Berlin Construction Sites

I wanted to get some money from the ATM at my bank this morning. Pech gehabt (tough luck, buddy), as the Berliners like to say. The construction site workers had taken over the place completely now. There was a big red sign on the door saying Pech gehabt, so-to-speak, only in a more detailed and polite manner.

Although they have been working here on and off for the past two months already, they had at least been nice enough to let me come in every now and then to pick up some cash. But it seems as if they had just been warming up. Now they have taken complete control of the place and I have a problem. I'm going to have to find another bank to go to for the next few months, at the very least. They're changing all the light bulbs, you see. Or maybe they're even installing an additional ATM. This is a big deal here in Germany. This kind of thing can and will take some time. I'm just going to have to face the facts: My bank has now officially become a Baustelle (construction site).

A German construction site, however large or small it may be, is different than other construction sites you will encounter in other countries around the world. They are built to last. They are pretty much permanent, in fact. And the ones here in Berlin are the worst of all. You stop noticing them after a time. When they finally do disappear after many months or a year or two or maybe three, the construction site authorities quickly put up a new one right across the street from where the old one was just to keep their customers from getting too disoriented. Or at least that is what I have to assume. It appears to be a shock to the German system if a construction site disappears too quickly around here. Germans want to know that the construction being done at their construction sites is being done so very, very thoroughly. That is why the German construction worker is very, very gründlich (thorough) and of course therefore generally very, very slow.

Otherwise, I assume, folks here think that if he has not been slow enough then maybe he has not been thorough enough and this is frowned upon in German society because if you are not going to be slow (thorough, that is), then why take the time to put up the damned constuction site in the first place?

All of this has something to do with what the Germans call Deutsche Wertarbeit (German-quality work). When something is built with Deutsche Wertarbeit (you know, like construction sites), it has to be built to last. Of course Deutsche Wertarbeit is nothing but a big fat myth, of course, or Germanic myth, if you prefer. There is no such thing, not really, but the Germans believe that there is. They cling to it. I suppose it has something to do with the Rhine river and those guys with the horned helmets and Thor and Wagner operas and who knows what else so it is therefore very dear to them, I must assume, but please don't quote me on that one.

Anyway, all I wanted to do was to get some money from the ATM at my bank this morning. I guarantee you that I will not be able to set foot in that ATM room for the next six months. But I can also guarantee you that the light bulbs will all have been changed in a thoroughly thorough manner once I do and that the new ATM machine will work without a hitch.

Fortsetzung folgt (to be continued).

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Originally from California's Central San Joaquin Valley and washed ashore on the coast of old West Berlin, Charles Larson is a freelance writer well versed in German and German culture. For more info, feel free to visit his website at EnglishPro & Co.