One of my wife's cousins, now working in Sweden, commiserated with her recently on the phone. My wife lapped it up. Having lived in Germany for almost five years now, she's solidly in Phase II of what I've come to regard as the Three-Phase Expat Acclimatization Process: Phase I is Attraction, Phase II is Repulsion, and Phase III is Equilibrium. Remember, you heard about the 3-PEA Process here first.

The cousin spent a few months in Germany some years back, and he's glad, very glad, to be outta here. The Swedes are more relaxed and tolerant of foreigners, he related, and aren't forever talking about money.

An obsession with money is usually ascribed to Americans. To be more precise, Americans are absorbed in making money or, if need be, borrowing it. Germans' great preoccupation with money, however, is focused mainly on saving it -- and having the grasping state redistribute as much of it to them as possible.

It's remarkable how exercised Germans can get over essentially piddling amounts. Germany is a wealthy country, and German politics often seems to be a never-ending chain of drawn-out disputes over who cops a few more euros from the treasury, be it in the form of child-care benefits (Elterngeld), subsidies to first-time homeowners (Eigenheimzulage), subsidies for private pensions (Riester-Rente), subsidies for business start-ups (Gründungszuschuss), tax deductions for commuters (Pendlerpauschale), or whatever.

Germans' abiding love of penny-pinching was encapsulated in the advertising slogan "Geiz ist geil!" (loosely translated: "Stinginess is cool!"), which has become a mantra of sorts over the past several years. The slogan was launched by the German electronics retailer Saturn to plug its low prices.

There's nothing wrong with frugality, of course -- quite the contrary -- so long as it's not taken to extremes (the meaning of "extreme" being highly subjective). But it often goes hand in hand with a certain small-mindedness.

One of my first memories of Germany was a display of frugality. The year: 1976. The lady of the house where I was staying, in Freiburg, dropped an egg on the kitchen counter. Rather than wiping up the mess and pitching it, which I, a continuously well-fed American, would have considered normal, she carefully collected the innards on a plate. I was struck by her behavior and put it down to wartime want.

Fast forward about 20 years. Then with a job in Moscow, I was subletting my Hamburg apartment to a young German carpenter. Part of our deal was that he pay for his telephone calls and I pay the monthly fees for both the telephone and the connection. During one of my visits, he offered to replace the telephone with one of his own so that I could save some money. I thanked him but said that the amount wasn't really worth the bother. Not worth the bother? he said, surprised. Why, in the space of months I could save enough for an ice-cream cone...

Seen from a foreign perspective, the size of Germans' concerns over small sums seems more than a bit excessive. In an interview several years ago with the newsmagazine Der Spiegel, German rock singer-songwriter Herbert Grönemeyer, who lives in London, described a TV show he'd watched back home in Germany about a German company: "A woman was sitting in a big, beautiful office that in England five people would be working in. She looks into the camera and says, 'My paycheck is for eight euros less. Now I have a crisis,'" Grönemeyer was quoted as saying.

"If someone in England sat in front of a camera and claimed a crisis because of earning 10 pounds less, the person would be institutionalized."