Trying to Pay My Bill in Germany.

Dealing with money is quite different in Germany, and trying to pay my bill in a restaurant is no exception.  I have to access my money differently, I spend it differently, and I struggle to keep track of the cash flow.  I’ve been able to use our US credit card in more places than expected, but frequently I only have the option of using our German debit card or cash.  In the US we almost never used our debit card (since it wasn’t as secure as our credit card) and we rarely used cash, which was usually reserved for farmer’s markets, gifts, or emergencies.

But as our German bank account grows and our remaining time here diminishes, we’ve found ourselves heading to the ATM more often in an effort to spend those euros while we can.  Yet, spending cash and entering pin numbers still feels foreign to me even after eight months of living here.  It would feel foreign to me even if I didn’t live in Germany – it’s been eight years since I cashed my paycheck weekly and then had to use that money to pay for what I needed.  Even so, here I am once again fumbling with bills and coins.

It doesn’t help that I’d be nervous trying to pay no matter where I was.  Here in Germany or home in South Carolina where the cashier might call me sweetie as she reads off my total, my awkward, agoraphobic tendencies make things like that hard.  Usually I get a free pass because Mr. Meena is with me and he takes care of paying, but there are times when I go out without him and I have to pay – namely my weekly coffee meetup with a group of expat women.  The coffee shop we meet at is one that takes away all my alternatives; I can’t pay with a debit card and there’s not a little electronic screen that I can glance at when I don’t understand what they said (do I ever??).  The women who work there can speak English but they usually speak German to me (which is actually quite refreshing since often people will immediately switch to English instead of letting me practice speaking German).  This is how the encounter often goes when I attempt to pay:

Frau: inquisitive look
Me: Caramel latte.
Frau: Ah, ja.
Me: leans forward and intensely listens so that I can hear what she says
Frau: Drei und sechzig.
Me: wait… was that three and sixty or six and thirty?  Surely it’s not six and thirty.  Or did she say zwanzig?
Frau: …
Me: hands her the incorrect amount of change

What makes the process more confusing is that amounts are often said backwards.  For example, twenty six would be said in reverse order (and as one word): six and twenty, or sechsundzwanzig.  But I’ve found that cashiers  aren’t always consistent, sometimes they will say zwangzig und sechs.  Maybe it’s because they can tell that I’m not German or perhaps it varies by region, I don’t know.  So I try to listen for the numbers but my anxious brain can’t always handle translating the numbers, putting them in the correct order, having to decide immediately how much to tip, and also counting out the right amount of coins, which I have to stop and inspect since they are still a bit unfamiliar to me.  It can be overwhelming.  Add in a local dialect or a quick speaker and I’ll have to ask them to repeat it or maybe even say it in English.  And some words sound so alike to me, like ten (zehn) and cents.  Sometimes I choose to avoid the stress entirely by just handing them a five or ten euro bill when I know it’s got to be more than my total.  But doing that leaves me with an endless supply of coins (which Mr. Meena is happy to claim as his Brezel fund).

Photo by Branko licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Also, it’s very weird to hand over a ten euro bill for a total that’s barely over five euros and then only receive coins back.  Where are my one dollar bills?  It feels almost like being cheated, but of course it’s just because coins can be worth much more here.  While it’s rare to use anything bigger than a quarter (25 cents) in the US, one and two euro coins are commonplace in Germany.  When I work up the bravery to go into a store or bakery alone I usually end up handing over the cash with shaking hands.  Last week I went to my favorite coffee shop and I couldn’t even hand the cashier the bills because my hands were shaking so badly from nerves, I had to set the money down on the counter.  Hopefully he chalked it up to coffee buzz or just ignored it altogether.

So, I often dread paying my bill in Germany.  I’ll keep doing it, of course, in order to practice my German and overcome my fear.  But I’m definitely looking forward to eventually flying back home to the US, hearing my total in my native language, and then swiping inserting  my credit card with relief.

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Above photo by Visit Flanders licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0; modified by My Meena Life.

Featured photo by Christian licensed under CC BY 2.0.