Nie wieder Matratzenlager. OR: down with dormitories!

Those of you who are on Facebook will have seen my post there the other day. I didn't have the strength to write any more than that. Having promised some people to elaborate, here goes. 

Beneath you see a photograph, sneakily taken by me, from my niche in the corner of the so-called Matratzenlager (literally: mattress place; usual translation: dormitory) in the Schachenhaus on Tuesday morning. For the uninitiated amongst you, this is a (small) room within a hut, with multiple bunk beds, which means a bunk for eight people has four mattresses on the bottom and four on the top. There was also a four-person option in our room. Having stuffed a small room full of bunks, it is clear to see that there is space for little else, so add twelve adults, twelve backpacks, assorted waterbottles, slippers and other necessary accoutrements and the room starts to look a little overcrowded. But none of this matters at first, as you deposit your few belongings on your allotted pallet, and hurry off to get the first beer of the day. All seems well. Seated on an uncomfortable but authentic rustic bench or chair-with-a-heart-in-the-back like Heidi had, you sip away and peruse the 'menu'. Sighing with relief that there is only one dish you could possibly stomach, thus doing away with any silly dithering which might irritate your partner, you order a bowl of stodge with cheese and, just for the hell of it, another beer. An hour later you investigate the 'facilities'. Both toilet cubicles are occupied. You decide to wait. Someone rushes past you with a sense of urgency. If they had been a small boy, they'd have been clutching their behind. You decide to postpone your visit and have another beer. 

After all this beer, you are feeling quite jolly and well-disposed towards your room-mates and, as darkness falls (which it does remarkably early up there), there is not much option but to prepare yourself for bed. This you do in the gloom, stumbling around on the one square foot of floor remaining and wondering where you put your toothbrush. But you manage it, and you even get to the loo before the next shift arrive to perform their ablutions. Safely installed within your sleeping sheet, you sigh with contentment (or something). A bat flutters at the window, a waft of alpine air tickles your nasal hairs, a goat farts somewhere on the meadow. This is what you came for!

In ones and twos, the rest of the party blunder into the room. The drunk ones switch on the lights and dig around in noisy plastic bags and have stage-whispery discussions about where the towel is. But you remain patient. Pleasantly tired, you wait for sleep to transport you away from this alien situation.

Well, my sleep dumped me right back in it after ninety minutes. Dreaming that a giant warthog was lying next to me, I woke with horror to find it was true. The warthog had a wife, and both had serious phlegm issues. The word snore does not do it justice. Earplugs were a waste of time. Always a light sleeper (why was I there in the first place, you ask), I spent the next six hours alternating between rage, fury, frustration and extreme fatigue. A small break in the snorting chorus meant I dropped off around five a.m. Half an hour later, someone's alarm went off, and the day had begun. The sun rose, and I lay there, exhausted, watching as people in various stages of undress (not a pretty sight) emerged from their cocoons. See picture below (a naked backside would have been the next shot). 

Resigning yourself to the fact you will be exhausted all day, you shuffle off to breakfast, having 'freshened up' with thirty other people in the two-sink washroom beforehand. You chew on some stale bread and drink a cup of Muckefuck.

So why was I there, and why indeed does anybody pay for this experience? CG and I mulled this over from the comfort of our wide and spacious bed the following evening. What possesses grown men and women, with good incomes (they were all wearing The North Face or such like - a reliable indicator) to shun comfort and privacy and hygiene, and lie cheek-by-jowl with the very people they spend half their lives trying to avoid, in other words, everyone else? We decided that it reminds them of childhood. Scout camp and the like. Getting back to basics. A mini-break from the materialist, consumerist trappings of daily life.

I hope I haven't put you off, though I dare say the Alpine Association is unlikely to recruit me for advertising purposes any time soon. As CG always said, I'm a spoilt city slicker with a penchant for luxury.  But at least I tried.

Make me a German what?

Despite Gaia's assertion that I have 'reached the end of the road' with my blog, I plod on. Inspiring comments from other, more erudite readers urge me forward. So here goes. The other night, CG and I watched a TV programme. Nothing unusual in itself. The rather ambiguously named 'Make me a German' was about a Brit journalist and his half-German (yet non-German speaking) wife who decided to try out life as a typical German family for a while. (I say ambiguously as 'German' could mean a kind of cocktail, or beg the question a German what? Wouldn't 'Make me German' have been more appropriate?)

The next day's review in the Guardian neatly summed up the show's highs and lows - full of cliches and contrived situations. Father goes out to work on shop floor of successful but small, family-run pencil factory. Mother stays at home doing housework and looking after the children, one of which goes to a Waldkindergarten (in the forest) and gets to play and poo in the great outdoors. The parents have to eat a specified amount of pork and potatoes every week in order to match average German consumption thereof. Father gets ticked off for arriving late to work and for sending a text message during work hours. (We are told this is greatly in contrast to British office life, where people spend the whole afternoon on Facebook.) They get reprimanded by a neighbour for making too much noise on a Sunday. The same neighbour displays thinly-veiled racist tendencies towards the prominent Turkish population in the area. There was lots of hand-shaking, sausage eating, and all the shops were closed on Sundays - shock, horror. And so on, and so on. As is often the case with stereotypes, I was struck by the programme's ability to simultaneously hit the nail on the head and generate so prolifically. We asked ourselves: is life really that bad here?

British people make much of the numerous laws in Germany, and it is true, there are many. What is more, Germans tend to know of them, cite them word-for-word, and even obey them. However restrictive this may sound, I have yet to encounter a law that doesn't make sense in some way. To understand the most obscure ones has required intensive consideration at times, but I have always found the solution. And it really is better to do what the Germans do and toe the line. The irony of all this is that there remains here a sense of freedom, particularly with regard to children. The health and safety law epidemic gripping Britain has not reached the fatherland and hopefully never will. Young Germans are still free to roam the streets and climb trees and build dams in the river. The finger of blame would not be pointed at the parents or teacher if something were to happen (unless, of course, they were clearly to blame).

There is also a marked lack of materialism and consumerism here. Debt is not a desirable state to be in, and people do not mention their credit cards, if they even have one. Mortgages are seen as millstones, rather than milestones. It is cool to live within one's limits, unostentatiously, and respect the laws of the land and one's fellow man.

If it weren't for the odd occasion where Germans throw caution to the wind and/or sink gallons of beer and stand on the table singing, life here could be rather boring. But it isn't, and what's more, I think Britain is catching onto the fact that Germany gets quite a lot right and is not only a force to be reckoned with, but something to be envious of.

None of this means I wish I wasn't British. Oh no John no. I go about my ordered life and smile politely at all the remarks about British weather (rain), British food (fish and chips), the Royal family (Prince Charles' ears) and the British pound (no comment). But inwardly I relish the fact that I get to enjoy what Germany has to offer whilst knowing I am from a much cooler, quirkier place.

And the thought of living there again terrifies me.

PS: I write some of my most profound blog posts when I am supposed to be writing other profound things, and this is no exception. I now have five weeks to complete my master's thesis and progress is SLOW. Just let me clean out my kitchen cupboards and dust the skirting boards, then I'll get started...