Embracing Culture Shock: The Joys & Challenges of Life in Germany
Living and traveling overseas may be one of the most life-enriching things that a person can do. The exposure you have to a different way of life, cultures and attitudes is unparalleled to what you ever encounter in your home country. I feel especially lucky to get to experience this totally immersive way of living twice so far in my lifetime — first in Japan and now in Germany.
Both times I arrived at my new home, I felt a little bit of culture shock and a lot a bit out of place. There are different ways to do things you’ve done a certain way your whole life, like taking out the trash or how you buy groceries (more on this in a minute). Not to mention, you’re navigating all of it not in your first language.
Gradually and ever so subtly, you adapt and going about your day in this new way feels completely normal. So normal that you almost forget how you did these things before you arrived in this different country (which is a whole other issue).
While I lived in Japan, I didn’t take the time to capture all of these differences, and I wish I would have. Memories get hazy and fade, so it becomes difficult to explain to people this feeling as time passes other than the poorly inadequate answer of, ‘It was amazing, but very different’ to the question, ‘How was it living there?’
But fear not, gentle reader, for this time I have an actual list of cultural adjustments we’ve undergone in our first few months of living in Germany. Please don’t mistake any of this as complaining; I’m quite happy living abroad and will likely (note: have already) asked Mark if there is any way we can stay here longer. My motivation for this post is to answer questions I’ve gotten from several friends in a succinct manner and for my own reflection. With that, let’s dive in!
GROCERIES
Most of the biggest differences we found right away were at the grocery store. Obviously shopping in grocery stores abroad means you’ll be filling your cart with a bunch of different food items you’ve never seen before (hallo quark) and that you’re often hard-pressed to find some of your stateside staples (goodbye corn tortillas). Since we’ve already lived overseas, I was prepared for this, but I was a little less prepared for the actual shopping portion.
First, the produce is way better. Everything is brighter, more colorful and just in general healthier-looking if that makes sense. This may be in part to the EU’s stringent regulations on pesticides and farming practices in general. That being said, food spoils at a significantly quicker rate, or at least quicker than I have previously experienced in the states. Because of this, grocery shopping is something that is more or less a daily activity (except for Sundays, because everything is closed).
Another hiccup we encountered is that you are expected to weigh your produce before you go to the cash register, unlike the states where the cashier punches in the PLU at checkout. Friends, it took us several weeks to figure this out. We had multiple cashiers either scold us (in German, so we understood little of it) or roll their eyes and weigh it for us. Eventually, we got the hint, but the weighing wasn’t as straightforward as you would expect. See, only some things need to be weighed. Others are sold by item, like lettuce or avocados. What you need to do is look for a bunch of little numbers, aka the PLU, by that item to determine if it’s one that needs to be weighed. Oh, and I hope you speak enough German to know the difference between mushroom species so you weigh the correct one. If you choose incorrectly, no worries, the cashier will just make you run back through the whole store so you can reweigh it while everyone in line behind you stares aggressively, pissed that you’re delaying their quick grocery run… theoretically. You can tell this exact situation has never happened, right?
Another fun DIY portion of the grocery experience is you are expected to bag your items, using the bags you brought from home, of course. Now, I have no problem with this. In fact, I usually bag my own groceries in the states if there isn’t someone employed to do so. (I see you struggling cashier. I was you.) The part that I’m adapting to is the speed with which these cashiers chuck items at you. I feel like I’m participating in some wild game show where we’re against the clock to get through checkout in 60 seconds or less every time I go to the store, which as we’ve discussed above, is several times a week. The cashier shows no mercy, and they won’t be slowed down by all the produce at the beginning of the belt because you already weighed everything for them. I know what you’re thinking, just bag your items at your speed. WRONG! As soon as you’ve paid, they start chucking the next customer’s items down the line. Don’t even think about not paying as soon as they’re done either, lest you be met with an icy stare — both from the cashier and everyone behind you.
I guess the TL:DR for groceries is that it is stressful, I’m almost always messing it up, and that I have to have a calming moment before every endeavor… which is basically every other day.
DINING OUT
Stuttgart has a million restaurants, and living just a mile from the city center, we’re able to easily walk or train to some of the best offerings. Eating at a restaurant in Germany (and most of the other European countries we’ve visited so far) isn’t wildly different from the states, but there are a few things I’ve noticed.
Probably one of the biggest differences is that you seat yourself unless instructed otherwise. It doesn’t matter if it’s a 10 table cafe or a multi-room restaurant, you just sit down and someone will (eventually) bring you a menu, after you’ve shown proof that you’ve checked into their COVID contract tracing app, of course. Honestly, I don’t know how the servers keep track of a new table, but they always do.
When it comes to ordering food, you pay for everything. You want water? Pay. Bread on the table? Pay. Refill on that water? You guessed it… pay. And if you want a refill or to pay your bill, get ready to flag down the server. No one ever stops by and asks how everything is a million times — which I’m quite alright with. American servers come by way too often in my opinion.
I think my favorite part about dining in Europe is the shameless people-watching. In the states you have to be all covert about it. Not here. The outdoor tables are facing the street. ALL of them. They also place the chairs side-by-side so you don’t even get to fight about who gets the people-watching side and who doesn’t. It’s brilliant and I love the honesty behind this simple gesture.
ENVIRONMENT
As I mentioned in my first post about Germany, environmentally friendly practices are a big deal here. The whole country is setup to make recycling more convenient. In fact, recycling isn’t just encouraged, it’s the law. Every person is legally required to sort their trash into the appropriate bins or face fines. Trash is separated into a few different categories — paper, bio, glass and plastic/aluminum. Anything that doesn’t fit into any of those categories goes into the trash (Müll). Because of all the sorting, we only take out the trash maybe once a month. It‘s crazy how much is recycled.
