An event that I consider to be a very important culture shock during my exchange year and it shaped in a positive way the image I had about Germany. I was amazed about this fact although this is a short story about drinking beer. Read below about the dark lonely street and why it is so different from what I was used to.
Background photo created by jeswin – www.freepik.comThis post and many more are related to my Exchange Year in Germany from 2008 to 2009. In this country I lived with various host families and learned German too. Click in the link below to read more.
Table of Contents
Drinking Beer
On August 22 of 2008 we met with my friends Zhalo and Sand on Flehbachstrasse street to drink beer. That's the reason behind many social meetings: alcohol. As usual, we bought a few beers per person from the supermarket Rewe. Since the start from my exchange year, I tried to buy beers that I had never tried before. My friends got Tuborg Pilsener, Mönchshof Kellerbier, Gilden Kölsch and Beck’s. Oh yeah, I was drinking beer and it tasted so well.
You can read, see and almost smell the beers that I tried during my exchange year 2008–2009 in Germany, by clicking in the link below.
The Dark Lonely Street
We sat on the bridge by the park entrance. A few meters away from the tram station, it was in a dark lonely street. We spoke in English so that Sand could understand us. We shared various stories of ourselves in our home countries and how we had chosen to come to Germany.
A few stories about ourselves
Zhalo told me that until his adolescence he had learned more French than English; it was for a matter of possible studies in Canada, as I remember. But he had always been interested in Germany above other countries.
Sand had learned German for 3-5 years at school. He was of course interested in coming to Germany to live the experience that he had studied in recent years. He shared about the wild sports campaigns in his high-school. A sample picture, which he send me days later, on how to use toilet paper correctly, I guess.
As we continued to talk, I was thinking about if we should drink elsewhere. Perhaps in front of somebody's house instead in a random dark park.
Now, the dark Street isn't lonely anymore
Something unusual happened that night.
After 9 p.m. an elderly woman, perhaps 60 or 70, approached us. She wanted a favor from us. It already seemed strange to me. Why would a woman come to ask some young men who were drinking beer in the street for help?
Help in a different way
She asked us a few questions. Sand, who understood more German than me, spoke to her. She told us:
- [Mysterious Woman] I'm scared to cross the park alone at night. Can someone from you accompany me? {German}
- [Zhalo] I can. {German}
Sand was translating us the situation. Zhalo went away with the woman, even-though he didn't spoke german very good. Sand and I was discussing about this and after a while Zhalo returned; he said the woman was fine and nothing had happened to her, or to himself.
What did just happened?
“A woman approached us to ask for help knowing that we were drinking beer” we all thought. That was strange to me and definitely to any of us. I was thinking “I don't believe it“. We said that we would never ask for help from a group of men drinking beer, alcohol or liquor in a dark lonely street, even worse in the case of a woman. I would not have done that in Ecuador or Germany. But I still found it interesting to perceive that trust that exists, in a certain way, towards a stranger.
In the next few months, I would experience an almost complete sense of security. In Germany you could walk at 8pm or 2am at night very quietly through the streets without problem as long as you walk within the street light. This applied to 90% of the areas of the city.
In Ecuador it doesn't come to my mind to walk freely in the streets at night, after 8pm or so, unless it is populated with other civilians, it has plenty of light, etc. I appreciate this very much about German culture.
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