15 Things Germans Don't Understand About Americans

guys welcome to the now youtube channel now i have lived in germany for quite some time now and i have had a lot of conversations with my german friends about the differences between german and american culture i've experienced it a lot i've experienced culture shock coming to germany reverse culture shock going back to the states so this is something that i'm really interested in and really like a thing that i have experienced a lot is german people asking me certain things about americans in the united states why do you americans do this why do you americans have this why is it like this in the united states today i'm going to address 15 things that germans just don't understand about the united states some things i will explain some things i will try to justify and some things i will be right there alongside with you confused as hell as to why us americans do some of these things certain ways so without further ado let's get into 15 things that germans do not understand about us americans [Music] not using the metric system now i actually did a whole video about this on my now nonsense channel now the united states actually did make an attempt at converting to the metric system in the 1970s but people and businesses just weren't having it the consensus was kind of like this is taking too long and it's going to be too much money to convert all of our stuff to the metric system so let's just stick with our unique imperial system where there's 12 inches in a foot and 5 280 feet in a mile 5 280 feet you pick this ball up you run every one of them who needs that divisible by 10 simple nonsense no metric for us the same goes for celsius versus fahrenheit now i will admit celsius makes a lot more sense water freezes at zero boils at a hundred for us water freezes at 32 boils at like 217 or something i don't even know uh but i will say while i think and know that it is much more logical i can i get my brain to switch from fahrenheit to celsius i still on my phone keep temperatures in fahrenheit americans eat chips with a lot of meals specifically some sort of lunch meals like sandwiches i remember going to subway with some of my german friends early on and i was freaking out because the subway that we went to here in swedes hall they were out of chips their rack was cleared out they hadn't gotten the shipment in i was freaking out i can't eat a sandwich without chips and i think i speak for a lot of americans there where you know we need that crunch i don't know what it is maybe being served peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with chips from a young age it's ingrained in us that we need a side of crunchy chips with many different types of meals sticks with me manual cars i've seen different figures but all of them ranging to around the number of only 15 or so percent of americans can drive manual cars now i think this number used to be a lot higher both of my parents learned how to drive using a manual car but in the united states manual cars have become less and less popular when you do a driving test you usually do it with an automatic car and it is just not commonplace to be learning how to drive manual cars in the united states and that's why you run into situations like this me an american coming to europe and not being able to drive a manual car for three four years that's not that uncommon i actually think it's a great thing that germans learn to drive with their driving test using a manual car i think it is uh better to learn about the engine and how the car works it's also safer in my opinion because you are totally forced to be locked in to your driving you're focused on the road focused on switching gears you can't be distracted trying to mess with the music or tax whereas in an automatic car it is much easier for a teenager to be distracted by these sorts of things so i am actually a big fan of the manual car system and i will say personally i like driving manual car better now college is incredibly expensive and when i'm talking to germans they'll be like man i had to pay 250 euros for my university semester this year was kind of steep the average price in the united states for a public college four-year college is 37 400 dollars per year that's for a public college the average for a private college is 47 000 per year you're looking at about 200 000 if you want to get a private college education which in my opinion in the states for the most part those are really the only ones worth going to at this point the college diploma has become so diluted that i think you really need to go to like an elite school for your college degree to even matter so you're looking about two hundred thousand dollars to get a worthwhile college degree don't even get me started i went to film school for a master's program for one semester and i racked up a nice thirty thousand dollar debt there speaking of which if you would like to help me pay off my film school debt the link to my patreon is in the description lots of fun behind the scenes content exclusive content on there we just started a movie club so we do a monthly movie club and discussion so you know if you want to help chip away at that hefty united states film school debt you are greatly welcome [Music] there is this stereotype that americans are loud and i'm not going to argue with it if you saw my video a few weeks back where we went to heidelberg i kind of harped on mikey and the other guys for us being really loud i feel like guys we're just being this typical stereotypical loud group of americans and uh there's a theory for this there is a theory for why us americans are always speaking so loudly and yelling now here it is and if you've watched my youtube videos you know this a little bit americans have a much