Do Germans have a sense of humour?

Is the stereotype about Germans having no sense of humour in any way correct?

When I had a day job my authority was twinned with a small town in Germany. One of the Stadtdirektor’s staff was  Schneiderkin, who was completely off the wall.

On one visit he stayed with us. We took him to a fine restaurant in the village owned by a Swiss (apple dumplings to die for!). I told Schneiderkin that I didn’t think the owner was Swiss at all. ‘Who do you think he is?’ he asked. ‘Martin Bormann!’ I replied. When he had finished splitting his sides, he said ‘I vill ask him’. He then engaged the owner in a lengthy conversation in German. When he came back to the table he said ‘He is definitely Martin Bormann!’ We had a good giggle. I recounted this story to our German principal on one of his visits to Kingston. He gave me a very cold look and replied ‘Ve should not talk about such things!

Later I went to Malawi on an assignment that was a shambles from the beginning. The guy originally chosen as Team Leader pulled out at the last moment, so I found myself travelling to Malawi without a second member of the team. My preference as a replacement was an Irishman who was not qualified but knew IDA rules backwards and would have been good company (the Irish always are). True to form, the IDA selected a German ex-customs officer who knew nothing about law reform and spoke very limited English, as I was later to discover.

I went to meet him at the airport. He didn’t arrive but his baggage did (well, that’s Africa). I was unable to raise him on his mobile so I went back to the airport the following day on the off-chance that he might be on the J’oburg flight. I was expecting to see a tall, smartly dressed professional type.

Instead the very last passenger off the plane was a short, fat little scruff who looked as if he had slept in his clothes for quite a long time and was a stranger to the razor. First stop the ATM. Having first dropped his wallet, keys, small-change, mobile and passport on the floor, he eventually found his card. After struggling with the ATM for some time, he admitted defeat. He couldn’t remember his password! He told me that he needed money quickly because he only had a €20 note. When I asked him why he had left home with so little he said that, actually, he had found the €20 on the floor of the lounge in J’oburg.

He told me that the reason he was late was because there has been a bad-weather delay at Frankfurt. When I asked him why he didn’t phone to let me know he revealed that he didn’t have roaming for Malawi.

You will understand that by now I am beginning to believe that the German reputation for Teutonic efficiency is just another stereotype.

It quickly emerged that work was not a priority in his life. His key interests were beer, sausages, and jokes (yes – jokes). He kept up a running stream of one-liners like ‘A man knocked on my door and said he vos collecting for der old peoples’ home. So I gave him my mother-in-law!’ And ‘A man knocked at my door and said he vos collecting for der schwimming pool. So I gave him a bucket of water!’

That sort of stuff can get a bit wearing after two months.

One anecdote was about a job in Vietnam. At a restaurant with his Vietnamese counterpart he was asked ‘Do you like dock?’ ‘Yes’ said Norbert ‘I love duck’. When it arrived, it didn‘t look like duck. ‘Are you sure this is duck quack-quack?’ he asked. ‘No’ was the reply, ‘Dock bow-wow!’

One morning I caught him in the office looking very doleful. He said his laptop had crashed –hardly surprising as he had left it switched on all day in his hotel room where it had no doubt received the tender ministrations of the cleaner. He was not bothered by having lost all his data. It was his joke book that was the key absentee!

However, since he did no work whatsoever – not a tap – I assume that there was no data on his files anyway.

So one person destroyed a whole raft of German stereotypes – punctuality, efficiency, industriousness, financial prudence, lack of humour.

We used to call each other ‘Dr Warsteiner’ and ‘Dr Heineken’ just to confuse the ghastly programme officer.

I liked him.