Hey everyone! Dana here and on today’s Ask An American I've got a question coming from
Youtube. So this person has watched American TV shows and noticed that on the TV shows
you often see the characters going in and out of their home with their shoes on. And
they wanna know: is that a real thing in the U.S.? Do people just walk around their homes
with their shoes on or not?
So I've noticed that here in Germany, in general, broadly speaking, it's, it's a no-no pretty
much to walk around your home with your shoes on. Whereas in the U.S., I'd say it's just
the opposite. In general, broadly speaking, it's not a big deal to walk around your home
with your shoes on. A lot of people, myself included, do walk around their homes in the
U.S. with their shoes on.
But that being said, I will say that I think that when I lived in the U.S. I did spend most
of my time in my home without my shoes on simply for the reason that it's more comfortable
not to have your shoes on. It's just, it's just more cozy that way you know. And of course,
if I wanted to cozy up on the couch, get comfy on the couch, I definitely took my shoes off.
It's of course the rule no shoes on when you're on the couch.
But if I was getting ready to go out or if I went to the store and come back and I knew
that in another 10 minutes or so I was going to go back out again, then no, I probably
wouldn't take my shoes off. I would just walk around the home doing whatever it was that
I needed to do with my shoes on. I probably wouldn't have taken them off knowing that
in 10, 15, 20, however many minutes, I was just going to put them back on again.
Of course if I stepped in dog poop or got them completely muddy, I'm not gonna wear
them around my house. I'll take them off before even coming in through the front door. Something
to note here: I said that when I was in the U.S., I spent a lot of my time in the home
with my shoes off, but that does not mean that I spent time in the home with slippers
on. So, here in Germany there are something called Hausschuhe, and a lot of people take
their shoes off at the front door and then put on these little slippers, these house
shoes. Now, in the U.S. we do have slippers, but the concept of house shoes doesn't really exist.
So, we have slippers that we wear maybe, some people wear, not everybody, but some people
have them with their pajamas in the morning when they're just waking up. Or again they
wear their slippers in the evening when they're in their pajamas again.
But, yeah, the concept of house shoes that you wear with your normal clothes, it doesn't
really exist in the U.S. And people definitely, especially, do not
have in the U.S., um, extra pairs of slippers on hand in the house lying around to offer guests.
Here in Germany it is often the case that I'll go to one of my friend's houses and take
my shoes off at the front door, and then they'll offer me some extra slippers, the guest pair
of slippers that they have. But, eh, I'm just not too keen on putting my feet into slippers
that a bunch of other people that I don't know have also put their feet, their stinky,
sweaty, ew, feet into. So yeah, um, I just politely decline. I'm happy to walk around
in my socks. That's not a big deal. That's okay for me.
Another important thing to note here is that when you are invited to a dinner party or
some other kind of get-together in the U.S., there's pretty much no question generally
that you will be leaving your shoes on. You and everyone else will have their shoes on
because taking your shoes off and walking around with no shoes in the home, it's kind
of a personal sort of intimate thing. You know, I mean, kids do it and you do it in
your own home and you do it in the homes of your close friends when you're hanging out,
but, yeah, it's, it's still considered kind of intimate. So if you go to a more, not necessarily
formal event, but just if you go to a dinner party or if you, also if you invite people
over to your home, if you invite your co-workers over, if you have a birthday party, you invite
your boss to dinner; even if you usually run around your home without your shoes on, it's
pretty much expected that when those people come over, you will have shoes on. And they
pretty much expect, unless of course they got stuck in some torrential downpour and
their shoes are completely muddy, they generally expect to leave their shoes on because, also
in the U.S., you probably drove to wherever you're going, so your shoes probably didn't
get all that dirty. You walked from your home to the car, and then you parked at the person's
home and got out and went inside. As a great example of this, if you watched
Sex and the City, you might remember there was an episode where Carrie was invited to
her friend's baby shower. And this was at the friend's home, and so Carrie went there
and walked inside thinking nothing of it, with her shoes on, when the friend, the host,
said oh no no no, you have to take your shoes off. We take our shoes off in this home. No
shoes allowed in the home. And Carrie was shocked. She could not believe it, it felt
so strange to her to be walking around at this party and in this person's home without her shoes
on. You know it's, for us, yeah, taking our shoes off it's, it's, it's more intimate and
it's almost like, not like you're naked without your shoes on, but...yeah that's a more intimate
thing to do, so it's just not what we're used to.
Something that's funny is that I don't think that Mr. German Man really fully believed
me when I first told him that in the U.S. people don't take their shoes off in their
home, that they walk around sometimes in their home with their shoes on. I don't think he
really believed me about that until we went over there for the first time, I brought him
home to meet my parents and we got home from the airport and he walked inside and, you
know, took his shoes off, um, right at the front door and no one else did. And my parents
kind of, why is he stopping? Oh, he's taking his shoes off, you don't have to do that!
You know, of course eventually we take our shoes off. We don't sleep with our shoes on
and it's more comfortable to hang out without our shoes on, but you, you come in, you come
in the front door, you go you put your stuff down, you've got your suit cases, you put
everything down, you get settled, maybe go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, and
perhaps then you take your shoes off. It's not necessarily the first thing you do when
you walk in the door. So my question for you is: what is the shoe
etiquette in your home, in your country, the country where you live now, countries that
you've visited around the world? What's going on with shoes in the home? Please let me know
in the comments below. Thanks so much for watching. Please don't
forget to subscribe for more videos and hit that like button if you enjoyed this video.
And also for more photos, and other short video clips, and just whatever I'm up to around
town, you can check me out over here on my Twitter and my Facebook page. Connect with
me and please send me your questions. What other questions do you want answered for this
Ask An American series? Until next time, auf Wiedersehen!
Hey! Congratulations on making it to the very end of the video. You watched all the way
past the actual ending of the video, you're here, congratulations. So you get to get the
inside scoop on the story: so how about here in the Wanted Adventure household? Do we wear
our shoes in the house or not. Do we do it American style or German style? What do you think?
Yeah, of course, Mr. German Man won that battle within the first few weeks. Um,
even if we're only going to be here in the house for 10 minutes or so, we always take
our shoes off, even when Mr. German Man isn't here. We always do it. We never realize that
we forgot something in the closet right before we need to go out and scamper really fast
in there with our shoes on. No, we never do that.