larger threshold for what the accepted personal bubble is okay so we are typically further away from each other when we are speaking when you're further away from each other you need to speak a little bit louder and this is just ingrained to us so we have you know become accustomed to a certain decibel level of speaking that's probably a little bit more like this compared to a german who's used to talking to somebody this close because german you know personal bubble doesn't really exist here and german people are used to speaking in a softer quieter tone that is my theory for why us americans are quite loud [Music] sports clothes you can very often tell a group of americans wandering around in europe by the way that they are dressed oftentimes it'll be things like t-shirts athletic shorts or sweats baseball hat sometimes tall white socks and some nike shoes americans like to dress comfortably there's a name for this style of dress athleisure and actually i'll link an article in the description here about an interesting article about kind of the development of athleisure and companies that have profited off of it such as lululemon where athletic clothes has become basically normal for day-to-day life people will put on leggings or yoga shorts or yoga pants or whatever and go about their day-to-day life go get a coffee go to a restaurant go to work and this is becoming and has become a thing that is not so crazy in the states whereas in germany not so common and since living here i have developed a habit actually of always putting on my nice pants what i believe are my nice pants those pants that i wore to ollie and nikki's wedding yeah those ones i always put on pants like that when i leave the house i'm trying to not wear sweats typically when i leave the house unless i'm working out i don't really have a reason for why us americans do it i guess we just like to be comfortable [Music] [Applause] american football now you guys know i am here living in germany because i play american football team for the schwebisch hall unicorns in the german football league there is a sort of cult following and cult fandom of american football here in germany but more widespread i would say that germans on the whole don't really understand american football that much from afar it sort of looks like some dumb violent game where all you do is just run into each other and it's just sort of nonsense uh football is actually an incredibly complicated game with a lot of different rules and schemes and the game is developing in a really interesting way i would say the best way to describe it for someone who really doesn't understand the game it is a mix between rugby and chess the strategy involved and the stoppage after each play it is a chess game with rugby style moves and tackling saying thank you too often i feel like i've run into this issue quite a bit when i'm at a store say for example i go to a bakery i ask for a pretzel they say okay a pretzel i say yeah and then they go and they put the butter on the pretzel and then they bring it over and they put it down and i say donkey sharon and then uh they go to the cash register and get my change and they hand me my coins back and i say okay danke three times i said thank you and oftentimes i've had this experience where uh the person working there almost it's clear they're like okay you already said thank you stop saying thank you so many times but in the united states that's sort of the more polite way of doing things you'll thank people continuously if you go to dinner at somebody's house and they cook you a good meal you almost thank them throughout man this is so good thank you guys again thanks again no i really appreciate it thanks again and this kind of overuse of thank you which kind of goes along with the classic american politeness uh i think kind of weirds out germans sometimes there's they're fine with a whole interaction happening and then at the end if there's a thanks that is necessary you can say danke at the end of the interaction not seven times throughout [Music] drinking age is 21. now i've linked in the description of this video another video that i think gives a great explanation for why the drinking age in the united states is 21 but this i cannot defend uh you can do a lot of stuff when you're 18 you can vote you can join the military and go to war but you can't drink a beer i think that is a bit silly in germany teenagers are oftentimes introduced to beer at age 16. it's legal to buy beer at 16 and then at 18 harder alcohols i think this system kind of eliminates the novelty and the exciting prohibitive nature of the substance because the united states oftentimes teenagers are so prohibited from alcohol by the time they get to college and they're on their own and they're able to drink alcohol they abuse it and get themselves into trouble whereas when a german is 20 years old they've been drinking beer for four years and it's really no big deal for them at this point so i actually cannot defend this 21 drinking age and i think you know 18 is 16 might be a little low but 18 is more reasonable [Music] americans wear shoes in the house i have no idea why this is a bit more normal for americans but it certainly is now in germany this is an absolute no-no you always see shoes are taken off at the front door you don't wear your shoes in the house in germany germans will have designated house shoes that they wear in the house but in the states is actually a lot more common i think about you know when people come to our house stop by our house to stay high or whatever uh have a coffee typically don't take their shoes off if you take your shoes off in somebody's house it's almost like uh it's a certain level of comfort and familiarity that i don't want to say is it's not rude but it's