So, in honour of my boyfriend getting a ticket for biking across an intersection on a red light, I want to talk a bit about the cultural differences between Montreal and Berlin, as expressed through jay-walking.
Basically, it seems in Berlin that one only need cross the street against the light to demonstrate one’s auslander status. No Germans ever disobey the ampelmann. (Except, apparently, my boyfriend – I must be having a bad influence on him!). In Montreal, NOBODY waits for the lights to change. If you don’t see any cars coming, you cross. And if you stand and wait for the pedestrian signal light to change to ‚walk‘, you are kind of an idiot, or an auslander! Who has time to obey the law down to the letter? In Montreal we have a very subjective relationship to these ‚lesser‘ forms of social control… Which is actually quite funny, because drivers also play a bit fast and loose with the ‚law‘, and driving is really on the unsafe side. Even New Yorkers are shocked by how aggressive Montreal drivers can be!
But… Germans seem bound to the calm obedience of waiting for the light to change!
When I came to Berlin I was rather bemused by this, since as I said, waiting for the light is a fool’s game in Montreal. So, I crossed on my own terms, gathering a few shocked or even angry glances from the better German pedestrians as I made my way into the (nonexistent, but potential) oncoming traffic at empty intersections. Until one day in Kreuzberg, walking along Oranienstraße, minding my own business, paying no heed to the pedestrian crossing, suddenly I hear a police siren hooting at me from a nearby police car. And then a voice comes over the loudspeaker… in German… and everybody on the sidewalk turns to look at me. I don’t know what was said, in German, but it was obviously a severe reprimand. A pedestrian turned to me and roughly translated that they were telling me I should not cross against the light, but that they were sort of joking. I was fully and completely humiliated. But I wait for the light now. Most of the time.