3 things that SHOCKED me about the US! | Feli from Germany

this was me when i headed to the us for my exchange semester in 2016 thinking that i was pretty educated about the us hi how are you oh i'm doing fantastic how was your weekend don't talk politics don't talk politics don't talk politics versus me after i got there [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello servos and welcome back to my youtube channel my name is feli i'm originally from munich germany but i've been living here in cincinnati ohio on and off since 2016. first of all thank you guys so much for the amazing feedback on my last video which was a comedy skit about how german sounds compared to other languages from a german perspective for those of you who just recently started following this channel i actually did a reaction video a few months ago about the viral videos by the copycat channel where german is portrayed as this harsh and aggressive language and as part of that i came up with the idea to kind of do a response video with some more pleasant sounding german words and actually make german the pretty language for once and you guys liked the idea and left a lot of comments with suggestions for beautiful german words and even though it took me quite a while to finally make this video those suggestions really came in handy if you haven't seen it just go check it out up here but today things are getting a little more serious again because today i want to talk about things that shocked me when i first moved to the us and i don't mean your typical culture shocks this time or small rather amusing things like how giant american onions are but i actually mean things that shocked me mainly in a negative sense so disclaimer this is going to be one of those videos where i'll talk about negative aspects of the us for the most part but and i wish i didn't have to say this that doesn't mean that i hate this country if you watch my channel you probably agree with me that the world isn't all black and white and there isn't only unconditional love or pure hatred it's okay to criticize things even if you like them and care about them especially if you care about them and even as an immigrant like myself someone who wasn't born here and who actually chose to live here it's okay and even important to look at things critically sometimes that doesn't mean that i regret my choice to live here if that were the case i wouldn't be here anymore and one last thing before we get into the topic my bavarian beer mugs are finally back in stock so if you've been waiting for these to be back like myself you can now order them again on failyfromgermany.com and they're also displayed underneath this video they're perfect for the summer time to kind of create a beer garden atmosphere but i'll talk about them more at the end of the video so one thing that all of these points on my list have in common is that i wasn't really aware of them before i came to the us even though we do know quite a lot about the us and germany and in the rest of the world so most of the major differences i did know about before moving here and even though it may have taken me a while to get used to them and understand the culture better i was in a way expecting those things but there are some things that i either wasn't prepared for at all or i just didn't think they would be as extreme as they turned out to be and those are the things that i'll be talking about in this video now i actually have way more than just three points on my list but this would probably be an hour long video if i mentioned all of them at once so i decided to break this list into parts and turn this into a little series with several parts that i'm probably gonna be spreading out over time so that it doesn't get too depressing all at once not all of these things are going to be super dramatic and controversial but since i've kind of built up the suspense now let's start with one of the heavier topics and that is drugs now i did know that the us had a bigger drug problem than germany does and terms like opioid crisis had crossed my path before but to be honest i didn't really think that it would be a topic that i personally would be in touch with a lot well i was wrong and shocked i came to the us in the fall of 2016 for an exchange semester at the university of cincinnati and was lucky enough to make a lot of american friends pretty quickly and went to a lot of college parties and bars i was already 22 at the time which means that i had been legally drinking and partying in germany for about six years at that point drugs honestly hadn't really been a big part of that for me though i personally have never even tried any drugs besides marijuana but i also mean that in my social environment drugs didn't really play a role and then i go to these college parties here in cincinnati and these 18 and 19 year old girls just casually do cocaine in the bathroom and that wasn't an isolated incident this happened at pretty much every party i went to there was always at least one person that had drugs on them usually more than one and in some cases people would offer me some too like it was nothing one time an american roommate of mine had friends over at her house on a tuesday night to pre-game because there was a college bar that always had tuesday specials so that alone was pretty normal honestly but the next day when i asked her why they never left for the bar because i heard them in the living room all night she casually responded that they didn't end up going because they ended up taking some acid instead lsd on a tuesday night in our living room and i was also pretty surprised shocked by the amount of people here that smoke weed on a daily basis like not just on the weekends with their friends but actually smoke every day often several times a day even though i did know people that did that back in germany it was pretty rare and i definitely didn't consider it normal but here out of all of the friends that i've made here since 2016 i would say that probably about 20 of them regularly smoke weed and some of my friends have even told me that their health class teachers suggested that while smoking cigarettes will kill you smoking weed is not as big of a problem which in my experience is different from what we're taught in germany we're definitely told that cigarettes are bad for you and cigarette consumption has been going down but it's still a pretty normal part of our society while weed is usually considered more of a gateway drug that will lead you to do harder drugs so overall something to stay away from and i feel like that narrative is reflected in everyday life too here in the us i personally know more people that smoke weed than people that smoke cigarettes and you hardly ever see someone smoke a cigarette on the street while in europe in comparison to that cigarettes are pretty much everywhere still by the way i'm not at all trying to tell anyone not to do drugs if they want to or make any implications about whether or not i think marijuana and other drugs should be legalized these are just experiences of mine that were new to me things that seemed normal here that were not normal for me back in germany and it doesn't stop with friends who smoke weed or do cocaine on the weekend over the last five years i've also heard endless stories about drug overdoses the opioid epidemic which are prescription painkillers and the resulting heroin epidemic here and those are stories that happen right in front of my eyes that i hear from friends