almost over familiar in certain situations not really sure why this is because it's pretty dirty to wear your shoes in the house when you think about it you're you're walking through the dirt and the mud and the grass and everything and then you come into your house and walk on the carpet so i don't really know why this is more common but it is can't explain it [Music] this one drives me crazy the price you see on the sticker in the store when you go to check out and actually purchase that item it's not the same price that you saw now this is the case for most states in the usa and that is because they add the sales tax on at the end at the counter instead of including it in the ticket price this is an absurd system i have no idea why we do this probably to trick people into purchasing things because it looks cheaper and then once you bring it up to the counter you get this tax added on and you know at this point like ah screw it i'll buy it anyway but i thought it was cheaper and that's probably my best guess for why this is the case but i'm lucky i live in oregon and we don't have a sales tax so in oregon and a few other states the price you see on the sticker is actually the exact price you pay when you check out but when i for example went to college in washington dc and i had to deal with this stupid tack on tax like just put it in the price man [Music] pharmaceutical commercials the united states is one of two countries in the world where it's legal to advertise prescription pharmaceutical drugs to consumers directly the only other country is new zealand and i actually think there's quite a bit of regulation with it if you watch american tv i don't it feels like 50 to 60 percent of the commercials are for some prescription drug where the narrator will say ask your doctor about so-and-so and the commercials got you know people dancing in fields and all this weird footage that doesn't match up with uh the ailment that the medicine is trying to cure and it's always weird and at the end they have these really fast quickly red side effects uh that they say with like a happy and pleasant voice it's just it's a strange thing especially for me after being in germany for a while i get freaked out seeing pharmaceutical drug commercials [Music] vacation days us americans we don't like vacation we like to work 365 days a year no time off what are you lazy i'm just kidding i have come to really love the idea and concept of a work life balance not only because uh it makes you feel more relaxed and make you feel better but actually in the long run it makes you more productive of a worker in germany workers are guaranteed 24 days of paid vacation by the government every year guaranteed 24 and a lot of times employees actually get closer to 30. in the united states the federal government guarantees zero paid vacation days a year it is not required at all by employers to give their employees paid time off now that's not necessarily the norm i think people typically get like between seven to 14 days off a year but it is not guaranteed by the government and uh this is something that germans just are always shocked about when they hear this like you you like what you're supposed to just work every day except the weekend the whole year and you have no guarantee of vacation time hashtag no days off tipping now you tip in germany but it is not as big a deal as it is in the united states in the united states servers are oftentimes paid two to two dollars and fifty cents an hour by their employer and the remaining part of their wage is made up from tips so if you don't tip they don't get a living wage this is why it is common to always tip 15 at a restaurant and if it's good service you're tipping 20 maybe 25 this is expected german tip culture exists and i would say at a restaurant maybe you leave about 10 or so but it's not as expected and the people who are serving you are actually paid a full wage and they're not just living off the tips now i actually have a mouth nonsense video planned for the history of tipping in the united states i've been researching it it's quite interesting it's very interesting why tipping is so prominent in the usa so be on the lookout for a nonsense video talking about this subject now american football fans are die hard crazy fans but i don't know if it is intense as the european crazy soccer hooligan fandom but there's one thing that american football fans have the european soccer fans don't and that is tailgating tailgating is sort of the pre-party of a football game where everyone's in the parking lot people bring barbecues beers lawn chairs and you essentially have an outdoor party in the parking lot where you pre-game the football game this is a huge tradition especially with college football in the nfl there are some nfl teams that have a very specific wild tailgating culture for example the buffalo bills bill's mafia this is what they do during their tailgates but this is a huge part of american football culture and tradition is tailgating and no matter how big or crazy the soccer game is in germany people for the most part aren't bringing barbecues to the parking lot and having huge parties in the parking lot before the game this is a an american thing all right guys that is 15 things that germans don't understand about americans if you've got some other stuff you don't understand about my country and and my people feel free to let me know in the comments thanks so much for watching my youtube channel really appreciate it hope you have a lovely day and i will see you next time [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: NALF

Views: 684,095

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Id: KASMZOMOtHc

Length: 19min 57sec (1197 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 07 2022