Cash or Credit?

America, how I love you. Germany, how I love you too. The theme hasn't changed over the seven odd months I've been here but there's one thing--that I noticed from the very beginning of all this adventuring thing--that hasn't sat well with me about Germany.

What is up with this cash flow economy?

It seems like a holistically European thing from what I gather but since my experiences are made up 99% of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland I'm gonna talk about it for 99% of the time.

*Cue some awkward completely irrelevant "we are the 99%" Occupy movement in 3...2...*

All I Wanted

...like seriously, I was sitting at work last week (a great experience thus-far) and I wanted to go to the store to buy some gummi/y (which one is it?) bears, because I have a minor obsession with them, when I realized my craving wouldn't be tempered any time soon. Why? Elementary, my Dear Watson (I can guarantee with 100% certainty that no one who reads my blog's name is Watson) I had no cash on me (A second reason might have been because it's still freezing here and I didn't have the guts to go outside in the sub-freezing temperatures [I'm really abusing parentheses this blog post]).

Big no-no Germany. You lost my patronage all because I was terrified of the look I'd get from the cashier if I walked to the register, whipped out a card and proceeded to pay with it. Like throwing a 2 Euro purchase on a credit/debit card is the sin of all sins. Do they not understand that they are LOSING my money because I literally feared the cashier's glare.

Literally. Feared. Paying. With. A. Card.

I seriously and not just for dramatic blogging effect, seriously just cringed typing that sentence. That's how foreign it is to me. I'm an American! I have the RIGHT to pay with a credit/debit card whenever/wherever and for as little or as much as I want. So WHAT if I have $4,000,000 of debt on my Black Card, swipe that baby one more time at the Chick-fil-A drive through. It'll get paid back--somehow. The true American Dream is the ability to shovel out as much money as you want (according to your credit limit) without a second thought. This whole "spending what you have" nonsense has worn off on me. At first I thought it was cool, you know, having money and spending it, but now I'm annoyed.

You ever been to a bar? If you're in my peer group, the assumption's going to be yes. This is only because of a certain necessity within our age bracket not because you're a raging alcoholic. If you haven't been to a bar...then you should give yourself a pat on the back for whatever you've been doing with your free time since you hit 21. I've been to a bar, a few actually, and one thing I can tell you about bars in America is that credit cards are an amazing commodity. "Put it on my tab" is the most ridiculous, brilliant, thing ever and it forces people into silly decisions with money and alcohol. I  wouldn't even brave putting something on a tab here, I'd probably get kicked out for even mentioning such a thing. I'm kidding, I am sure there's some places you can use a credit card to pay in a bar...but they're probably owned by Americans, frequented by Americans and happen to be in...well, you get the picture. When I go out in Germany, it's already expensive so it's only natural that I want to ball so hard.

Bands will make her dance; traveler's checks won't.

I guarantee half of you didn't get the urban reference, whatever...I tried.

I am half kidding about this; of course I definitely see the benefit of the way Germany's cash economy works; brief aside: this is not to say that people don't have credit/debit cards on hand, it's just that the frequency of someone using one--of someone using one for, let's say, gummy/i bears-- is drastically decreased. I actually respect the idea behind it, I just don't understand and can't quite get behind the aversion to plastic. Maybe this isn't a problem for everyone who travels to Germany, maybe some people are more used to carrying large amounts of cash on them all the time but it's not really something I'd been accustomed to before this journey which necessarily means it's something I still struggle with now.

I could have vented more but I decided that everything is right in the world, March Madness starts soon and I kind of feel like a boss tossing out 50 euro bills to buy 95 cent gummi/y bears.

But SERIOUSLY where were Jay-Z and Kanye Euro-partying when they were writing Watch the Throne? Or did they just get the Illuminati memo to carry cash with you in Europe? My membership doesn't get renewed until next week; I tried to pay with credit card but it got declined...

