hey guys welcome back to the channel today we're going to be checking out a video from uh zoe marie
again um this one's gonna be german culture shocks as an american should be really interesting and uh
we're gonna get right into that video but like i said before i'll be moving to europe and i can't
stress it enough my other channel will be linked in the comment section instagram so on so forth
and it's going to be a travel channel just like this when i get there share my experience talk to
you all about it do all that you know nice goody stuff for you guys but we're gonna get right into
this video so i do hope you guys enjoy as usual and uh please do like and subscribe i'd really
appreciate that but we're gonna get right into this video so without further ado guys let's go hi
guys welcome back to my channel today is going to be some germany culture shocks which i experience
while living in germany i have 13 differences that i found while living in germany and before
we actually start this video i do want to put a disclaimer on the screen that these are all my
experiences these are things that i've experienced while living in germany it might be different
from your experience but of course i'm just saying what i experienced so just a disclaimer
got you so let's jump right into the video with the first difference that i found while living
in germany so i'm going to start with something typical i'm sure everyone has heard this if you go
across youtube but the first thing obviously that an american would notice while living in germany
is that everything is closed on sundays you cannot go grocery shopping you cannot go to the mall
everything is literally closed and this was super hard for me to adjust to in the beginning because
randomly i would like to go grocery shopping on a sunday or you just forget something
you know i'm actually just clocking what she's saying right i'm actually i was clapping that
she was saying it was closed early but i'm just actually clocking that she said it's actually
closed you cannot actually go wait i'm just clocking that i literally just clocked that so
for real it's 100 close like you cannot go to the store like none at all it's not half day you know
a few hours five hours maybe one a little eight hour shift i don't know it's not that it's just
fully dead nothing closed sheesh something but things are closed here on sunday so you cannot
actually go out and get anything but restaurants are open so you can go to a restaurant okay
so the second thing which i've noticed which i think is a little bit of a culture shop for me as
a new yorker is the fact that everyone here really follows the rules and this is not a bad thing okay
i'm not saying that it's a bad thing one example of that when people are crossing the road bro
if you act over there in new york bro and you don't j want man yo i'm gonna shake your hands
bro if you if you're in new york probably i'm telling you bro when it comes to new york the jay
i just knew she was gonna talk about jaywalking when she said the rules bro because oh my gosh
i'm not dude i would follow the rules in germany you know because they say when
you're in rome do as the romans do so i would follow the rules but when i'm in new york boy
i gotta do as a new yorkers do man that's just how i go but for real though um it's
really really a busy um time in new york and um really you know um i i'm not telling anybody to
go out there jaywalking because it's pretty dangerous but um sometimes you just gotta
bounce you know what i'm saying like you know you see nothing coming you you calculate you you just
bounce like i remember i was in new york and um i had to do something over there and i got to be at
the building at a specific time right and i had to just be cutting through bro i had to just be going
bro and i'm talking about in the winter time right so it was pretty cold right so i'm telling you new
york you just got to do what you got to do you're trying to get where you're trying to get at and
it's pretty darn busy so you just got to do what you got to do man we'll just cross the road if
it's free if we see no cars we're just gonna cross the road but in germany if the crossing road sign
is not on green they're not gonna cross the road and just an example of how intense people really
follow this rule i lived in this really small town a few years back and it was about i don't know 5am
or 6am i was going to pick up my sister from the train station and i was walking there and there's
no cars on the road absolutely zero cars on the road it's too early there's nobody around and
people were still waiting at the crosswalk for the crosswalk sign to turn green it is literally like
that so the next thing that i want to talk about as a culture shock is definitely the recycling
recycling is taken very seriously here in most homes that i've been to in germany they have
different boxes for different things like paper like bo plastic there's also water box there's so
many things for recycling again this is something that's really good and we should all be doing it
but it is a huge culture shock coming from america because i've never really seen someone have
multiple boxes for recycling obviously for plastic and things like that but in america it's normally
that you put everything in one bin which is not very good and it's a huge huge difference here
and i have another experience about this where people really really
go hard for their recycling which is fine my last apartment i've actually had an old german couple
like i was throwing out my trash and they checked my trash to make sure that it was recycled
properly literally went into the trash and was like is this recycled properly and it was it was
but they just wanted to make sure because they can obviously tell that i'm a foreigner so they were
