Public Transit and Food Anxiety - Dresden, Sep. 17

I did not sleep well at all last night, mostly due to lots of intermittent noise. Someone in the room snored very loudly for short intervals, some people outside started yelling for no apparent reason at 2am, and cars driving by in the morning were very loud since all the windows were open for some reason. I did try my noise cancelling headphones a couple times, but they're not comfortable to sleep with. I usually sleep with my head sideways, which I can't do with headphones on, so it wasn't comfortable for me. Not a great night, so I've been fairly tired today.

When I did finally get up around 11am, I wanted to get some food to hopefully energize me a bit. But I have to admit, I've been really intimidated about ordering food here. It's not like it's fundamentally different from getting food in the US, just tell the person what you want and give them money in exchange. But there's a handful of minor differences that each intimidate me a little bit. And summing all these minor intimidations together makes me very intimidated about it. Here's a few of those things:

Obviously, the language is different. I do know a bit of German, enough to say things like "I'd like a pizza!" or "Check please!" But usually when ordering food, you get asked questions like "What size?" or "What toppings do you want?" or "How spicy do you want that?" Those are questions that I don't understand and can't answer in German. And I don't want to just ask to speak in English each time, because that doesn't help me learn the words.

Another big one for me has just been figuring out where to go and who to talk to. I've seen so many shops and restaurants where the entrance just isn't clear at all. So many of the doors around here are covered in stickers and graffiti for some reason, so it's not clear which door you're meant to go through. Even more confusing is that you're not even meant to enter the buildings sometimes! A lot of smaller restaurants have an exterior window somewhere that you're meant to order through, so you have to find that instead. I've also noticed a lot of businesses are really dark inside for some reason, so it's not even clear whether they're open unless you can find a bunch of people standing in line or some other indication.

Here's an example I found on Google Street View. There's 2 bars here, and 3 doors. Which door corresponds to each bar? I could probably make an educated guess that the middle door is to get to the upper floors, but how do I know for certain? Some buildings have that door in the middle, other buildings have that door on the edge. None of the doors have signs on them indicating where they go. And on top of that, all these windows look dark inside and I don't see any people. Are they open for business? I don't know!

One obvious way to tell if a restaurant is open is whether there's people sitting at tables outside the front of the restaurant. I actually quite like seats out the front like this, but that's also been another source of confusion since I've not experienced outdoor seating like this before. I'm used to restaurants having a main entrance that everyone goes through, but this style of seating completely removes that. And waiters in the US will basically hold your hand through the entire dining process, including bringing you to your table, asking if you're ready to order, asking if you need anything multiple times through the meal, and nagging you about paying afterwards.

From what I've gathered, that's not the case in Germany. Your waiter will not hold your hand through the whole thing, you basically have to summon them when you want something. You choose your own seat, and you call the waiter when you're ready to pay. It's still not clear to me whether you have to call them when you want to order or if they'll come to you. How do you know if the waiter knows about you after you sit somewhere?

These are just a collection of things I've come across since I've been in Germany. I've managed to figure out some of them, but I'm still confused on a lot of them. And that's not helped by the fact that I've been very concerned about not doing the wrong thing. I don't want to be seen as the dumb American tourist who doesn't know how to order food in the country he's visiting. Which is pretty silly, since literally no one here knows who I am, and I will never see any of these people ever again. So who cares if I look foolish?

I only just consciously realized this today. Ever since I've arrived in Germany, I've been subconsciously fussing over how people would think of me if I did something wrong. Because I've had this anxiety about not wanting to look foolish, I've been incredibly reluctant to order food even though I'm hungry. I'm glad I've finally realized that I've been doing this to myself, because it's a bit ridiculous. It really doesn't matter what people think of me, it's much more important that I don't starve myself, and don't have so much stress about it. I'm definitely going to be more conscious about this moving forward, and just let people think whatever they want about me without letting that affect me!
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After I'd finally gotten some food, I wanted to visit the university in town, which is TU Dresden. I took the public transit to get there and was looking up routes through Google Maps. But I think its routes must be outdated, because the trams and busses kept turning in places I wasn't expecting. So I had to hop off and find another vehicle going in the right direction until I got close enough to walk.

I eventually made my way to TU Dresden. Again, I was expecting students to be roaming around campus since it was the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, but there was hardly anyone around. It felt a bit like a ghost town with the occasional person just passing through. I'm beginning to suspect there's just no in-person classes because of the pandemic. Or there's something else going on that I'm not aware of. Regardless, I was definitely hoping to see some actual activity happening on university campuses, but right now they're just dead areas.

