Published July 20, 2007
If you're traveling to Germany soon, there are some things you'll find yourselves amazed about. German hygiene is one topic that's always caught my attention, and I always wonder how much that has to do with my Japanese American upbringing. At our house, everything always had to be washed in hot-hot water, and evening bathing was a ritual.
In Germany, there seems to be a schizophrenic attitude toward cleanliness. First of all, the restrooms are really fantastic. Normally they're clean, the cubicles have enough paper, and there's plenty of hot and cold running water. What's really impressive are the self-cleaning toilet seats - after you flush, the seat starts turning, passes under a little apparatus on the far side, and comes back sparkling clean.
There are also a variety of flushing devices, enough to set the average American into a panic. If you're searching for that little flush lever, don't look further. Those are passé here in good old new Germany. Most of the levers are built into the toilet, a bit hidden so that you sometimes have to feel for them, especially in the night. And then, there are normally two - one for the quick flush with smaller amounts of water, and a bigger one for a full, completely cleansing giant flush.
The showers in Germany are also a masterpiece of hygienic design. Forget a pipe sticking out of the wall with a showerhead on it. Every home has a bar on which the showerhead slides, so that you can adjust it to whatever height you want. In addition, you can take off the head to make close-up scrubbing easier. And most of those showerheads are adjustable to pump out a stream, a light mist or a massage.
With all this thought going into hygiene, you'd think the country would be full of clean-freaks. Unfortunately, this isn't so. There is another side to the coin, which sometimes has me really wondering. For example, a lot of food products are handled without much care. Take eggs. In the supermarket, they aren't refrigerated. They sit out at room temperature for days until someone buys them. Even the boiled and colored ones at Easter - they just lie there in their little baskets by the checkout stand, or in clear plastic containers on the shelf, so everyone can see how lovely they are. But they're not kept chilled.
Did we miss something in California, where I came from and where eggs were always in the refrigerated section at the store? You took them out and they were cool to the touch and when you packed them into your fridge at home, they were clean and white. In Germany, I sometimes find myself timidly picking little tiny feathers out of the egg containers, where they've been squished between the cardboard and the egg itself.
And then there's the color of the eggs. They're not a milky white, but a kind of dirty white or worse yet, brown. And when you cook them, they have an orange yolk instead of the bright yellow ones I grew up with. In the meantime, I've found out that farmers put a pigment called Canthaxanthin into the feed to make the egg yolks look redder. My comment is simply: EEEIII!
Another problem are the bakeries. People behind the counters handle money, wipe their sweaty brows, and then grab the rolls you just ordered with their bare and unwashed hands. Once I complained, and the baker said to me, "What do you think I do in the kitchen?"
Last week I thought I'd try again to get a sandwich. I walked into the bakery and asked the clerk, who had just finished taking money from the customer before me, if she could tell me what was in one of the bigger sandwiches. She picked it up in her bare hands, clutching it tightly not just with her fingertips but placing it smack into the center of her palm, swung it in front of my face, and said, "You mean this one?" Then she started prying it apart with her fingers and said, "it's ham, see!"
"Oh," I said calmly. "I don't eat pig." And then I walked out without another word.
Yes, Germany is definitely loony when it comes to hygiene. Or has my JA background made me overly sensitive?
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