aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Monday, July 04, 2005

Düsseldorf and the South

Today, in observance of the Fourth, Kevin Drum points to this from Andrew Hammel, an American in Düsseldorf:

Here are some pieces of advice for my fellow Americans who choose to move to Europe:

• Don’t brag to other people about how hard you work. If you go up to someone in Europe and say “I work 10 hours a day, six days a week, 51 weeks a year. Look how much I achieve!” you’ll get the same reaction you would in America if you said “I wash my hands exactly 169 times a day. Look how clean they are! Look! Look!!!”

• Learn your environment. Take into account how much work you can really expect from Europeans. Don’t expect anything to get done in August, don’t expect a response to your email the same day. If you really need to get in touch with someone while they are on vacation, or on the weekend, you won’t be able to. Which means not that they are being irresponsible. It means you don’t really need to get in touch with them.

• Change your standards. Realize that when someone complains about being horribly overworked, even though you know they are working about 40 hours a week, accept it. By their standards, they are working very hard. Helpful thought-experiment: Europeans pay about $5/gallon for gas. Wouldn’t you want them to display compassion for you when you complain about paying $2?

My partner Doug spent four of his five years in Germany living in Düsseldorf (and I expect that with this post he’ll become a regular reader of Hammel’s German Joys). He loves Germany; and he is a born and bred Southerner.

But my point is this: As a New Yorker living in the South, swap out European and replace it with Southerner. Hammel’s advice is the same advice I’d offer a New Yorker planning on moving to the South.

Oh, except that his thought-experiment doesn’t work for the South. We were just in Manhattan. Gas there was $2.99 a gallon. Here it’s $2.03.