Life in Germany

TeeJay · 07 Apr 07 :: 09:49

Cab asked what life in Germany was like. Geez, Cab, what do you wanna know? I could write pages and pages. You'd have to be a little more specific.

I could try to start with some things that I think are very different in Germany than in the US, at least what I know from the two times I've been there. First of all: Cars and environmental concern in general. The Germans are way more alert about the environment. The majority drives small-ish cars (and often hatchbacks), you don't see those honkin' big Hummers or other gas guzzlers here.

We have something called "trash separation". Most households have two trash cans, one for plastic and wrapping (e.g. yoghurt containers, plastic milk bottles, tetrapacks--which I think are recycled afterwards), and one for all the rest. Sometimes you also have one for organic trash (biodegradables). And of course paper and glass is also disposed of separately.

Unfortunately, we don't have a non-smoking rule in public places yet, but they're currently working on a law about that. Over here you can smoke in most restaurants, pubs, bars. The train stations have extra areas where you can smoke, but not a lot of people actually stick to them.

Our driving license costs a lot of money. You have to pay $2000 or more for it for all the driving lessons that are mandatory and the theoretical and practical driving test you need to take afterwards. You have to be at least 18 to get one for a car or a motorcycle.

In the cinema and on TV everything is dubbed into German (very annoying!). Yes, including Chris. We also get all the US stuff later than you do, of course. With TV shows often one or two years later, although that's gotten a little better lately, I hear. Not that I watch any German TV anymore...

We don't have Casual Friday. On Friday everyone wears the same clothes they normally do at work.

We get a lot more vacation days at work. Usually between 26 and 30 a year, depending on where you work and how old you are (you get more, the older you get, I think). Your salary is almost always paid on a monthly basis.

We don't have a jerk for a president. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) Instead we have a very unattractive female chancellor.

You guys have air conditioning in almost every building. We don't. Some companies will have it, some department stores, cinemas, mostly public places. I don't know anyone in Germany who's house they live in has air conditioning.

You measure in inches, feet, miles, ounces and stone. We use the metric system. Very confusing!

DVDs come in region code 2 and usually have both the German and original language on it. That's what I love about DVDs. With VHS, I always had to get mine from the UK to watch movies in English.

In restaurants over here, things are a lot less... let's call it efficiently planned. I found that in the US everything is so organized. You come in, are taken to a table (over here you usually just choose your seat yourself, but they've started to have people here that will seat you in some places now), someone's right there to take your drink orders. Every now and then the waiter will come back and check. You get your food very fast, you eat. When you're done, your plate is taken away, you get the check, you leave. In between the different steps, there's often less than five to ten minutes. In Germany that's a little more unceremonious. You have to wait longer (which can be annoying), but you also feel a little less "watched" or "checked on". Often people will sit at the table after finishing dinner for up to half an hour or an hour before they ask for the check, and then continue sitting there for a bit after having paid. I found that would probably be unusual in the US. Time is money, right?

Our cashiers in grocery stores sit down when they work at the checkout. Deb was really surprised when we talked about that. She was like, "They let them sit??"

In Germany things will often be or seem less friendly. No one will enquire how you are today when you walk into a store. You can go to a drug store and buy something without having talked one word and it would not be that weird. People are way more reluctant to talk to people they don't know. It's what we often perceive as shallow or superficial in people from the US. They all seem to be interested in you when they ask you how you're doing, but deep down they're really not interested in whether you're having a bad day because you ran over your sunglasses with your car or your cat is sick. I'm not saying any of the two ways is better. I learned that it has a lot to do with cultural differences and the way you were raises where and how you were. I'm just pointing out the difference. I think in Germany people might seem a lot less friendly at first, but by no means are all Germans unhappy creatures with no sense of humor. They're much different when you scratch beneath the surface.

Food is different. Not fundamentally, but we have stuff you don't know and the other way round. I had never heard of okra before I went to the US. Deb had never heard of cooked red cabbage or potato dumplings--things that are very commonplace over here.

We have way more sidewalks than in the US. In general I think either the Germans like to walk more or the US people are much lazier. I found that in the US you have to drive everywhere if you wanna do things. Over here we walk or take the bike if we can and want to a lot more. Shopping areas are built in a way so that you can walk. In the US it's often built so that you have to drive. We also don't have a lot of malls. Instead we have the pedestrian zones in pretty much every bigger city. If you wanna go clothes shopping, you don't go to a mall or shopping center. You go downtown in the nearest town and peruse all the stores there. Of course we now have a few malls as well (we actually call them shopping center in German), but it's not the first place you think of when you say you wanna go shopping.

We don't have the living community phenomenon as much as you do. I found that when you leave the city, you have a lot of these housing estates in the US. That's not very commonplace over here either. Of course we have residential areas as well, but they're not as closed off and confined as those that you have. I live in something they call the "Austrian district" because all the street names have names from Austrian cities or places. But if you didn't know where the district started and ended, you wouldn't even notice it.

Our (money) bills are colored, each amount has a different color. It was driving me nuts that the dollar notes all had the same color and you had to look at the numbers to distinguish them!