Germany makes recycling everyone‘s priority, from the consumer to giant corporations by making sustainable activities relatively more convenient and less eco-friendly practices less convenient. It is expected that plastic and aluminum products go into a special bag called the Gelber Sack (literally yellow sack). Since this isn‘t optional, every citizen is able to get these special sacks free of charge; all you have to do is ask the cashier at a grocery store or find one of the thousand other distribution points sprinkled throughout the city and villages.
Recycling glass and some plastic bottles or aluminum cans gets a little trickier. Whenever you buy a beverage, you‘re charged a Pfand. This is essentially a deposit that you get back if you recycle it properly (aka bring it to the grocery store and run it through a nifty little machine). The machine is only for Mehrwegflasche (literally more way bottle); Einswegflasche (literally one way bottle) cannot be put through the machine and need to be taken to a glass recycling sorter which are all over the city. Usually beer bottles are recycled, while wine bottles and glass food containers are not, but each item is clearly marked so you don‘t have any doubts.
While the glass recycling containers are all throughout the city and the nearest one is less than a quarter mile from my house, it‘s still annoying to have to carry all of your glass there. Because of this, I‘ve noticed that I will intentionally buy foods in plastic containers instead because I can recycle those in the Gelber in my kitchen.
Bio waste is pretty straightforward — everything that is compostable goes into the bio bag, which in itself is biodegradable. The most important thing to remember with the bio waste is to take it out frequently, otherwise the bag will start to break down and you‘ll be left with a mess.
Companies are also incentivized to make packaging more eco-friendly through lucrative tax breaks so they often make small changes to their packaging to comply. For example, most of our Amazon packaging is cardboard here (goodbye plasticky bubble envelopes). The tissues I buy have a cardboard inner flap instead of a plastic one. It‘s truly amazing how many things can be modified just slightly to be more eco-friendly.
The way things are engineered and city planning are also more green. There are many streets that are pedestrian and bicycle priority, meaning that it is rare to see a car drive down them. Almost every single building has a bike room in it for people to park their bikes, which many use to commute to and from work daily. In the U-Bahn (subway) stations, a single escalator will go both directions based on which sensor is activated. If no one is using the escalator, it stops moving.
HOUSEHOLD
The last significant difference we‘ve noticed is how differently the houses are built compared to the US. First, all of the rental properties we looked at listed how many rooms there were, not how many bedrooms. In general, it is not uncommon for houses and apartments in Germany to not have a kitchen. They are only required to have gas lines in case the tenant wants to install one. Luckily, the place we rented is used to renting to Americans so it has a built-in kitchen.
Another common (and slightly annoying) feature of German homes is that they don‘t have storage. Literally not a single closet in the whole home. It‘s more common for Germans to buy closets and put them where they want. This is all fine and great, if you were planning to live somewhere for longer than a few years. We were issued three closets to rent for our whole tour by the military base, but we still have one room that is basically just storing all of our random stuff. They also loaned us a fridge because German fridges are basically mini fridges (probably because you‘re supposed to go to the market every day as mentioned above) and a washer and dryer set.
I love our washer and dryer. It‘s German so there was a bit of a learning curve to figure out which settings to use. I also had no idea that I had to empty the water out of the dryer. All of the water from the dryer collects into this little plastic drawer that you have to empty about every three loads (or more frequently for things like towels). The first couple of times I used the dryer, it kept beeping at me but the clothes weren‘t dry. I thought I had broken it, but Mark shoved enough things around and eventually found the drawer.
Another one of my favorite features of our house is that all of the windows and doors open both horizontally and vertically, which is terrifying the first time you open them vertically because you think you’ve broken a window. There also aren‘t any screens on the windows. That‘s right — you can climb in and out of a window easily. A slight drawback to this is while there are a lot less bugs than we had in places like Alabama, they are still here and do often end up in the house, especially bees. I‘ve ushered no less than four bees out of this house since we‘ve moved in.
It‘s also important to open the windows for a little bit every single day, even in the winter, because German houses are built airtight. This helps keep the cool air in the house during the summer (v. important since there is no air conditioning) and warm in the winter. If you don‘t air it out, it starts to feel stale and musty. Also, there‘s a small window in our shower so you can let the humidity out.
While we‘re talking about bathrooms, I need to mention the shit brush. Every single bathroom in Germany (actually most of Europe) has a small brush next to the toilet. This includes bathrooms in public places. It is expected that you clean it after you‘re finished for the next person using it. I also like the shit brush; this practice is coming back to the states with us when we move back.
The last difference is how we get our packages. It probably has to do more with the fact that we live in an apartment in the city than a German thing, but it‘s a difference and it‘s something we joke about with all of our friends. DHL is horribly inconsistent here. Sometimes they ring the buzzer for everyone in our building, hoping someone is home and will buzz them in so they can leave the package in our lobby. This is the best case scenario. Other times they insist on having me sign for the package and hand-deliver it to my door. I want to note that they do this for EVERYTHING, not just high dollar items. So sometimes I have to sign for dog poop bags. Most often, someone isn‘t home, so then they drop off the package at a convenience store for you to pick up there. Which would be fine, if they were at all consistent with where the package gets left. They basically just drop it at whichever store is on their route so sometimes you‘re walking to multiple stores collecting packages.
So there you have it — some of the cultural differences we‘ve noticed so far in the short few months we‘ve lived in Germany. Again, I love getting to live abroad. It‘s such a unique and special experience that I‘ll always appreciate.