Through the Looking Glass

"Things do not change; we change"

-Henry David Thoreau 

This blog post was started and finished on March 6, 2013. One of the rare times I've sat down with an idea and just shot it out without having to go to sleep, getting up and going somewhere or running straight into writer's block. The purpose of this statement is to say that a little over half of my time in German is behind me: a perfect time for a post like this I think.

There's nothing like getting up and leaving everything you've ever known behind.

Those securities that you once had: the familiar places you could frequent whenever you needed a little reminder of who you are vanish mercilessly. All you're left with is your bare bones, whatever you lugged on your back, and a subtle understanding of how human interactions work, hoping your awkward social skills will reap the rewards of a golden friendship or two. It's a rather liberating experience really: going to a new place where no one knows you, all the regrets, mistakes, etc. but a thing of the past....

...but that necessarily means that all the joys, triumphs and things that made you who you are also become a thing of the past. We're humans. Our personalities develop thanks to the interactions we have with other people; they're what we exude when we're around our friends and family.

Everyone should have an experience like my year in Germany. I know, I know, we don't all have the resources, time, or desire to up and relocate halfway across the world; the traveling part isn't important. It's the introspection. Maybe I'm an outlier and the rest of you guys are busy in self-reflection every minute of your normal lives but for me, it's something that's been magnified ten-fold after up and leaving everything behind. If my hunch is correct; however, and you're not, then maybe it's worth looking into for yourself.

No pun intended. 

We're stuck in a world that moves so fast. It's not necessarily a bad thing, hey, the increase in productivity of humanity has probably multiplied so many times over it's incalculable. Then again, it's not necessarily a good thing when I have to sit down and write a blog post about how important it is to be introspective.

What exactly happens when we no longer have our families and friends as an outlet to express ourselves? What parts of us grow? What parts of us shrink? What are the lifeless things that we can leave behind and what are the aspects of ourselves are inextricably linked to who we are? The questions certainly linger in one's head on those cold and lonely nights; far away from everything one's ever known and not quite in the mood to see every new and strange feature of one's new, foreign asylum as an adventure.

They've certainly popped into my head a time or two.

The problem with writing a blog in one sitting and in a spontaneous manner such as this one right now is that there comes a crossroad where you have to decide the next heading of the post. It's an awkward time; I'll liken it to the last two minutes before the 2nd and 4th quarters of a three point basketball or football game: so called "crunch time". Execute well and you are crowned victorious (victory in my eyes is you all's enjoyment); stumble, make small errors or choose the wrong set of plays (topics) and suffer defeat (boredom on the part of my readers). Well here it goes readers.

Down. Red Eighty-Two, Red Eighty-Two. Hic!

Not Football...in case you didn't know.

Perhaps to this point, I've made it (the introspective lulls of semi-expatriate life) sound a bit melancholy; on the contrary, it's a beautiful, liberating, enlightening sort of journey. There are so many aspects of myself that have been stretched, pulled upon, prodded and dragged out of me during my time here. What my values are, how I am around people I don't know, who I gravitate towards as friends, acquaintances, confidents...it's all a rather deep and intimate kind of development. It's something that makes you wonder why people get so comfortable in routines. Why are people so content with settling down in one place and doing one thing. Security? Fear? Good, cogent answers, but let's take it a bit further. Maybe it's the fear that getting to know those foreign sides of ourselves--the sides of us we don't like as much--those inner distant cousins who we hate to be around because they make those stinging comments that are so true but no one wants to hear. The "you've really put on weight in the last few months" or the "well that thing you did last month was dumb as crap"

The stuff that no one wants to hear. That's what our other sides bring to the table. That's why so many people settle in to doing one thing, forget about security, forget about comfort. On some intimate level it's that we might not like what we find out about ourselves if we up and try something new. We're terrified of adversity and so we're terrified our other sides.

There we go--back to melancholy. The point is: we're wrong for hiding from our inner selves as much as we do. They can teach us great things about who we are and I am so glad for those cold, lonely nights far away from everything I've ever known--the types of nights you can't get without, say, up and moving to Germany. Without them I wouldn't have learned some valuable things about myself.

And that's worth an extra blanket or two.