There are a lot of fun things about Germany: for instance, they have these awesome, colored marker-pens that you can't buy in the States, Ascension and Pentecost are national holidays, the mixture of beer and sprite and/or cola, and their language contains nouns for such things as "a song you can't get out of your head", "a slap in the face", and "a not-so-good idea of something to do that someone put into your head and now you can't get rid of".
And then there are a lot of things that drive me just a little bit crazy: like always having to wait for the traffic light men in order to not kill the children, how every single piece of documentation needs to have an "official" stamp on it, how there is an authority for "order" (don't ask), and that we never, ever go against tradition (seriously).
So when I came to understand that the Germans are incredibly ecologically friendly, it fell somewhere in between for me. I like the environment, I care about it, but have never been overly conscientious of my own actions. But, every German has about 4 trash cans in their apartment: one for plastics/packaging, one for paper, one for biodegradable materials, and one for normal trash. So ok, we'll go with that. That's not too difficult and it helps the environment...
But then today I heard something so perfectly German that it made my head spin. People keep asking me what Germany is like, what defines it, etc. Well, here it is. I have no clearer picture than this. My friend was complaining to me this morning that her car was dirty. I made the mistake of asking if Germany had "student" car washes...no, they don't. But it's not simply that it hasn't caught on over here or something. It's actually against the law to have them. Why? It's not that they block off massive portions of usable space in parking lots or that the students might harass people with the water hoses. It's because the soap is bad for the environment. And how is it bad, you might ask? Well, the soap gets mixed with the water, which then flows either down the drain and/or into the earth. The soap goes into the earth and contaminates it. Theoretically, one could use biodegradable soap. But that's too difficult to monitor, because one could buy biodegradable soap once and then refill the bottle with regular soap and then we would be stuck with the same problem that we started with.
Therefore, we won't worry about how soap, exactly, is bad for the environment, how we use regular soap in our bathrooms, or how our children will pay for their summer trips. We will simply abide by the law, and not hold any car washes. :)
