they still consider ironic tattoos and techno music to be the edgiest stuff in the universe, German people are still totally down for the “Heroin Chic” look from those old Calvin Klein ads. The good news is – you can save a lot of money that you would spend on boring and mainstream stuff like running shoes, gym fees, or food. The key to getting a body German people will consider hot is to have an unsophisticated palate and to use your bicycle a lot.

The money you saved on the gym and healthy food should be spent towards tattoos. Some ideas for tattoo motives are: A pencil on your index finger; an “Engineered Garments” logo below your neck; or a cute, cartoonish elephant below your navel. If you aren’t up for that sort of tattoo, just get some tribal bands and tell your German acquaintances a made-up story of how you got those tribal band tattoos accidentally when you were totally drunk, out of money, and stuck in a Burmese harbor city with a bunch of “good” skinheads from Guadeloupe. You know, just some random edgy story to keep your German acquaintances interested in you.

If you are sure your body shape and decoration are sufficiently careless and ironic, you can safely take your T-Shirt off and open yourself a bottled Bionade using only a lighter (standard bottle openers are banned for outdoor use by German law – everyone must use a cheap, plastic lighter). During the heat up of the charcoal, you will notice that your German acquaintances will stand around the grill and toss certain items, like cigarette butts, into the fire. Do not question this ancient ritual. It will make you look complicated and snobbish.

As soon as everybody sits down to eat their personal grill item, the following conversation between two female German persons will take place: One female German person will have brought some kind of salad to the barbecue party, e.g., a pasta salad. Upon tasting this salad, another female German person will proclaim, “This is really delicious. You have to tell me the recipe!” whereto the pasta salad maker will respond “Uh, I got this recipe from my grandmother who lives in a very culinary skilled region in south-western Germany. This pasta salad has quite a tradition in our family. I’ll write it down and send it to you.” You will notice a few of your German acquaintances nodding in dreamy-eyed admiration.

A few minutes into the meal, suddenly all your German acquaintances will burst out in earth-shattering laughter. The reason is that one attendant of the barbecue party will have displayed some kind of slapstick-y behavior or blooper, i.e. mistaking the Ketchup bottle with the Nutella one, dropping his Tofu cutlet into the grass, or being hit by a soccer ball while drinking from a bottle. If now you are thinking “all that isn’t particularly funny and no reason to roll on the floor laughing”, you are underestimating the German peoples’ love for slapstick humor. Do not forget that you are now in a country where the highest grossing movies are a slapstick western and a gay Star Trek parody. Actually, slapstick humor is the only kind of humor that doesn’t offend German people, so in order to blend in with them, be prepared to synchronically burst into laughter at any given time over the feeblest of matters.

Important side note: Make sure to cancel all further appointments for the day. Although everybody will be done eating after about 45 minutes, German people will consider the party a flop unless everybody stays together to small talk for another six to seven hours, or up to 10 hours if staying outside. If the barbecue party starts at 5pm, it is not unlikely for a German person to ride home by four in the morning.

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Or so you thought. Living among German people, things are not so straightforward. When non-German people hear about your vacation plans, the resulting social transaction very often consists of a high-five, followed by something like “enjoy yourself, you lucky bastard”, said with a big smile and no further questioning. German people, on the other hand, do not see any benefit in such an easy-going approach to taking breaks. As with many other areas of life in Germany, making the right decisions about your vacation will either heighten or severely diminish your chances to earn respect from German people and keep up a friendship with them. When it comes to vacations, the sheer number of things that could possibly offend your German acquaintance is so great, getting this one right is even more important than your taste inmusic, housing, transportation, or knowledge of coffee specialities.

The first mistake you probably made is assuming that German people share the same reasoning for going on a vacation as we Auslanders do. You’ve been working your ass off for a year, so it is a no-brainer that you are going to a nice, sunny place somewhere southern, and take it easy for two weeks, right?

Wrong. The type of German people you aspire to blend in with despises the concept of taking a vacation for hedonistic reasons. In order to feel good about spending money on anything other than owning property or their career, there must be a serious cause attached to the expense, like experiencing authentic culture, studying, helping the poor, or self-discovery. Never openly show a carefree, happy-go-lucky attitude about traveling - it will earn you admonishing glances from your German acquaintances and at any further encounters, the conversation will be somewhat reserved and awkward.

When speaking about your vacation, the following words should be avoided at all cost: Sun, beach, cheap flight, restaurant, hotel, Europe, vacation. Yes, vacation should not be used as German people like to use the more pretentious word “travel” for it, because it gives them the air of being a real adventurer tracing the footsteps of Marco Polo. To help you keep up with the impressive stories of your German acquaintances, let us analyze how elite German people “travel”. The most important aspect of your vacation is who you go with. Just going alone would be seen as dishonest conduct, because there is no way your German acquaintances could assess how “important” and “special” your vacation really was - after all, you could make up stories about it or exaggerate the facts, so the German people around you would feel high peer pressure as they are required to top your vacation and anyone else’s by measures of intensity, authenticity, and uniqueness. Therefore, German people usually go on vacation in groups of at least ten people. Usually, there is one “leader” who initiates the whole vacation planning. Often, this “leader” is the lucky offspring of a better-off family who owns some property in another country, where he is allowed to invite some of his friends. Going with a group solves two dilemmas: With everyone being under surveillance 24/7, German people can finally kick back and rest assured no one will enjoy themselves more than they do. Also, staying in a privately owned property is considered vastly superior to a hotel. Only the wrong type of German, or someone who doesn’t have a bunch of “great” friends, would stay in a hotel. Remember, anything that will lessen your stress is a no-no during vacation time.

