Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Ten Germany culture shocks so far.

1. Bicycles. Are. Everywhere. It's really hard to drive around them, in the two total times I've driven around (I have a car...a Honda accord!...that I inherited from the previous staff member who was given it by a military family who wanted to help out the Club Beyond ministry). I also inherited a bike from the last staff person, but I can't ride it yet because my sprained ankle isn't completely healed. But seriously, there are even elderly people riding bikes. They are really into the environment here, plus it takes lots of money and lots of time to obtain a German drivers license.

2. Everyone dresses well. All the women are wearing boots. All the men are wearing scarves. Nowhere will you see someone dressing "American": hoodie, sneakers, tshirts, etc.

3. IT GETS DARK REALLY EARLY. Seriously, at like 3:30pm it starts getting dark out. It's really messing with me. Apparently, during the summer, the sun doesn't go down until about 10pm. Welcome to the arctic circle.

4. The autobahn. I drove on this for my very first excursion alone the other day, to the Momax (kind of like a smaller Ikea) to get a bed. First of all, I have an American car so I can't go as fast as everyone else. European cars are made to go on autobahns. No speed limit= some people going REALLY fast by you and sometimes shaking your car. Also, I have to convert everything to kilometers. No miles per hour here. The rule is, if you take kph (kilometers per hour) and multiply it by 6 and then take off the last number, you get mph. 30kph = 18mph. It's true, you do use math in real life.

5. Restaurant servers don't work for tips. Having been a server, it's strange to me that you don't really tip your server. You can give them 15-20 Euro cents if they were really good, but they get paid really well. The funny thing is, they KNOW most Americans don't understand this, so they EXPECT to get an additional tip from us. So sometimes I don't know what to do, haha.

6. You can get all kinds of food here, not just German. I've eaten at a really good Mexican place not far from my house, and every day when I walk to the Morgan's apartment before going on post with Shea I walk by Italian and Chinese restaurants.

7. Germans don't really believe in using dryers. They have washing machines but usually just hang their clothes up to dry, inside and outside their home. I don't have a washing machine (yet) or a dryer. I use the laundromat on post.

8. Driving around downtown is NOT like driving around downtown Chattanooga. Their streets are not in any kind of neat, square, numbered order. And there are a TON of one-way streets (called Einbahnstrasses) and some that are so narrow you almost knock your mirror off on the buildings going by. When I returned from Momax, using my stupid iPhone GPS that tried to make me go down a one-way street the WRONG WAY, I got lost for 20 minutes less than half a mile from my place.

9. You can take your canine friend with you into stores.

10. You can only pay your landlord by having your bank automatically pay him every month from your account. I don't really understand how this works. I kind of like it though, one less bill I have to worry about actually writing the check for.

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