The German Birthday

Today I attended yet another German birthday. Once again, I contend with how different one's special day is celebrated (i.e. not celebrated) in this country.

Coming from the family I do, I tend to get excited about birthdays. Growing up, our mom provided each one of the five of us with our favorite meal, our favorite cake -- handmade and decorated by her of course -- gifts of our choosing when affordable, and treatment so extraordinary we felt very important. Yes, we were lucky kids. I learned a lot from my mom on how to make someone feel special on their birthday.

With cocktail in hand, this chick is having a crazy good time at an American birthday party. (photo by KS)

Today we siblings still send cards and presents, if only an Amazon Geschenkgutschein, and we remember to wish each other a happy birthday with a personalized phone call, humor usually included. It has been our practice to carry on the happy and fun family birthday traditions learned in childhood, with all the people we love.

Over here in the Mutterland, Germans can make such traditions difficult, because they have their own stiff requirements.

First of all, it is rule among co-workers and friends that you provide your own cake to share at the office. Normally, no one else makes you a cake as a surprise or a gift -- the way it's done in the U.S. At the outset this practice was very strange to me. Hallo... where is the love? Perhaps the policy here is that you have to love yourself first?! Nope, since it's your birthday, YOU bring the cake, Punkt. If you're self-sufficient nothing can go wrong. German efficiency in its finest form.

When stuck at a German birthday party, you can entertain yourself by playing with the food, drinking too much coffee, stabbing yourself

under the table with your fingernails or fork, going outside to stare at something until the "party" ends, or a combination of all of these. (photo by KS)

Okay, if you're a man (or woman) who doesn't bake, I suppose your mother or sister can make you a cake to share (something my boyfriend benefits from annually). You could also purchase a frozen apple Strudel (yuck) or store-bought cookies or muffins. Likely the best option and the way to please sugar-curbing Germans (see below) is to buy from your local baker or Konditorei a beautiful cake to share. Then the German birthday-cake-self-supplying requirement is satisfied.

I'm a nonconformist. I don't always do what is expected of me by Germans (or anyone else). Also, I love to bake, so this year I decided to make Heinie a fabulous carrot cake from a recipe I found online and had been saving for months.

As is the norm, I enhanced my cake with lots of healthy organic ingredients and extra bio coconut. I also cut the sugar amount recommended in the recipe by about two-thirds in the cake batter, knowing Germans don't enjoy cake as sweet as we Americans do. While whipping up the cream cheese frosting, which called for lots and lots of powdered sugar, I realized I couldn't cut out too much of the dry ingredient, because part of its purpose was to soak up the vanilla flavoring and Milch. Nevertheless, I used less sugar than called for, feeling confident that two cups less than the required ten would please the Germans. Though my frosting drooped a little, it stayed on the cake as it firmed up in the refrigerator.

The cake wasn't gorgeous, but it was going to taste good. Adding more coconut to disguise the frosting failure, I was content with my German carrot cake creation, and with extra caution, it traveled 45 km and was carted carefully from the car to the fridge the morning of the birthday gathering.

Later, setting it down on the table in front of Heinie's tough German family, I gallantly faced their questions about this foreign cake. What kind is it? What's inside it? Are there any nuts or other allergens? Is it sweet? Is it a traditional German cake? What's that white stuff on the outside? Who made it?

It's problematic for an American to make a cake and set it on the table next to the baked conglomeration of dryness and nuts crafted by the German mother or sister of the Birthday Boy without being questioned and eyed with suspicion, but I was used to their wicked glances and raised eyebrows. I knew my cake was good. Slicing my masterpiece and serving up pieces to each of the guests, frosting sliding down the sides just a bit, I awaited their responses.

From the first bite, Heinie was the worst, as is oftentimes the norm.

"Boah, der ist so süß!" he said, putting his fork down in repugnance and betrayal, pushing his plate away. Everyone else stopped chewing. The frosting was too sweet for him. Couldn't he have been polite and perhaps scraped off the frosting and enjoyed the cake? Couldn't he have simply eaten and enjoyed it, knowing how much work and time I put into making it? No, not Heinie, because he prides himself on his brutal German honesty.

I'm sure my face turned red at first, but I took a forkful of my cake, put it in my mouth and said, "Mmmmmmmmmmmm. Delicious!"

Birthday cake should be obnoxiously good -- not practical -- especially if that goodness involves plenty of sugar and food coloring. (Photo by KS)

Most of the family eventually stopped eating the cake after their own experimental bites, though they were more subtle about it. I did witness Heinie's older daughter spooning chunks of cake into her mouth after wiping the frosting off to the side. Heinie's sister-in-law, always gracious, told me the cake was fine. His niece asked to take some cake home (to eat in the sanctuary of her own private space, away from the glaring eyes of the Germans who had rebuffed my cake?). At least three of them appreciated it. However, I will probably not bake another birthday cake for that person anytime soon. It stings when you exert effort into something special for someone, only to have it rejected. Next year, I hope I have not forgotten the ungrateful behavior of German Nummer Eins in meinem Leben.

There's more to a German birthday than the provision of your own tasteless, dry cake. I have also discovered that birthday blowouts as we know them don't happen. Oh yes, Germans may have what they call birthday "parties," but these are sit-down, boringly-civilized affairs, organized around Kaffee und Kuchen, or a dinner.

