GERMAN CULTURE SHOCKS AS AN AMERICAN 🇩🇪🇺🇸

hi guys welcome back to my channel today is going to be some germany culture shocks which i experience while living in germany i have 13 differences that i found while living in germany and before we actually start this video i do want to put a disclaimer on the screen that these are all my experiences these are things that i've experienced while living in germany it might be different from your experience but of course i'm just saying what i experienced so just a disclaimer so let's jump right into the video with the first difference that i found while living in germany so i'm going to start with something typical i'm sure everyone has heard this if you go across youtube but the first thing obviously that an american would notice while living in germany is that everything is closed on sundays you cannot go grocery shopping you cannot go to the mall everything is literally closed and this was super hard for me to adjust to in the beginning because randomly i would like to go grocery shopping on a sunday or you just forget something and it happens to be a sunday and you want to get something but things are closed here on sundays so you cannot actually go out and get anything but restaurants are open so you can go to a restaurant okay so the second thing which i've noticed which i think is a little bit of a culture shock for me as a new yorker is the fact that everyone here really follows the rules and this is not a bad thing okay i'm not saying that it's a bad thing one example of that is when people are crossing the road again i'm from new york and people just cross the road if it's free if we see no cars we're just gonna cross the road but in germany if the crossing road sign is not on green they're not going to cross the road and just an example of how intense people really follow this rule i lived in this really small town a few years back and it was about i don't know 5 a.m or 6am i was going to pick up my sister from the train station and i was walking there and there's no cars on the road absolutely zero cars on the road it's too early there's nobody around and people were still waiting at the crosswalk for the crosswalk sign to turn green it is literally like that so the next thing that i want to talk about as a culture shock is definitely the recycling recycling is taken very seriously here and most homes that i've been to in germany they have different boxes for different things like paper like beo plastic there's also water box there's so many things for recycling again this is something that's really good and we should all be doing it but it is a huge culture shock coming from america because i've never really seen someone have multiple boxes for recycling obviously for plastic and things like that but in america it's normally that you put everything in one bin which is not very good and it's a huge huge difference here and i have another experience about this where people really really go hard for their recycling which is fine my last apartment i've actually had an old german couple like i was throwing out my trash and they checked my trash to make sure that it was recycled properly literally went into the trash and was like is this recycled properly and it was it was but they just wanted to make sure because they can obviously tell them i'm a foreigner so they were checking my trash the next culture shock which i find a little bit you know hardcore as an american living in germany is definitely the sea and the do for maladies that they have here for example if you're in the office you're always saying ccc to people that you don't know or just managers or supervisors or whatever and you have to then ask them if it's okay if you're friendly enough with each other you can ask then if you can use the informal version of you so c basically means you you can use the informal version of do if you know them properly and for me this was a big culture shock also learning the language that you always have to change between which type of you that you have to use and then it also comes with different conjugations which is just a little bit different because we don't have this in america i think the closest thing you could say is we have mr and mrs i suppose but with the actual word you in america we call everyone just you there's no formal you there's no informal you it's just you the next culture shock which i've noticed in germany when i used to take the bus if for example a pregnant woman would come into the bus or an old person would come into the bus it's just natural that someone would get up immediately to give their seat away and in new york i have not seen that ever i've never seen it i'm sure it happens but i've never seen it but i've noticed on every single bus that i've been on people always get up for the old people or the pregnant women and make way for them to sit down the next culture shock which i found while living in germany is the smoking situation in germany i could also say this is maybe a european type of thing but it's a huge culture shock for me because everybody is smoking literally everybody's smoking i'm seeing like kids outside smoking and i feel like it's not as looked down upon as it is in new york per se or america to be a smoker but here everyone is smoking my next point which is the tipping in germany so what i've noticed is that in germany obviously you don't tip as much as you tip in america tipping in america is a must do you cannot go to a restaurant and not tip the waiters a nice amount of money you know because they're making most of their money from tips and so in germany when you do go to tip i mean necessarily i guess you don't have to which is what i've been told you don't actually have to because they're making their normal wage but when i've seen people tip they're mostly tipping to round the bill up to like an even number for example if the bill is 23.5 euros then people tip okay let's just give you 26 for example so that's what i've noticed tipping is not a big thing here in germany as it is in america this next one it could just be limited to the area that i'm living in but i find that it's like wine country so a lot of people are drinking a lot of wine so there's just wine everywhere i guess the main reason for that could just be because i'm living in the south of germany so the next culture shock that you might find if you come to germany