Erlangen 91052 (12)—Everyday Words: Tchüß!

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One year ago on Round and  Square (9 April 2013)—China's Lunar Calendar 2013 04-09
Two years ago on Round and Square (9 April 2012)—La Pensée Chinoise: Primitive Classification
Three years ago on Round and Square (9 April 2011)—Exilic Response: Introduction

[a] The end (for now) RF

I had to make a little trip yesterday to the customs center in the little village of Tannenlohe, positioned between Erlangen (91052) and Nuremberg. A package was waiting for me, and it contained a bunch of old books that I purchased in the 1980s and 1990s. I was told that in the "old days," just a few years ago, I could have sent approval for them to open the box; they would then send it on to me at my office. No more. Now I have to take the Stadtbus 295 to Tennenlohe Frauenweiherstraße...thirty minutes through woodlands and outskirts before finally arriving in the middle of what looks like a parking lot. Could this be right?

Yup.

[b] See ya! RF

I walked into a nondescript building that made no mention of Deutsche Post, and just had a small four letters—Zoll (in this instance, "customs." I knew this was right, but the place did not seem particularly welcoming. I walked through the doors, went to the wrong window, was pointed to the correct office, and arrived to find a big, young, burly, Germanic guy with one of the warmest smiles I can remember. I handed him the letter that "he" had sent me. He set that one aside and picked up the next page—the customs slip that my wife had filled out when she sent me the books. That was what he needed. All seemed to be going well as he retrieved the box and set it in front of me.

"Invoice?"

"Huh? I bought the books twenty years ago. I don't have the receipts anymore."

"Invoice?"

"As I said, these are old books. They are from my office." This went on for some time before I blurted the following: "My wife put them into the box and mailed them to me from Virginia." "Oh!"...and everything was o.k. It turned out that she wasn't a used books seller, and all was well. "Open the box and show me the contents." Done; done. "Tape it back up; you are finished."

[c] Partin' Machine RF

I taped the box, nodded kindly to the now-stern-now-warm big-guy, and prepared to leave the office with my haul of academic platinum. As I neared the portal and prepared to disappear into the hallway, I heard one of the most familiar words in Germany today (it has been so for several decades). 

Tschüß!

I turned around and repeated tschuß!, and we parted as happy customs-companions.

***  ***

So, if you thought that this post would be about packaging, shipping, and customs-customs, you would be mistaken (like a Simpsons episode, we start with a twist). It is rather about the big, burly, bubba-guy who seemingly changed personality when it was time to bid adieu.

That's the story of my life here in Erlangen 91052. 

"Goodbyes" matter, and for serious social-theoretical reasons that will help us conclude this essay. For now, just know that if you gained your linguistic knowledge of goodbye! from The Lawrence Welk Show's channeling of the von Trapp family singers, you will have big problems here in Erlangen 91052 in 2014. 

Lawrence Welk Goodbye! 2:34

[d] Tschuß! RF

I will not speak (now) to the other languages, but let's just get this clear. The auf wiedersehen that you hear from the cherubic singers on the Lawrence Welk Show...never gets said here. Oh, I exaggerate you say? Come spend a week with me. I dare you to "hear it." But isn't that what Blickpunkt Deutschland "said" I should "say" in high school German? I'm pretty sure that's what "they said."

Nope, now it's tschüß!, and this didn't happen just yesterday. I first encountered the phrase in a cassette tape series I checked out of the Madison Public Library in 1998, so I am not claiming that it is "new." On the other hand, I do know that my high school and college German in the late-1970s and early-1980s never had tschuß! in them. You don't believe me? I am looking right now at my soiled copy of German in Review right now—one of the books that was in the precious package I received just yesterday. Nope, nein, nichts.

Tschüß! doesn't appear in there once. Not even once.

So what happened?

Well, that will require a follow up post, and a little bit of fieldwork (look for it in late-March). For now, however, I want to emphasize the ubiquity of the term. I use it in parting at Kaufland, at my local tobacco store (where I buy my weekly copy of Die Zeit, not tobacco), after a brief conversation on the bus, when I leave my favorite zaiten sushi restaurant, and almost every day when I lock my office door at what we call the IKGF (Internationales Kolleg für Geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung), and speak my parting words to colleagues before walking the two pastoral blocks back to my apartment on Carl Thiersch Straße in Erlangen 91052.

[e] Headin' Out RF

Tschüß!

And that is why I find this little "bye-bye" so interesting. It is fascinating in a(n) historical sense, of course, and our follow-up post will investigate what people have to say about the "development" of the term in the last thirty years. This is not your...Lawrence Welk's...Germany anymore. That is for a later day, though.

For now, let's consider what I think is really most interesting about this little parting ejaculation. It's one of the most florid words in all of social theory (not to mention country music). Goodbye isn't just "language." It certainly isn't a tiny little final aside in the back-and-forth of purchasing, question-asking, or conversing in a dynamic social dyad. It is the very moment when the teeming vivacity of dialogue (or more) makes the cut-off toward parting—toward severing the social dynamic. 

The sound of goodbye.

And "parting" is such an indispensable part of social interaction that we need to focus our gaze keenly in that direction. Do we do this often enough? No, we don't. We tend to see the "meat" (or "meet") of the interaction in terms of what is happening in it. Unless we spend a lot of time listening to Patty Loveless or Hank Williams, we are most likely to think about the middle of the interaction. I am saying that we need to focus on the end—on how we say (in words and actions and gestures) "goodbye."

[f] Ending RF

The "sense of an ending" has everything to do with how people associate. You can't spell "meeting" without "time"...ing, and (aside from introductions, which we will consider later), nothing packs a mnemonic, historical, and emotional punch like the sound of goodbye. And let's not even kid ourselves. Auf wiedersehen (see you again!) does not compress phonemes and letters into as evocative an utterance as tschüß!

Think about it, and we'll return to this topic next week (I can't let it go, and because it is probably in a punch-match with genau for the most common word in German social life. People have opinions about it, and (as we will see on Tuesday), there is a varied world between danke...tschüß! and schöne abend...tschüß!...and auf widersehen.

Are they subtle? No, not really. They're all about goodbye.

Pierre Bourdieu will help us as we expand our parting struggles next week. 

We will consider history, culture, fieldwork, archives...and everyday experiences in Erlangen 91052.

NEXT
Tuesday, 4 March 2014
Erlangen 91052 (13)—Everyday Words: Tschüß! (b)
The word has a history, and it will take historical (and ethnographic) inquiry to begin to understand it. 

[g] Auf Wiedersehen! RF