When is a Kleenex not a Kleenex?

I seem to spend a lot of time at the post office.  I don't think this is a particularly German experience; rather, this has everything to do with being a stranger in a strange land.  First of all, I love sending postcards, and as a lifelong Stamp Traveller (Happy Canada Day!), I like to pick out flashy new stamp releases to wow my friends back home.   Post offices do have machines that prints stamps to order depending on how much money you feed them, but  the stamp is always the same stylized graphic of the Reichstag in Berlin and (Achtung!) they do not give change, so I tend to steer clear.  Secondly, German postal workers seem unable to read names that are not of indisputably local origin, and because apartments do not have numbers and everything is delivered based on the name on your mailbox, that means a lot of mail does not reach me without an extra trip to the post office.  With suitable identification, of course.

On my most recent trip to send out some packages, I picked up some scotch tape as well.  The cashier and I did our regular song and dance routine where he tries to convince me not to send a package express because it costs too much and I try to explain the very foreign concepts of deadline, urgent, and ASAP.  Germans are very concerned about saving money, especially, it seems, other people's money.  It's the perfect storm of thriftiness and nosiness.  Anyway, after he had rung up the packages, I put the scotch tape on top of the pile.  And, I said, the Tesa.  At which point he looked at me and said, I see you have learned some of our German words.  As if, of course, every other word out of my mouth was not also German that I have painstakingly learned and practiced in order to make transactions such as this one.  Yes, I smiled, I'm integrating.

For those of you who don't know, Tesa is the ubiquitous brand of scotch tape in Germany.  Let us not forget that Scotch is also a brand name, one that, probably because "transparent adhesive tape" is too unwieldy for everyone except off-brand marketers, has become shorthand for the thing itself in all its generic forms.  Germans have their shorthand too.  When is a Kleenex not a Kleenex?  When you're in Germany, of course.  But here it's not just a tissue.  No, here they have their own brands, and so instead of a hankie you pass a Tempo.

New brand names add a whole new dimension to the foreign experience, and make you sit up and realize how many trademarked titles have slipped into your vocabulary.  For example, bandaid.  Bandage doesn't really mean the same thing, does it?  A paramedic applies a bandage; your mom gives you a bandaid.  Here in Germany, bathroom cabinets are stocked up with Hansaplast (of several kinds, which must be confusing).   Or Whiteout.  When was the last time someone asked you if you were carrying around correction fluid in your pencil case?  (I know, it's been a while since I had a pencil case, too.)  For Germans, the answer would be a matter of Tipp-Ex.

There are also some things that have escaped being linked to a brand name here.  For example, Jello is just Wackelpudding, or wiggly pudding.  Popsicle also passed Germany by - here it's the self-explanatory Eis am Stiel, or ice cream on a stick.  Post-it notes are Haftnotizen.  Saran-Wrap is Haushaltsfolie.

But some things remain the same.  Tupperware is, and always will be, Tupper.  In fact, the Germans love this one so much (and Tupperware parties - but that's another story), that they have not only adopted the brand name as the noun but as a verb.  That means you don't just toss your sandwich in a container, you eintuppern it.  TM, naturally.