When I failed to schedule my Food and Toilet Times

2005 was my fifth year in a row in which I spent time in Germany and each year the time period of my stay in this country had become a bit longer. I obviously got to know a lot about people there, which means that I was slowly able to not only make the difference in between ‘western culture’ and ‘Indian culture’ or usual behavior but could even tell about a few characteristics and qualities in people which were typically German. Obviously, one of the first stereotypes which I found confirmed was the one that German people are very organized and structured.

I was once with one of my organizers with whom I had a very strong and really quite funny experience of this German quality. I was staying in her home and on the evening I arrived, she asked me at what time I would have breakfast in the morning. I looked at her, a little bit surprised. She had put such a focus on the words ‘What time’ that I was puzzled about what to say. I didn’t know yet when I would get up, so it was a bit difficult to tell an exact time! I knew my sessions would start at ten, so I said her that I would eat before that, in time for getting to the center where people would come to meet me.

The next morning I came down at around nine o’clock. My organizer was up and ready and so we had breakfast together. After a day full of work, we had dinner together, too, and when I was about to go to bed, she asked: ‘So, will you eat at nine tomorrow, too?’ I agreed, fine, why not.

When I came back down the next morning, she was already sitting at the table, everything ready for breakfast exactly how it was set the day before. I saw her before she saw me and what I saw gave me a guilty feeling: her fingers were drumming on the table, making small, impatient noise and she kept on looking at the clock. I followed her look and saw that it was five past nine. She was obviously stressed about the fact that I was still not at the breakfast table – five minutes after I had said I would be! When I fully entered the room, she turned to me, saw me and gave me a big smile. I immediately felt better and we had a good breakfast together.

I was not used to look at the time for every small thing that I did! I was never late for my program but never scheduled my meals exactly either. That’s how I did not make it to the breakfast table at nine the next morning, either, and immediately felt guilty! When she then asked me why I was late, it was enough. I had to talk about this! I told her that I could not predict when I would feel hungry! She actually protested, so that I had to explain that I was afraid she would next ask me when I would go to toilet and if I didn’t go at exactly that time, she would object ‘But you said you would go at this time!’

Don’t get me wrong, I knew this woman loved me! She had watched what I was eating and what I put on my bread and thus knew what I liked. The next morning the exact same things would be there so that I would have a nice breakfast! This organization until the last detail was how she expressed her love!

At the same place I met some people who wanted to organize program in their homes, too. When I reached their places later in 2005, I got to know that my organizer had again gone too far with her love of detail – she had given them a complete list of what I used to eat and what I did not eat!

Apart from the fact that this list was incorrect, I really did not like this behavior anymore. I was not a guru, so you should not act as though you were a close disciple telling others about the rules on how to behave with me! Just talk to me, I am human, just like you!

Well, that was my experience of the over-structured and too organized German mind that gets confused when you decide to go to pee at another time than you daily do. And as I don’t keep a record of when I go to pee, I could unfortunately never comply with such standards of structuring one’s day!