The past week in the office has led me to one conclusion: there are better places to spend the summer than in a German industrial park. It’s nice to open the window to catch a breeze, but it’s never long before you hear:
- hammers, saws and other construction equipment
- jackhammers
- trucks that run their engines all day in order to mix asphalt or concrete
- trucks that shake and empty the garbage bins
- trucks that shake and empty the recycling bins
- guys with electric hedge clippers
- guys with electric leaf blowers (as previously mentioned)
- guys driving street sweepers (whether necessary or not)
while you’re trying to work. The delivery vehicles that come by are almost inaudible in comparison.
All of this noise is made by men. Women apparently don’t get any kicks from it.
The funny thing is: in America, this kind of noise exists, too, but I’ve always associated it with progress, not with frayed nerves. That’s because no one has to listen to it all day.
You see, we have a wonderful invention called air conditioning. It not only cools the room you’re in; it also blocks noise from the outside. Even indoor sounds are muffled by the pleasant white noise it produces. After only a few minutes in an American office building, you are in a state of Zen. You hear phones ringing and people talking, but they all seem so distant.
I’ve been thinking of patenting air conditioning in Germany, as I’m sure I could make a fortune from it. It does use a lot of energy, and it heats up the planet as fast as it cools the room, but think of how it would cool our tempers!
Summer offers many sounds. The sonic environment of downtown Pittsburgh includes:
- the hum of all the air conditioners embedded in the windows of older office buildings
- the clank of metal gratings in the street and sidewalk as you walk or drive over them
- the honk of car horns when someone doesn’t notice the light has changed
- the “smack” of a gargantuan pizza as it lands on its serving tray
- the roar of a city bus as it starts up, leaving a cloud of hot smoke at waist level
- the flutter of a flock of pigeons as they descend on some crumbs that someone left behind
- the chords of a random pop song for 15 seconds as some show-off in a convertible pulls up to a traffic light
- the distant beeping of a backhoe in reverse
- the “Ding!” of a heavy brass elevator as it reaches your floor, just before the doors roll open.
The suburbs offer a different soundscape. I think of:
- the echo of elevator music inside the vast supermarkets
- the rattle of ice cubes as they are shot out of the machine and into your cup
- the hiss of water coming out of a drinking fountain when you push the button, then the sudden vibration as the motor kicks in to keep the rest of the water impossibly cold
- the purr of a lawnmower as some kid cuts the neighbors’ grass
- the zip of the UPS truck as it swoops down the street to make a speedy delivery
- the tweets and caws of visiting birds
- the rustle of laundry hung out to dry, or of sunflowers in the garden
- the chirp of cicadas and crickets
- the murmur of the neighbors’ TV through an open window late at night.
I think I’ll take that over the jackhammers.