Lack of people aside, I still had a walk through campus anyways to get a feel for it. The buildings aren't as imposing as the ones in Berlin, but they're still very large. And similar to TU Berlin, TU Dresden has a big main road running through the middle of it. However the Dresden campus actually has a pedestrian bridge running over it, so that's nice. But there definitely seemed to be a lot less foliage around the Dresden campus, most of the place seemed to either have buildings or paved roads. There was also a lot of construction happening on several buildings, meaning it was hard to actually go everywhere I wanted to see.

So I've not really seen what I've been hoping for in the campuses in Germany so far. The biggest disappointment for me has been that both campuses had very few people in them, making them feel like dead places. In my mind, a good school has lots of students bustling around, but that's clearly not what's happening here. I guess my expectations have been out of line, so I'll need to readjust for the future.

I made my way back to the center of the city to better document some of the road infrastructure here, because there are some very neat things I've noticed. As I mentioned yesterday, there are very few places that cars to go through the center of town, less than 5 main roads (depending on how you count). This means pedestrians and cyclists encounter cars very rarely, so they're not usually a concern at all.

When cars are encountered, it's handled really well from what I've seen. One simple solution is to just have people go over the cars, such as this bridge that connects the north and south sides of Dresden. It also goes over a major road, so there's no interactions between people and cars.

The other main solution is very well designed crosswalks. In the US, there's usually a 6-lane road with hundreds of cars zooming down at over 40mph. Here, there's only 1 or 2 lines of cars going in each direction, and the lanes are designed in a way that cars drive under 20mph, which is a heck of a lot safer. Additionally, the lanes going in opposite directions have been physically separated from each other, which allows people to deal with one direction of cars at a time. This also means people don't have to wait for a clearing on both sides, a clearing on one side is sufficient progress through.

The car lanes also have a bike lane painted onto them for cyclists. It's not fantastic bike infrastructure, physical separation from car lanes would make them a lot better. But they're at least more than 3ft wide like in the US, so that's something. And they're usually denoted by red surfaces, which is a nice visual indicator that cars should keep their distance.

In addition to separated car lanes, the lanes are spaced even further apart to allow all the public transit vehicles to have their own section in the middle. The busses and trams are the only vehicles allowed in this area, so it gives them extra priority over cars. And because the public transit vehicles often have tens or hundreds of people on them, fewer of those vehicles are needed to move people around than if each person had their own car. And fewer vehicles means there's less risk of a person getting hit by one, thereby helping improve safety. Oh, and they're bright yellow, so it's hard to not see them. There's also a station placed in the middle for people to get on and off the public transit. It's right in the middle of the pedestrian area, so it's easy to get in and out as needed.

Lastly, pedestrians have their own stop lights at each cross point. And people here seem to be really good at actually waiting for the light to change even if there's no vehicles in the intersection. Unlike the US, where people often just walk across if there's no cars around while the light is red. The lights here appear to be on a timed circuit, and it's frequent enough that it doesn't feel like you're waiting forever to get your turn.

​I've also noticed that people are incredibly good at passing by each other. I've noticed a few times when there's a few dozen people waiting for the crosswalk light to change, and everyone gets past each other in about 10 seconds. Take this picture for example.

Now imagine that we repeat this chaotic crossing where every person has their own 2-ton death machine (*cough* I mean, uh, car). Without any other infrastructure to guide people, it would become a congested mess that wouldn't clear for several minutes. Even with modern infrastructure, it would still take a lot longer than 10 seconds to get everyone across. since drivers have to wait for the car in front of them move before they can. This means people further from the traffic light are still sitting around after the light turns green. People are just so much better at navigating past each other when not in giant vehicles.

The last thing I want to highlight is crosswalks that separate pedestrians and cyclists. These are great, since cyclists don't like to be held up by pedestrians, and there's a higher risk of a bike hitting a pedestrian. The red on the ground makes it very obvious where pedestrians and cyclists are meant to go. Also, the stop line for cars is very far back from where people are actually crossing, you can just barely see the dashed line on the left in the picture below. This makes it much easier to tell that a car will stop sufficiently far away to not hit you, rather than stopping 2ft away from you like crosswalks in the US.

That's all I've got from Dresden, heading to Leipzig tomorrow! I've got a family friend who lives there, so I'll be able to ask all the questions that have built up over the last couple days. Looking forward to that!