Well uh..
I don’t think I’m gonna get away with a title like that
without a disclaimer huh?
I was born and raised in the UK
and have been living in North Rhein-Westphalia in Germany, for about 2 years now.
I just thought it would be fun to compile a list of problems
I’ve experienced since living here
for you to laugh at
and call me uncultured.
So if you’re expecting some insightful political commentary from this video uh…
I don’t know what to say to you to be honest
I honestly thought the talking cat thing made that pretty obvious
Also obviously i’ve only ever lived in this one small part of Germany
so my list here probably doesn’t apply to the whole entire country..
So if you have any different experiences as a German
or someone who’s also moved here..
Please go ahead and tell me how my personal experiences are wrong
and aren’t like that where you come from
as if I didn’t just say that 5 seconds ago.
So…
Auf geht’s! (Let’s go!)
♫ Intro Music ♫
/music fades out/
People STARE
So when I’m out and about
I will often speak English with my fellow English-speaking friends.
It’s my native language
so I can better express my love of every dog in the world
But the moment one English word escapes my lips
EVERYONE within a 5 mile radius
is GLARING in my direction.
Look
I get it
not that many people speak English around here
and it’s interesting to hear a language that you understand at least a little bit
of in the supermarket
and I won’t lie
I too gasp loudly and mouth
“E N G L I S H” to my friends
but I don’t STARE at them!
Where I’m from
everyone minds their own business so hard
that they wouldn’t interfere in a mugging
out of fear of annoying the victim.
So it feels super uncomfortable to be stared at all the gosh darn time.
Even when I’m not doing anything
not speaking English or anything
just casually walking up to my house.
STARED AT.
Why don’t you take a picture it’ll last longer!
*camera shutter sound*
Uh-
Did you actually-
Okthatsfineiguess
Netflix
German Netflix SUCKS okay
There’s barely any selection compared to the UK
and SIGNIFICANTLY less
compared to the US
for the same price or even higher.
I get not being able to make every show available in certain countries for legal
Copyright..
WHATEVER reasons
but surely you can compensate for that by lowering the price?
At this point even YouTube Premium is more worth it.
You get to watch all the videos you want with no ads
AND support your favourite creators significantly more
AND get access to
Like
one good original show.. ? *laughs*
What were we talking about again?
Oh yeah
German netflix bad!
The Language
I know I already talked about the language in my “things I love” video
but I have kind of a love-hate relationship with it.
Those who are familiar with it probably know exactly what I’m about to say…
ARTICLES.
I’m going to explain this extremely simplistically so pls don’t use this as reference for your
homework
So you know how English has the word “the”..
well German has SIX different ways of saying the word “the” !
There are basically different rules that apply based on the context and type of word you’re
using…
But even if you have learnt the rules and understand what to use in which context..
you can still say it wrong if you don’t know what TYPE the word is!
Except for a few different circumstances
there is no way to figure out whether a word is masculine, feminine or neutral.
You just have to KNOW it.
And this concept gets applied to many other words..
including adjectives!
You can’t just describe a ball as red
you have to reference that “Ball” is a masculine word
and consider what is happening to the ball
and what is its relation to other things in the sentence?
It IS something you start to pick up on the more you hear and read the word
but even Germans forget what article words have sometimes.
Supermarkets
The supermarkets here are not that great compared to my hometown…
Sure you got LIDL and ALDI
which are great in terms of value but..they barely have anything??
So if you need something more specific
you have to go to one of the bigger stores which
ALSO doesn’t always have it or is out of stock.
This probably sounds really petty…
and..yeah, it is.
Everything on this list is really petty
but c’mon
I’m not advocating for change or anything
I just wanted to make a dumb video
BUT YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND…
supermarkets in the UK are HUGE.
Not all of them, there’s small and medium sized ones too and I have to point that out
or people in the comments will get mad at me
So yeah.
Compared to the ones in the UK
my local supermarkets have barely anything and are constantly out of stock.
And this is why I order takeout way more than I should..
“No, that’s just cause you’re too lazy to cook”
Food
Yeah- another one that was also on my “love” list ..
of course I still love german food but I’m honestly missing a lot from England..
Cheese for example
I cannot find a cheese in Germany
which is as delicious as British cheddar
"but German stores DO have cheddar"
NO.
This is NOT cheddar.
this tastes NOTHING like proper British cheddar.
I'm- I'm very passionate about cheese okay
Public Transport
*long sigh*
The trains here..have their days.
You’re essentially flipping a coin as to whether it’ll be there early and you can
get in and sit down already or…
an hour late.
Or it will just..
disappear entirely and NEVER show up
I was waiting for a train once
And, I’m super paranoid about travelling on my own so I have to make ABSOLUTELY SURE
that I’m in the RIGHT PLACE and getting on the RIGHT TRAIN
so I don’t end up in.. Amsterdam or whatever
So I was using this app…
it’s it’s just a train app, an app for trains
And it’s actually pretty cool because you can type in where you are and where you need
to go
and it finds all the trains you can take
but I was mostly using it because it shows you the progress of your train
Like
which stop it’s at right now
which one it’s going to next
and how long it’s gonna take to get to your stop
stuff like that
So I’m waiting for the train
staring very closely at the app
when the big display says it’s delayed by 20mins and it’s like okay
I’m gonna be late now, that’s cool.
But there’s no other trains for like an hour so I have to wait it out.
So I wait 20mins…
25mins…
30minutes…
40 minutes..
Eventually it’s gone from the display completely and I’m like huh??
Look at the app and it’s apparently reached its destination..?
But the thing is…
this is the only way that train could’ve gone to get there.
There was no way it would’ve gotten there without crossing through my stop -
which it didn’t do.
It didn’t pull into a different platform either so
idk it fell into a black hole or something I guess?
So I get on a different train and sit right in front of the display because paranoid.
It looks like the one on the app so I can be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that I get off at the
right stop.
So it’s kind of a long train so I’m sitting there chilling.
And after a while my stop starts to come up and I notice a little message.
I didn’t know German very well at the time so I text my German friend like..
“what does halt entfällt (stop cancelled) mean??”
So yeah they were just not stopping at my stop anymore
and I wouldn’t have noticed if I wasn’t staring at the display
because there was no announcement or anything!
So I had to get off at a different stop
then take a train back to MY stop
and all-in-all I was about 2 hours late
Needless to say I’m glad I don’t go to school here
because I could barely even deal with the nightmare that was buses in the UK
So that’s about it!
Obviously despite the few downsides
I still really enjoy living here.
If you’re interested in why
I actually made a video about that already!
You can check that out here.
Or if you’re tired of the whole Germany thing
I would recommend this video.
Feel free to leave me any suggestions for what you would like me to make a video about
in the future
and subscribe if you haven’t already.
Thank you for watching and auf wiedersehen (see you next time)!