We have door handles and seldom door knobs. Our houses are usually built from stone and are a lot more sturdy than those I've seen in the US. They almost always have cellars and roofing tiles. Our butter is always unsalted. Our AC power lines run on 220 V and not 110 V, our wall sockets also look different. Our light switches are flat. We have duvets that you don't tuck under the mattress and our toilets have other knobs for flushing. Our toiles also have way less water in them.

And that's pretty much all I can think of right now.

If anyone has anything to add or questions, feel free to post.

And I'm not implying that Germany is better than the US. In some ways it may be, in some it may not be. I myself would rather live in Germany (or other places in Europe) than in the US, but I guess that also has to do with where you grew up and what you know. Don't get me wrong, I like the US, I'm coming back in August/September. But there's just so many things going wrong in that country, I don't think I'd like to spend the rest of my life there.

-TeeJay

domesticelefant · 07 Apr 07 :: 11:31

TeeJay wrote:

In the cinema and on TV everything is dubbed into German (very annoying!). Yes, including Chris. We also get all the US stuff later than you do, of course. With TV shows often one or two years later, although that's gotten a little better lately, I hear. Not that I watch any German TV anymore...

Oh yeah, I agree here. VERY annoying. The only undubbed television we get here (with subtitles though) is MTV. Sometimes I watch it for fun.

TeeJay wrote:

We don't have a jerk for a president. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) Instead we have a very unattractive female chancellor.

Hahaha! That just made me laugh out so loud that my dad came and asked what just happened. :lol::lol: But ... it's true. LOL

TeeJay wrote:

DVDs come in region code 2 and usually have both the German and original language on it. That's what I love about DVDs.

Me too. And they have subtitles, that's good for me because sometimes I still need them.

TheCentralScrutinizer · 07 Apr 07 :: 18:34

We measure in pounds, not stone. It's the Brits who measure in stone. Other than that, sounds pretty accurate to me. I would also add that you guys have a better healthcare system than we do and that should be an embarrassment to every American who reads this.

Deb

TeeJay · 07 Apr 07 :: 18:38

Oh, don't get me started on the healthcare system! Yes, here everyone is forced by law to have basic health insurance. It's basically unheard of that someone would not have health insurance.

And I stand corrected on the stones vs. pounds matter. We measure in kilogramms.

-TeeJay

Chnyst · 07 Apr 07 :: 18:44

What about sports? Just a guess but I figured football(Soccer to us) is the big one there? Do you have professional teams? Are athletes treated like celebrities/heroes/role models there? I'm sure their salaries aren't as ridiculous and absurd as they are here, but I was just curious....

TeeJay · 07 Apr 07 :: 18:48

Chnyst wrote:

What about sports? Just a guess but I figured football(Soccer to us) is the big one there? Do you have professional teams? Are athletes treated like celebrities/heroes/role models there? I'm sure their salaries aren't as ridiculous and absurd as they are here, but I was just curious....

Oh, totally! Yes, soccer is our national sport #1, kinda like baseball in the US. There is no baseball in Germany, at least not on television. The most popular sports are soccer, tennis, then I guess also handball, ice hockey, formula 1 and boxing. In winter there's also skiing and things surrounding it.

I think Chris would like it in Germany, seeing as he's a huge soccer fan. In any sports show on TV, soccer is always the first thing they talk about. We have national leagues (the biggest one and most talked about being what we call "Bundesliga") and also Champion's League (with national teams from other countries) and then of course the international matches.

-TeeJay

Chnyst · 07 Apr 07 :: 19:01

Cool, thanks homie!

What about Dwarf-tossing? ........j/k

TeeJay · 07 Apr 07 :: 19:13

We don't have dwarf-tossing, but we have clay-pigeon shooting. And that's not a joke. (It's not on TV, though.)

-TeeJay

domesticelefant · 07 Apr 07 :: 20:40

Don't forget to mention our national holiday. It's October 3. Noticed something? That's Chris's birthday. But I guess he would find it pretty boring here because all the shops are closed that day and you can hardly do anything.

TeeJay · 07 Apr 07 :: 21:41

Yeah, not even any parades or fireworks. But at least he wouldn't have to work that day. It's the Day of German Unity, to comemorate the day that Western and Eastern Germany reunited. Happened in 1990, if I'm not mistaken. The wall fell on November 9, '89, didn't it?

Here's something else that's different in Germany. No shops are open on Sundays. So if you need groceries or anything else urgent on a Sunday, you're basically screwed.

-TeeJay

TheCentralScrutinizer · 07 Apr 07 :: 21:49

And I thought it sucked that you can't buy beer on Sunday in Georgia. Well, you can in restaurants. But not in the store. It's different from state to state. And some states have ridiculous rules about that stuff. Here in the south, they're trying to get the last of the old "blue laws" off the books. It wasn't until the 1980s that most stores started staying open limited hours on Sunday. It would suck to have all stores closed. Especially since Sunday is when I drag myself to the grocery store.

