You know your time is winding down -- if you're in my modest price league, anyway -- when you need a new watch and wonder, "Could the next one be my last? Will my mortal ticker stop before the timepiece needs replacing?

Thus preoccupied, I glumly set off for the watch shops in my neighborhood.

I went first to the place where I'd bought my latest -- now dearly departed -- model. The shop is solidly German, and run by what appear to be father and son. While the latter waits on customers, the former, a loupe over one eye, is often hunched over a balky mechanism in back. The two know their watches, and the prices on the tags are what you pay -- Germany isn't a bargaining culture, after all. You can bet they set their prices carefully: low enough to attract buyers, high enough for a decent profit.

My search continued at a shop on a choice corner down the street. The proprietors there, a Turkish couple that has lived in Germany for 30 years, moved in fairly recently. I spotted a watch in their window very similar to one I'd examined at the first shop -- same brand, just about the same features. "How much?" I inquired, wanting to compare prices. I must have flinched when the woman presented the tag -- the cost was nearly nine times higher -- because she quickly assured me: "For you, half price!"

Nice try, lady!

Such "bazaar behavior" is no longer unheard of in Germany, which has got a lot more multicultural since the end of World War II. Some 500,000 foreigners were living in West Germany in 1950, about 1 percent of the population. Recruitment of "guest workers" -- mainly Turks, along with Italians, Greeks, Spaniards, Portuguese, Yugoslavians, Moroccans and Tunisians -- raised the number to about 4 million by 1973, according to Germany's Interior Ministry.

From 1973 to 1985, most new immigrants were family members of foreigners already in the country. Travel restrictions were lifted in the former Soviet bloc at the end of the 1980s, allowing more than 2.5 million ethnic Germans (including dependent family members) -- chiefly from Poland, Romania and the former Soviet Union -- to resettle in Germany between 1987 and 2000. In addition, the number of applicants for political asylum increased dramatically between 1987 and 1992.

The European Union's recent eastward expansion is also prodding Germany, which long sought to protect its ethnic and cultural homogeneity, to open up to more foreigners. Ten countries -- among them neighboring Poland and the Czech Republic -- joined it in the EU three years ago. Bulgaria and Romania entered the now 27-member bloc last January.

According to the Federal Statistical Office, about 6.8 million foreign nationals were living in Germany at the end of 2006, more than 8 percent of the population. Turks were the biggest group, at 26 percent, followed by Italians (8 percent), Poles (5 percent), Serbs and Montenegrins (5 percent), and Greeks (4.5 percent). When naturalized and ethnic-German immigrants are taken into account, however, nearly one in every five persons living in Germany today has an immigrant background.

Foreign influences are increasingly felt. The famously stiff Germans have loosened up a bit. Turkish döner kebap has surpassed sausage with fries as Germans' favorite snack. A bright-robed African in the subway on Monday morning isn't necessarily a figment of delirium tremens anymore. It's now common to hear Russian and Polish on the street, and stores have taken to stocking the better Russian vodka brands.

Alas, the trains in this country aren't as punctual as they used to be. Heading home last weekend from a visit to a friend in Westphalia, for instance, I learned upon arrival at the station in Münster that my train to Hamburg would be coming more than 60 minutes late. Fortunately, I only had to wait 15 minutes or so because I caught another train going to Hamburg.

It was running 75 minutes late.