as an american is the taxes so they are no taxes in germany that's not true so if you go into the supermarket for example and you want to buy a stick of chocolate for example it will cost you two euros and when you go to check out you pay two euros it's not like the tax is not included and you have to pay two euros and five cents now the tax is already included in the chocolate so when you go out to check out you just have to pay that price that you have seen which i really really like because in america you go you see the item without the tax and i don't know why we don't just include the tax within the product and then just pay for it with the tax included so the next thing has to do with the autobahn and the fast fast driving normally if you hear german you just obviously think about fast cars mercedes etc etc and i did not really think that they would be driving as fast as they say in the movies or as fast as the stereotype is but they're actually driving that fast on the autobahn but what's crazy about it is they're driving fast and they're driving safe which is a little bit weird so in america obviously you have your speed limit and obviously you know people are always breaking the speed limit but here the speed limit is already so fast and in some places there is no speed limit so they're actually going extremely extraordinarily fast and as a new driver i've been driving in germany for a year now compared to driving in new york it is just so fast my little car is literally vibrating as i'm staying on the right side it's literally vibrating as these fast cars are just zooming by my little car and when i mean that they're driving fast and driving safe well first of all when you go to take your driving license here in germany you have to go through a lot of processes to actually get your license i can only speak for new york unlike in new york i felt that it was very very easy there's not a lot of questions to study for in the theoretical but here in germany i had to take everything all over again so theoretical and practical to get my german driver's license and it was very very very difficult i failed the theoretical twice it was like over a thousand questions that you actually have to study for and no to pass this test and the practical was also you know you really have to know the road and know the signs and that's what i mean by that it's a lot safer i feel because people study a lot longer and a lot harder to take the german driving test and also there's one thing which i like about the german autobahn is that you cannot you know overtake on the right side so if you're driving and you want to overtake the car that you're behind you have to go to the left and then go in front of him you cannot overtake on the right side that is illegal so the next thing has to do with coupons so as an american and as an american with a mom who was a hardcore coupon clipper in germany there's no such thing as like big big savings coupons for example in new york my mom she used to cut a lot of coupons for the supermarket we have a big family so she would cut a lot of coupons and we would go to the supermarket we would have like a big cart of food and big cart of stuff and when we would go to check out she would be going through all her coupons all her coupons and you can you know mix and match and do whatever and in the end we would pay pennies for a full card of food because of all the coupons she had and the coupons also extend to you know beauty products cvs but in germany i find that there is not this coupon culture you cannot save a lot of money at the supermarket with a bunch of coupons it's just not a thing and i've never seen it if it is a thing please do let me know if there are coupon clippers in germany let me know because coupons really do help for me personally i love coupons i'm a big saver so that's why this was a real culture shock for me because i like to save money on things so the last thing that i want to talk about has to do with the german supermarkets um and this is a huge culture shock for me because shopping at a supermarket for me is a leisure type of fun thing that you do and get yourself and then you just leave in germany it is calming when you go to pick out your stuff you know it's a nice supermarket you pick everything up and you're ready to go to the cash register and you're ready to check out all your stuff is on the belt and you're at the end and the thing which i found super hard to ingest is that you have to pack your stuff asap as soon as the woman or the man at the cash register scans your item because they leave literally like this much space for your items at the end which means they do not want you to stay there for a long time they want you to pack your stuff with some speed and i'm sure there's some reasoning behind why they do that obviously i guess to move quicker but for me it's a huge culture shock because in america when you go to check out the cash register it's this huge like runway where all of your groceries go you pack it at your leisure there's no rush there's no anything no one is looking at you like why are you taking so long to pack your stuff it's just a long runway you take your time it's 100 different than how it is in america so out for that when you're going to go grocery shopping it's going to be a little stressful when you're checking out so that was the end of my culture shocks which i face in germany if any more come to my mind i will of course make a part two of this video if you have your own culture shocks about living in germany if you're from the states or from another country definitely include that in the comment section below obviously let's all be respectful this is just a fun video i hope you guys are staying super healthy and i'll see you in another video you

Channel: Zoie-Marie

Views: 553,265

Keywords: Germany culture shocks as an American, culture shocks in Germany, germany vs. usa, Being black in germany, african american, stuttgart, deustchland, love, funny, germany, black girls, girl, berlin, frankfurt, europe, language, culture, being black, what it's like being black, living in germany, german stereotypes, racist, germany vs america, germany vs usa, Munich, my life, United states, bavaria, living abroad, woman of color, WOC, speaking german, expats in germany, military in germany

Id: RsrcDdquFyA

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 23 2020