Awkward.

My favourite coffee shop in Göppingen is neatly tucked away down an unremarkable side street.
It is my favourite because they offer a delectable fusion of excellent cappuccino and remote distancing from my school, students, teachers and anyone else that I might know, or might know me. Paradise.

Although us Brits are internationally acclaimed for being Kings (&Queens) of small talking prowess, the nightmare that could ensue if we accidentally bumped into someone we knew, but not all that well, when out and about minding our own business and polite thoughts, borders on the traumatic.

This morning, I bordered on that trauma. There was trouble in paradise.

Sneakily I crept out of school for a coffee; I could have invited people, but I didn't. I loitered to my hiding place like the scallywag that I am, and settled down for an antisocial coffee. Then, BAM, I spotted another teacher sitting two tables away from me. I didn't say hello. He had seen that I had seen him and subsequently ignored him. Five minutes passed and it was then too late to initiate any form of recognition or, even worse, eye contact. I contemplated walking away and finding another cafe twice before I ordered, and drank my coffee so quickly that now, later, I have red bumpy burn marks all over my tongue.

Why, I ask you, was this such an ordeal?!

The problem lies in the fact that I am very awkwardly British, and that I know our lovely German friends do not have the awkward radar that we seem to possess. They don't even have a word for the emotion. (The closest you can get is 'unangenehm', which roughly translates as 'unpleasant'.) In the development of the German psyche, some bright spark realised that 'awkward' would hinder productivity, and so thereby decreed to bypass the whole scenario, preferring to battle uncomfortable situations head on without even a grimace.

I do not think this neglect of awkward is merely a German phenomenon; read any 'Welcome to Britain', or 'Britain for Dummies' guide and the rudimentary message is that you should under no circumstance known to mankind initiate any sort of conversation with a stranger on the bus/tube/bus stop, unless you want the poor Brit's bum to fall off with an overload of awkward. This means that no citizen of any other country in the world would understand the excruciating torture of deciding whether to get on the train at the same time as an old school friend you talked to once, five years ago, and having to make small talk, or else risk being known as the person-who-ignores-people; or, alternatively, walk the 5 miles home in the rain because you just can't face it.

Another colleague of mine asked my name for the 4th time, last week. Everyone has watched Mr McIntyre explain it to us; you just can't do that. The three times rule dictates that after the third time of asking, and subsequently forgetting, someone's name, no more can you ask what they are called. You must just accept the fact that you will have to call them 'mate', forever. But oh no, he laughed in the face of awkward and ploughed right on. Job done. He'll probably ask again next week and not even bat an eyelid.

What can I say - expat life, full of social predicaments.