Controlling my World

If you knew me well (or maybe even a little bit) back in the States you knew that I loved to watch TV. There’s a good chance that I watched too much. One might say I was willing to watch whatever was on, with a special penchant for decorating shows and documentaries on prisons (but that’s for another day). Moving to Germany has broken my TV addiction cold turkey, a lifestyle change made easier because German TVs and programming are a hot mess.

Today I need to address German remote controls:

In our old apartment the remote had two rather unfortunate features - one, that all the numbers and symbols had been rubbed off long before our arrival and two, it lacked channel up and down buttons. The lack of guiding signage created far too many unintended mutings, random displays that were impossible to erase except with complicated button sequences, and general frustration. The lack of channel buttons was “solved” by instead having the SCAN button that flipped through the channels in rapid succession, a process that could only be stopped if you timed your re-pressing of scan with hair-trigger precision. Oh the fun that provided!

Our new remote is far superior to the old one in that all buttons are clearly labelled AND we have channel up and down. (It’s the little things in life, really.) Of course, this “better” remote with its channel buttons does enjoy the entirely illogical feature of using the channel DOWN button to turn on the TV. This appears to be common across Germany is evidence that the rumors of German ingenuity are perhaps inflated. Oh, the remote also has a Power button, but that’s only used to turn it off. Obviously.

This weird feature of German remotes caused a great deal of consternation as we travelled on the first Seminar and repeatedly found ourselves pointing at the TV in a frenzy of button-mashing, sputtering incoherent exclamations of rage. We just needed the weather report!!!! (Eventually you remember to push channel down; but it’s remarkable to me how long muscle memory reigns in every day tasks like remote usage. All my life I’ve pushed Power, why stop now?)

The new remote also came with a “Magic” button. What magic does the remote conjure? Not sure quite yet. Maybe I should point it at John instead...