or the local news i mean just take ben he's from a rural town in kentucky a place that checks all the boxes to be prone for these kinds of issues tons of kids in his town that he grew up with used to get prescriptions for opioids from a local pain clinic and developed an addiction once this came out and the clinic was shut down a lot of them started replacing it with another opioid that they could get on the streets heroin in ben's social circle alone six people who went to high school with him friends of his have died from drug overdoses and even at their school the drug problem was so big that the police did a canine drug search every other week and high school athletes had to do weekly drug tests now of course these are my own personal experiences with the topic everyone has different experiences and it's not like drugs aren't a thing in germany of course germany deals with drug problems too and especially in the edm scene party drugs are pretty common that's just not really my scene but if you look at the numbers i think the overall picture is pretty clear while the us just recently reported a record number of over 100 000 drug overdose deaths within one year with about 75 of those caused by opioids the most recent numbers in germany from 2020 show about 1600 drug overdose deaths per year that's about 30 people per 100 000 residents in the us and about two people per 100 000 residents in germany overall the area that i'm in is affected by this more than other parts of the us ohio and kentucky are both among the states with the highest numbers of drug overdose deaths in the country now obviously this is a very complex topic and there's a lot more to this but i've already been going on for a while so if you want me to dedicate a whole video just to this and take a deeper look into these numbers and the causes behind them let me know in the comments and i can make that happen [Music] but for now let's move on to a topic that's a little lighter but also shocked me when i came to the us and that is how expensive groceries are here now you might think wow big shock but i just wasn't expecting normal everyday groceries to be that much more expensive than they are in germany even though i did know that the overall living expenses are higher in the us this is something that people from other countries who come to the us might not find shocking at all but groceries in germany are actually really cheap and when you grow up with that you just kind of take it for granted but then i came to ohio and suddenly a one person shopping trip for about one to two weeks cost me about 100 to 120 dollars at a regular grocery store like kroger while in germany that would maybe be 60 to 70 euros at a regular german supermarket like river or itica i noticed it especially with the produce at first buying a pack of strawberries almost felt like a special treat because it was like five or six dollars a pack but this applies to pretty much all food categories fortunately german discounter supermarkets like iodi and lidl have stores here in the us too so i usually get the majority of my groceries there now because it's a lot cheaper but i really don't know a lot of americans that go to id for their regular shopping some don't even know about it so most people get all of their food at regular price stores i was also pretty surprised to find out that low income people in the us tend to eat a lot at fast food restaurants rather than buying groceries i mean it makes sense when you look at the grocery prices but to me coming from germany it seemed kind of twisted at first that fast food meals at a restaurant were cheaper than buying those ingredients at the supermarket and making food at home or getting instant meals because in germany getting groceries will always be your cheapest option and the last point on my list for today is a little more juicy again i'm pretty sure i'm not the only person who was shocked by this one because this is something that's just not widely known about the us and that is that most american men are circumcised i actually made a whole video about this topic before i'll link that up here and down below but with the us being a predominantly christian country i simply didn't expect that about 80 percent of american men are circumcised in most cases without any religious motivation in germany it's only about 10 percent of men that are circumcised and worldwide it's about 30 to 40 percent so the us is way above average here now if you're curious as to why this is such a common practice in the us i would recommend watching my video on that but of course only after you're done with this one so these were the first three points on my list of things that shocked me when i first came to the us but as i said i have a lot more on that list including some more heavy and controversial topics so stay tuned for part two and three as always please share your views and experiences with these topics in the comments below and before i wrap it up i just wanted to talk about the beer max real quick so these are the result of an idea that i first brought up two years ago in my 50 000 subscriber special video so this was my very first idea for a merge product if you will and you can still see that in the comment section of that video you guys were excited about the idea to say the least i then launched them in june of 2021 but had to stop selling them last fall because of the rebranding because they had my channel name on them and then unfortunately it took forever to get new mugs printed because of supply chain issues but they're finally here now they're back in stock with the new design this is what it looks like i'm gonna show a picture somewhere too and these are real authentic bavarian beer mugs beer kruger just like the ones that we use in munich at oktoberfest or at beer gardens or restaurants or pretty much everywhere this is a muskrook so a one liter mug and then this is a half liter mug we also drink other beverages out of these by the way not just beers so they're great even if you're not a beer fan or even for your kids so check them out on failyfromgermany.com and if you want to you can even order a personalized beer mac with little handwritten notes from me like post and your name etc so hope you enjoy the mugs i hope you enjoyed this video make sure to follow me on instagram facebook and tick tock as well for more content also make sure that you're subscribed if you haven't hit that subscribe button yet and you're watching this video then you can just might as well just be subscribed too right if you enjoy my content and if you want to support my channel even beyond that you can join the patreon family hit the super things button down below or go to buymeacoffee.com and buy me a little drink thank you guys so much for your support thank you for watching and i hope i'll see you next time cheers [Music] you

Channel: Feli from Germany

Views: 322,056

Keywords: Germany, USA, America, Munich, Cincinnati, Cultural Differences, Culture Shock, Kulturelle Unterschiede, Feli, Felicia, Deutschland, München, Amerika, Kulturschock, Ohio, USA vs. Germany, Comparison, Expat, Living abroad, Move to Germany, Life in Germany, Move to Europe, Life in USA, U.S., Deutschland USA Kulturunterschiede, Unterschiede Deutschland Amerika, Feli from Germany, drug problem USA, opioid crisis, heroine crisis, drug overdose deaths America, Drogenproblem, Drogentote Deutschlan

Id: fJvBIGK8LzU

Length: 14min 17sec (857 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 03 2022