TeeJay · 07 Apr 07 :: 22:03

I think there might be some stores that are open on Sundays and public holidays, like at the main train stations in the big cities. I also saw this little newsstand-like store near my place that was open this Friday (which was a public holiday in Germany), and gas stations will be open as well. But they are way more expensive than the normal grocery stores, so you would only go there if you absolutely needed something very urgent that couldn't wait until the next day. At least I would.

I know something else that's different in Germany. We have letters that you don't! There's Ä, Ö and Ü (or ä, ü, and ö). And ß (which is kinda like 'ss'). And we have the 'ch' sound that a lot of English speaking folks can't really do. Then again, most of the Germans have problems with the 'th'. But not because we can't speak it, more like that we don't want to. It often sounds like a 'z' when Germans do the 'th'. Zis is ze tee eytch. I beg to differ, though.

-TeeJay

domesticelefant · 07 Apr 07 :: 22:40

TeeJay wrote:

Yeah, not even any parades or fireworks. But at least he wouldn't have to work that day. It's the Day of German Unity, to comemorate the day that Western and Eastern Germany reunited. Happened in 1990, if I'm not mistaken. The wall fell on November 9, '89, didn't it?

You don't know that for sure?

I actually heard about that beer thing in the US on another forum. I was like, what are they so annoyed, in Germany the shops aren't even open on Sundays. But we have some kind of "open Sunday" a few times a year, where the shops are open in Sundays. But like I said, it's only three or four times a year.

I actually hate it if someone refuses to speak the TH. It's not that difficult, I can do it too.

TeeJay · 08 Apr 07 :: 18:10

Here's something else that's different in Germany:

Our traffic lights don't hang from the overhead power cables. They're all fixed to metal poles, even the overhead ones. Come to think of it, we don't have that many overhead power cables. Maybe that's why.

And I'd estimate that about 90% of cars in Germany are stick shift. Maybe less, but it's definitely the majority. Actually, I've never driven an automatic, and I've driven a lot of different cars.

-TeeJay

Chnyst · 08 Apr 07 :: 21:04

I was in High School taking German when the wall came down. It was cool because we actually had a big party that day in class. We also got posters that had the date: Nov 9th, 1989 and showed people dancing on the wall that I still have.
Good times.

TeeJay · 08 Apr 07 :: 21:40

Yeah, that day we also celebrated in school, we were all pretty jazzed about the whole thing. I have fond memories of that day, though not very specific ones. Everyone remembers those pictures of the people climbing the walls and dancing and celebrating.

-TeeJay

domesticelefant · 08 Apr 07 :: 22:28

I was in first grade when the wall came down. I don't remember if we celebrated it, but I remember that our teacher told us about it and sometime later we got a new classmate who came "from there". I remember that some of the other pupils said that he'd talk in a funny way.

Chnyst · 08 Apr 07 :: 23:18

They actually had slabs of the wall on display at Universal Studios Fla. It was kinda cool since it's something we never had the chance to see.
I was also able to get a few chunks of it that had grafitti on it. Probably not a big deal since you guys live there, but I thought it was neat.

TeeJay · 08 Apr 07 :: 23:49

I don't have a piece of the wall, but they're also sold over here, I believe. I live five hours away from Berlin, so I'm not there often. In fact, I've only really been once. But I'd love to go back one day. I'm sure it's a great city to explore. My parents have a piece of the cloth that the artist Christo used to "wrap" the Reichstag. I don't know if you've heard about that. My most prized posession is probably my Chris autographs and the prop gun I have from my favorite German cop show that my favorite German actor wore on it (he also signed it).

Okay, I do also have autographs from Nana Visitor, Alexander Siddig and Max Grodénchik, but I didn't get those myself--a friend of mine got them for me at a Star Trek convention. They're still hanging on my wall, though. Right below and next to Chris.

-TeeJay

domesticelefant · 09 Apr 07 :: 10:28

TeeJay wrote:

My most prized posession is probably my Chris autographs and the prop gun I have from my favorite German cop show that my favorite German actor wore on it (he also signed it).

Speaking of that, I saw him on TV a few nights ago, but this time he played the bad guy.

They still sell pieces of the Berlin wall, I saw it when I was in Berlin in September. But I didn't buy some. What I bought was a sticker with that "You are now leaving the American sector ..." sign. I thought that was cool. LOL

TeeJay · 08 Aug 07 :: 21:29

Nothing much going on today around here, huh? Okay, so let me show you where I live:

My street:

The house my apartment is in:

If you look closely, I think you'll find that all the cars parked there are way more modest than what you might see in the US. No honkin' big cruisers or Hummers.

This was taken the other day when the light was just really weird. There was a wall of rainclouds in the background, dark and menacing, but in the foreground where I was, the sun was shining:

-TeeJay

domesticelefant · 08 Aug 07 :: 21:31

It seems that lately there is only action on the board when I am not here.

TeeJay · 08 Aug 07 :: 21:31

Don't say that, Anne, you'll be cursed! LOL

-TeeJay

domesticelefant · 08 Aug 07 :: 21:37

If this is supposed to be a joke I don't get it. I was only telling the truth. I just don't know what's going on lately. I somehow want my old life back and then on the other side I don't want it back. :clueless:

herrommance · 09 Aug 07 :: 04:44

I really like that dark stromy looking pic

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