Hey everyone! Dana here, and right now I'm in the U.S. visiting my parents, and I've
gotten lots and lots of requests to make a video talking about the, kind of, reverse
culture shock that I experience when traveling back to the U.S. And so, while I've been here
on this trip, I have been diligently keeping a list of all the things that I've experienced
and noticed that surprised me that I don't really think surprised me before I moved to Europe.
I noticed the very first one when I first got to the airport here in the U.S. and we
were still in the area where we were all together, no matter where we were from, what our passports
were, we were all together in one big line. And I could right away pick out, sort of,
who was the American in the line and who was from somewhere else by what they were wearing
and their hairstyle. So, hairstyles more so for women than for men. Um, there's this very
particular up-do that I've noticed a lot of women in the U.S. do. Hold on!
Ta-da! So this is like the typical, kind of, "I don't give a crap" hairstyle. And, so of
course at the airport I saw a lot of these. It's just the throwing it back, I don't care.
It's not even in a pony. A pony would just be too much, hitting me in the face. So they
wear it like this and as the day goes on, it sinks, you know, further down, so it kind
of hangs like that. So that's what I noticed on the women. And then also in line I noticed
a lot of baseball caps! So I don't think I saw as many baseball caps in Germany as in
the U.S. I counted at least 15 baseball caps, mostly on guys. And then in addition to the
baseball caps you had the sunglasses. Often on top of the baseball cap like this or, you
know, the cool people, upside-down. They had their sunglasses. And if they didn't have
a baseball cap to rest their sunglasses on, they just put it on their head, like that,
or they had them tucked into the collar of their t-shirt. So that was another one. I
saw a lot of t-shirts and those sports shorts. So the, the mesh, um, gym shorts, basically
on guys. They go down to about the knees and then of course sneakers.
And what I also noticed in the airport was just all of a sudden people that I didn't know
started talking to me.
We were all tired, you know, we were sharing a similar experience; we were jet lagged.
We'd just come from a different country. We were coming back "into our home." Actually
my home's in Germany now, but still, we all had that kind of tired, exhausted, doing the
same thing camaraderie. And so the person behind me just kind of started chatting with me.
And then I got into a new line and again the person around me, we just kind of struck
up a conversation: "Oh so, where are you coming from? Aren't you tired?" Laughing about something
that had happened in line. "What are your plans while you're here?" I don't know, just
talking with strangers. And at first it did surprise me. You know, the guy behind me said
something to me and I was like, you talking to me? So it did, you know, take me some time
to get used to talking to strangers again. And with that, my parents picked me up from
the airport and we drove right towards the home, we went out to eat; I was starving.
And we're sitting there at the restaurant. Our server has come. They've taken our, um,
our order. There's no reason for anyone else to come to talk to us that I can think of,
and suddenly this woman appears at the table: "Hello! How are you guys today?" And my parents
are like, oh, we're good. How are you? And the first thing that I thought was, "Oh! Do
my parents come here often? Do they know this person?" Nope! It was just the manager stopping
by to see if everything was okay. And then I remembered, that's right! The managers do
that in the U.S. The floor manager will often walk around the restaurant and just stop by
the people's table to make sure, has the server been doing everything okay, do you enjoy your
meal, is there anything special that the manager can get you? So yeah, that caught me off guard.
All of that just within my first day of landing in the U.S.
Then the next day I was surprised driving around, which of course we were driving the
car almost everywhere, which was in itself a big shock. Driving around, the banks often
have these big signs outside that show the time and the temperature. And we're driving
around and the temperature flashed as like 23 or something like that. I'm like, oh my God!
There's definitely something wrong with that thermometer, you know. Oh no wait, that's
right; it's in fahrenheit. So my brain had to kind of adjust to that. Which, I really
don't know cold temperature in fahrenheit because I lived a lot of my life in South
Florida, and so I know hot temperatures in fahrenheit, and then I moved to Germany, and
I learned all the cold temperatures in celsius. So coming back here, now my parents live in
Colorado where it's cold, this is my first time really getting to know the cold temperatures
in fahrenheit. Something else that I noticed that I was surprised
about was that everything was in English. You know, I showed up at the restaurant and
I was like, oh wow, look! They gave me an English menu, that was nice of them. Duh!
The only menu is in English. Or my mom and dad were going to some sort of a, a course
and they invited me to come with them, and the first question that I had was:
"Do you think it's going to be in English or in German?" Of course I didn't voice that. You know, my
brain, like, censored it before it came out. But that was my first thought, was, hmm I
wonder what language the course will be in?
Also something that I noticed, I was driving around in a car but also everyone else was
driving around in a car and the cars themselves are different. Of course bigger; everyone
kind of know that; the cars in the U.S. are bigger than the cars in Germany, in general.
A lot more trucks, pickup trucks. But something else that I noticed was that the cars...
there were a lot more dented and, kind of, cars being held together with duct tape, which
I don't often see in Germany. Yeah, I feel like I very rarely see a dented car in Germany,
whereas here, if you get into a small fender-bender, you know, and you just can't afford to fix
it, or you just would rather spend your money on other things and the car's still running
fine -- there's just a dent in the back or a dent in the front -- a lot of people just
kind of leave it that way.
Okay, and I had a bit of a mix up with the money. So I've gotten totally used to euros
and coins. Coins having, like, a significant value. When I lived here in the U.S., coins
were kind of an annoyance, you know. You just, sort of, left them at home, or at least I
did. I never really carried them around with me. I'd collect them, bring them to the bank
and exchange them for actual bills. But in Germany coins have big value! You can have
a one euro or a two euro coin. And so my brain, one evening, hadn't really adjusted, I guess.
And so I went to the store to get some cough drops. I got the cough drops; went to go pay
for them. Okay, so the guy said to me, it's $2.25. And my brain immediately thought, like, okay,
two; that means I need two of those coins that are kind of like this size or one of
those bigger coins. And so I looked into my purse, and what coin is about the size of
the one euro? A quarter! So I pulled out, not even thinking, I just pulled out two quarters
and I put them down on the counter, which that's also kind of a reverse culture shock.
In the U.S., you don't put the money down on the counter when you're paying at the grocery
store or any other stores, but you hand it directly to the cashier, directly into their
hands. It's quite rude if you just put it all down on the counter and make them,
kind of, sweep up your money. You put it in their hands. But so, you know, not really thinking,
I just sort of put it down on the counter and then I starred at it, and my brain, I'm like,
uh uh, and then I mumbled out loud -- this guy must think I was crazy or we're in Colorado
so high -- I mumbled, "Oh, these are just quarters." And put them back in my purse.
And then paid with a few dollars. So yeah, getting used to the money, the temperature,
the clothes, just people being more talkative; all of that is the -- everything being in
English! All of that is the reverse culture shock that I have experienced while I've been here in the U.S.
So my question for you is: what kind of reverse culture shock have you experienced when you've
traveled outside of your home country, maybe even just for a vacation, and then returned
home? Please let me know in the comments below.
Thanks so much for watching. Please don't forget to subscribe and hit that like button
if you enjoyed this video. And also, you can check me out over here on my Twitter and my
Facebook page, where I post photos, so for example, while I've been here in the U.S.
I've been posting a lot of photos of "you know you're in the U.S. when..." and then
when I'm back in Germany, I'll post photos and videos and just whatever's going on around
in Germany, Munich, whatever. So, yeah, you can check me out over there. Until next time, auf Wiedersehen!