Kaffee und Kuchen?! For a birthday party? Where are the cocktails? Where is the spiked punch? Where is the ice cream for the cake? Where are the party games? Where is the kitchen banter? Where's the enjoyment?

Ja, a German birthday is boring. It takes place around a long table where one is not allowed to budge, sometimes for hours. It's mostly uneventful, except for conversing with people you wouldn't spend time with if you had a choice. The people sit around, eat various forms of sometimes delicious cake, drink coffee, and converse... in German. This has never been amusing in my opinion, but no one ever said Germans were fun.

Even kids' birthdays in Germany are celebrated with coffee and cake. Poor little things! I've attended two children's birthdays since Heinie's, and these were also sit-down affairs. There were candles on the cake at one, but the poor little birthday boy didn't know how to make a wish. Did he receive his mock birthday spankings and a pinch to grow an inch? Unheard of. Did the crowd gather around to watch the ceremonious opening of the presents? Nope. Were other children invited? One or two only, so as not to disrupt the formality of the occasion. Were there party games? Sadly, no.

Thank goodness German children are expected to be unruly and are permitted to escape the table, running off to play with their friends and their new birthday gifts. We as adults aren't so lucky. We have to sit politely through the agony.

Now that's how a Birthday Boy should enjoy his special day! (No coffee available anywhere...) (photo by KS)

My young British colleague also has a German boyfriend. She and I talk often, sharing our laughably painful experiences in this great land. She, too, has been invited to German birthday parties, though fewer in her one year here in Deutschland than I've attended in over five years.

There was one whole week when she dreaded attending a birthday event coming up, and she reminded me of it every morning with a pained expression on her face. One reason for this was because her spoken German isn't as proficient as she would like it to be, and gatherings with Germans can frustrate and bore her. She is often ignored or overlooked when among the Teuts and resents being treated as if she is not there.

Having lived through similar circumstances, I recall early days of feeling like a piece of furniture, before my German improved. Though my language skills are much better now and I understand a lot more, I still have those days where I am virtually non-existent (and I'm a "loud" American!), especially during family birthday gatherings. It doesn't make much of a difference how well you can converse in their language: if the Germans you're with don't attempt to involve you in their topic of discussion, you're an outcast. Trust, it's not the lack of English spoken that bothers us foreigners in Germany; it's how we are overlooked. Somehow we become invisible yet have to politely stand (or sit for hours) by gritting our teeth through the discourse.

It hurts. Sometimes it's so bad that I poke my fingernails into the palms of my hands so that a greater pain overtakes my senses. This also helps keep me awake. Don't worry -- I never draw blood, and this happens only a few times a year. Thankfully, the other birthday gatherings I've attended include considerate internationals who attempt to speak English or use it as their main language.These people also know how to be convivial.

See the smiles and moving bodies? These are people having fun at a birthday party. (photo by KS)

That Monday when my colleague returned to work and told me all about the "party," eyes rolling. She detailed how the young woman hosting the Geburtstagsfeier posted signs downstairs the afternoon of the event and notified her neighbors that the party may get loud. Seeing those signs as she entered the apartment building, my colleague had a glimmer of hope. Later however, she almost cried from exasperation when explaining more about how the evening actually turned out. All that the "wild party" entailed was a somewhat sophisticated meal where the guests sat around a dinner table the whole night, conversing in German. Even more comical was that there was no need to notify any neighbors about noise, because the whole group was so boringly quiet. Schade.

I laughed loudly yet compassionately at her story, commiserating with her once again regarding the challenges we face here in Germany. Unfortunately, we have experienced all of it. Germany is the land of the unfun birthday celebration. It is the home of the seemingly endless sit-down meal where one has to pinch oneself to stay awake. It is the place where party noise, laughter, games, fun and enjoyment are elusive. Then there are the long and dreadful German conversations, sometimes about sinks or where the neighborhood kids now live, or about which restaurant serves the most inexpensive Chinese food or what's good in the frozen section at Aldi this week. Yawn.

When she told me her story, relief also washed over me. She confirmed that I'm not utterly crazy to think German parties are boring. Until I met her, I sometimes thought my misery at German birthday gatherings was caused by my American-ness. Now I know it's not true. British people, like Germans, hail from the continent of Europe and are also quite civilized, but can experience as much displeasure as we Amis can at a birthday party here.

Naja, there is no hope other than to be polite and attend, or to gracefully bow out. There is a third option: show 'em how it's done with a real birthday party, complete with fun.

Decide for yourself, because excitement on a German birthday will not materialize unless the birthday boy causes a scene, someone falls off their chair, or a guest chokes on a forkful of Mutti's Kuchen.

Wörterbuch / Dictionary

Amis - Americans, a cordial term used by Germans for people from the U.S.

bio - organic

(die) Geburtstagsfeier - birthday celebration

(der) Geschenkgutschein - gift certificate, voucher

Hallo - Hello. Hallo can also be used quite sarcastically as an attention-getter when you screw up.

(der) Kaffee und (der) Kuchen - coffee and cake (read more about this in related post "Kaffee und Kuchen")

(die) Konditorei - cake shop

(der) Konditor, (die) Konditorin (female) - pastry chef, confectioner

(die) Milch - milk

(die) Mutter, Mutti - mother

(das) Mutterland - motherland. Fatherland? What is the difference, I don't know.