Recently in the comedy club “Lucky Punch” in the old Gasteig. It was a Monday, and Mondays are always English evenings, which means that only English-speaking stand-up comedians perform. They come on stage for a short scene of five minutes and test their material on the audience.
Apart from a really nasty and funny Ukrainian (“For a year and a half we were the most popular conflict in the world! And now???”) the comedians were rather mediocre. The audience, on the other hand, is exciting. It consisted of many non-Germans, which is documented because a busy presenter interviewed the audience between each artist. Where are you from, what are you doing here, how do you find Munich?
Answers: from Brazil, from Bulgaria, from Turkey, I’m a programmer, I’m a web designer, I’m from Vienna. Munich would be great, if only the rents weren’t as high as the naturally wonderful mountains. They all presented their polished answers with great seriousness, which leads to the question of whether, when you enter Bavarian-German circles, you also take on a bit of the dry breadiness that Germans are so often accused of? And to the question of whether that wouldn’t even be desirable.
Take a look at this Jordan Prince’s Instagram account an American who lives in Germany and has built his entire social media career on conducting socio-cultural mediation between “Se Germans” and the rest of the world. There you learn about supposedly typically German characteristics – blatant staring, Terminator-like ignoring of illnesses – and obviously German obsessions – “Pretzels”, documents – but also about a certain lack of humor; even in sunshine.
We actually like each other in our grumpiness
This looking at yourself through the eyes of others is very fascinating to people in Munich; it’s the same pleasant self-assurance that you feel when strangers describe your partner as “really great”. Because we actually find ourselves charming in the grumpiness that we are assumed to be, in the magnificence anyway. When the new Dutch colleague, when asked how he “finds Munich,” replies that he bought a bike and went hiking at Lake Tegernsee, this is of course immediately appreciated.
That evening in the bar with that same colleague, two young people stumble up, giggling in English, saying they don’t know anyone, would he like to have a chat with them, a little conversation? He brushes them off politely and says to his Munich colleagues, slightly indignant: “I don’t want to speak English to people here!”. The colleagues are beaming.