The leader German person also bears responsibility to choose the right mix of people for the vaca…, sorry, “journey”. For example, there has to be one person who can speak the destination country’s language. Bonus points if that person is also a good barbecue chef. Eating at a restaurant is an inexcusable mishap only the most stuck-up, unromantic, and non-creative person would dare to propose. After all, doing barbecue, even every single day, is one of the most revered activities for German people, as it evokes memories of past summer nights where everybody was sitting around a campfire, next to a body of water, talking about going on vacation together someday to do the exact same thing, only in another country.

Next, there has to be a number of people who are in a complicated relationship. These people are easy to find as most German people below 50 actively seek out to be in complicated relationships. They consider these superior to relaxed, harmonic relationships because they enable them to always remain at the center of the conversation of their peers and to spice up their otherwise mundane daily life. If the vacation leader knows his job well, he will choose two or three couples who either have split up recently but are still hanging out together, or where one has an affair with another person and everybody but the spouse is in on the secret. Bonus points if the love affair happens to be a person who also attends the vacation. Lots of juicy love drama and late-night screaming matches will be the welcomed result. If the leader is in a pinch and no person he knows is in a complicated relationship, his German friends will grasp the danger of the situation quickly and save everybody’s experience by splitting up one day before departure, having a spontaneous coming-out, or contracting a sexually transmitted disease while insisting on trying group sex.

The other uber-important aspect is of course the destination of your vacation. As stated before, any country inside the borders of the European Union will just not cut the mustard. Chances are some of your German acquaintances have visited the place together with their parents when they were children, and therefore are now both bored by the prospect of going there again and, most important, are expected by their peers to do everything differently from their parents, which by the way you are expected to anticipate in anything a younger German person (read: below 45) does. It is also considered very bad eco-quette to go somewhere by plane where you could possibly also go by train or in an ironic, beat-up VW “Bully” bus. The reasoning goes like this: German people, while always eager to save money for investing it into property later, in fact hate nowadays’ cheap airlines to their guts. An old German person on time claimed the increase of flight passengers due to cheap ticket prices to be responsible for most of the CO2 accumulation in the European atmosphere, and therefore German people will only accept another person going by plane if the destination is reasonably far away (bonus “adventure” points if the airline isn’t commonly used everyday, like Iran Air, Air Bagan, or Air Koryo).

In fact, going to a remote, far-away location that cannot be easily traveled to is the most desirable option for German people. When traveling, German people loathe little more than being identified as Germans. Of course, even for uncontacted people like the Yanomamö, spotting a German person is a piece of cake. This has always been a huge source of frustration for any German person, which might explain the slightly bad mood Germans usually are in when abroad. In their constant struggle to become more cosmopolitan, the German person will already have arranged for himself an array of activities that other German people will admire, or better yet, envy him for. The important point is that these activities must be special, edgy, quirky, and zany enough to both surpass those of the German person’s peers and simultaneously divert all inklings of selfish hedonism. To give you some ideas about good destinations and activities to talk about:

Next week I’ll travel to Azerbaijan because I was invited to be a roadie for the Hajibeyov Azerbaijan State Symphony Orchestra who I will accompany on their tour through the Pakistan / Afghanistan border region.

You know me and my friends we are going kayaking on the Utcubamba together with some local Peruvian poppy growers. Who knows - maybe we spontaneously make a quick detour to Colombia to crash with this drug lord we met on Facebook. He seems cool, though!

I’ll go to Australia with a few other girls where we’ll hitchhike around the country and try to get kidnapped on purpose by some sheep herders who we’ll live and work with together for some weeks! It’s totally spontaneous and some guy in Berghain told us it’s really safe!

I am sooo looking forward to my visit of a super-special Thai ‘Wat’ where I will attend an eight-week course on how to cook traditional authentic south-eastern Mongolian food with one hand tied on my back, doing a handstand on a Ukrainian monocycle, using only bird feathers and shoestrings as cooking utensils. That will be soo intense, dude!

If this all sounds too complicated, angst-ridden, or downright dangerous for you to take on, there is one way out of the situation. Just tell your German acquaintances that you decided to stay in Germany this year and do a bike tour through the Uckermarck. Your German acquaintances will be so flattered by your newly found interest in the German countryside and from then on see you as a highly individual, romantic, and artistic being, who will serve well to improve their importance among their ranks. Who knows - you might even earn an invitation to stay at some guys’ parents’ house in Spain, together with some “really lovely” couples…

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