How to be German / Wie man Deutscher wird
Weil das verblüffend exakt beobachtet und so liebevoll wie respektlos aufgeschrieben ist, gehört sein Buch Wie man Deutscher wird in 50 einfachen Schritten zum Amüsantesten, was die Aufzählungsliteratur in den vergangenen Jahren hervorgebracht hat.
Der beste Beitrag zur Klärung der Frage, warum uns die Briten nach Jahrzehnten hingebungsvoll gepflegter Feindschaft plötzlich so mögen: wegen unserer direkten Art.
...solltet ihr unbedingt lesen, wenn ihr nach Deutschland ziehen wollt.
Here is a video of me reading from the book
Let's look inside
Not only does the book contain words of an interesting and amusing nature but it also has pictures! Yes, pictures! By none other than Romibello, my usual partner in artistic crime.
All 50 steps are illustrated, here are some of the new topics that were not in the original online series: Fireworks, Dinner for one, Denglisch, Mahlzeit, Kartoffelsalat, GEMA and the GEZ, Spiegel Online, Bio, Following rules, Humour, Fenster auf Kipp, Schwarzfahren and many more.
- 25 completely new steps
- Beautifully illustrated
- All 50 steps in both English and German, across 140 pages, perfect for language learners & polyglots.
Example step - 45. Travel Seriously
Well, I’d say you’ve worked so hard fitting in, it’s time you take a little break. How about a foreign holiday? Sadly, travelling with/as a German is also problematic. If you’re going to behave correctly, oh cultural explorer, you’ve much to learn. See, new land = new risks. The first step of the German Projekt Urlaub is to understand the potential hazards of this foreign land and ensure they are negated through extensive insurances and proper travel equipment. Even a weekend excursion to the Baltic Sea may require the use of high tech hiking footwear with special soles, zip off trousers, a drink canister, and a lot of those special hook things that climbers use. Maps must be printed. Routes planned. Backup routes found. Backup backup routes found.
On arrival in more distant lands Germans are often disappointed when they see these countries are just not run efficiently. Their disapproval will manifest in sentences like "they said the bus would leave at 6 p. m. It's 6:15 p. m. already. Typisch!", “A bathroom this badly ventilated is just a magnet for mould", or "Is a simple split bill just too much to ask from these people?"
Germans abroad are part traveller, part Techniküberprüfungs-employee, tallying health and safety violations with their eyes, marking off locations of emergency exits and toilets. Arriving at a restaurant you'll see them mentally arranging the furniture with their eyes for optimum Fluss (flow). Travelling is a little bit about getting to use all of the various foreign languages they know, but mostly an opportunity to be reminded first-hand about just how much better everything already is in Germany.
You can read more steps in the original article series.
Take the quiz
Building on the ideas in the book, we've created this fun, online How German Are You? Quiz. To date more than 450k people have taken the test.
- More than 219k FB Likes
- More than 450k completed quizzes
- Current average Germanness score of 64%
Upcoming Readings
If you'd like to request a reading, please fill out this form. Specific details about each reading will be added nearer the time.
2014
November
21st, Lesetag - Hallenbad, Wolfsburg13th, tbc - C.H.Beck Offices, Munich
About the Author
Adam Fletcher is a thirty-year-old, bald Englishman living in Berlin. When not writing books and articles he mostly spends his days dreaming up a whole range of largely unsuccessful products for his business The Hipstery, eating chocolate and napping. As well as writing about Germans, he writes a bi-weekly column about technology and entrepreneurship for Venture Village. You can find a big list of all his articles here.
He dedicates this book to his Ossi girlfriend Annett, since she dropped about 18 000 hints that he should do so and he'd really just like a little peace and quiet now. How to be German started its life as an online blog series, which much to Adam's surprise has been read more than one million times, generating thousands of comments, both saying how right and how wrong he was (this directly resulted in the addition of step 29: Klugscheißen). Adam has written about thirty new steps, expanded some old ones, had everything nicely illustrated and the result is this book.
Find out more about Adam and how you can contact him to tell him how right/wrong he is at The Hipstery.
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