October 16, 2011

If you are a non-German living in Germany (or if you are a non-German not in Germany who knows Germans), you will know that the Tschermanns love a good old wives’ tale. In fact, I would venture to guess that 86.3% of what the Krauts seem to believe is “health information” is actually based on crap their mothers told them when they were younger.

You know, misinformation passed down through generations. Lovely.

You’ve heard it all before, I know you have!

“Close the windows! The draught will make you ill!”
“Wear a scarf, even in the summer! You must protect yourself from those pesky draughts!”
“Forget the winter! If you go outside with wet hair, even when the temperature is 20C, you will catch pnemonia and die!”

It goes on.

Most of these old wives’ tales are ridiculous. It gets more ridiculous since I come from a country where you are supposed to tough it out when the weather is nasty. It’s like a contest of proving who can survive in -30C in a t-shirt and runners the longest.

Coming from this sort of background scares Germans. I have already been asked why I am not yet wearing a jacket. (Hello, because it’s still 10 degrees. A sweater is fine.) Don’t get me started on my perpetual lack of socks.

If it were up to the Krauts’ logic (or lack thereof), I’d already have died fifty-seven times over from pnemonia.

These people don’t know what cold is.

Anyhoo, this isn’t supposed to be a rant. Back to the point.

I live in one of those crappy buildings that was thrown up in the 1950s for factory workers and their families. Things like there being virtually no insulation against sound is one thing, and is annoying in its own right. This also means, however, that there isn’t really any heat insulation.

For some reason, this also means water condenses on my windows like crazy. You air, it goes away for a bit, it comes back, you air, ad nauseum.

So, yesterday S. was over and this morning when we got up, I went to air out the place as per usual.
She said to me, “You know, you should really get a dehumidifier. The humidity will make you sick.”
My gut reaction was to brush her off as a crazy German.

“No, seriously,” she continued, “You’ll get a really bad cough.”

Unlike most Germans, she qualified this through experience. This a rare thing, you know, and one of the reasons I like her.

But anyhoo, then I realized that I do have a cough! Oh shit! Since the windows became condense-city!

Can it be? A German old wives’ tale with some merit?

And I thought I’d seen everything!