Category: German Culture

This morning I sat in a doctor’s waiting room, happily engrossed in ‘Cosmopolitan’ (I’m always delighted when doctors have good magazines in their waiting rooms, though as a good uncertainty avoider I always take a book along, just in case). There was just one other person in the waiting room, so fourteen of the sixteen chairs were free. An elderly man entered the room and of the fourteen free chairs, he chose the one next to mine. Now, that annoyed me to no end and nearly took the fun out of ‘Cosmo’. In Germany, there is an unwritten rule for waiting rooms: you don’t sit on the chair next to someone if there are enough other free chairs. You at least leave one free chair between yourself and the other person. (Same with benches in the town or a park, by the way: you don’t sit next to someone you don’t know on a bench when there is a free bench nearby). Of course it’s not the law and nobody will say anything if you don’t stick to the rule, but it’s basically how it’s done and the majority of people stick to it. Why is that so? Because of personal space. People have their personal space and one doesn’t get too close because it’s rude. I’m old enough to have seen “Dirty Dancing” in the cinema and when thinking about personal space, I always have this vision of Patrick Swayze telling his Baby: “This is my dance space. This is your dance space. I don’t go into yours, you don’t go into mine.”

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