checking my trash the next culture shock which i find a little bit you know hardcore as an american
living in germany is definitely the sea and the do for maladies that they have here for example
if you're in the office you're always saying ccc to people that you don't know or just managers or
supervisors or whatever and you have to then ask them if it's okay if you're friendly enough with
each other you can ask then if you can use the informal version of you so c basically means you
you can use the informal version of do if you know them properly and for me this was a big
culture shock also learning the language that you always have to change between which type of you
that you have to use and then it also comes with different conjugations which is just a little bit
different because we don't have this in america i think the closest thing you could say is we have
mr and mrs i suppose but with the actual word you in america we call everyone just you there's no
formal you there's no informal you it's just you the next culture shock which i've noticed in
germany when i used to take the bus if for example a pregnant woman would come into the bus or an
old person would come into the bus it's just natural that someone would get up immediately
to give their seat away and in new york i have not seen that ever i've never seen it i'm sure
it happens but i've never seen it but i've noticed every single bus that i've been on people always
get up for the old people or the pregnant women and make way for them to sit down the next culture
shock which i found while living in germany is the smoking situation in germany i could also say this
is maybe a european type of thing but it's a huge culture shock for me because everybody is smoking
literally everybody's smoking i'm seeing like kids outside smoking and i feel like it's not as
looked down upon as it is in new york for say or america to be a smoker but here everyone is
smoking my next point which is i've never know or believed or thought you know smokers are supposed
to be looked down upon like if it's not illegal well i don't know like personally for me i like i
smoking affects you i know that i would never smoke i'm not a smoker i don't smoke
but i would never look down upon somebody who does something that i don't do that's not right
at all but um it's pretty much their choice you know because it's their body and um i think the
smoking packet actually says smoking kills or whatever right so that's their choice but
would i recommend spoken to anyone no i would not because i'm not that guy who's
going to recommend some even if i loved smoking i would not recommend it if somebody be like oh
i love this you should try it no because i know that um not because i like it i should
let somebody like you know what i mean it's i'm not that guy to force my likes upon someone it's
it's really a disturbing thing when i see people forcing what they like on to other people like
let me let me let me get to live please if i see you smoking and i i think it's cold then
i smoke that's all i but don't try to force me to do something you know what i'm trying to say
tipping in germany so what i've noticed is that in germany obviously you don't tip as
much as you tip in america dipping in america is a must do you cannot go to a restaurant and not
tip the waiters a nice amount of money you know because they're making most of their money from
tips and so in germany when you do go to tip i mean necessarily i guess you don't have to
which is what i've been told you don't actually have to because they're making their normal wage
but when i've seen people tip they're mostly tipping to round the bill up to like an even
number for example if the bill is 23.5 euros then people tip okay let's just give you 26 for example
so that's what i've noticed tipping is not a big thing here in germany as it is in america
this next one it could just be limited to the area that i'm living in but i find that it's like wine
country so a lot of people are drinking a lot of wine so there's just wine everywhere i guess
the main reason for that could just be because i'm living in the south of germany so the next culture
shock that you might find if you come to germany as an american is the taxes so they are no taxes
in germany that's not true so if you're going to the supermarket for example and you want to buy
a stick of chocolate for example it will cost you two euros and when you go to check out you pay
two euros it's not like the typical american do not add the tax until you go to the connor or the
cash register or whatever tax is not included and you have to pay two euros and five cents
now the tax is already included in the chocolate so when you go out to check out you just have to
pay that price that you have seen which i really really like because in america you go you see the
item without the tax and i don't know why we don't just include the tax within the product
and then just pay for it with the tax included so the next thing has to do with the autobahn
and fast fast driving normally if you hear german you just obviously think about fast cars
mercedes etc etc and i did not really germans told me not to try that thing man that thing put
you in a casket if you're not german just let it be just let it be it's not for you just let it be
you'd think that they would be driving as fast as they say in the movies or as fast as
the stereotype is but they're actually driving that fast on the autobahn but what's crazy about
it is they're driving fast and they're driving safe which is a little bit weird so in america
obviously you have your speed limit and obviously you know people are always breaking the speed
limit but here the speed limit is already so fast and in some places there is no speed limit so
they're actually going extremely extraordinarily fast and as a new driver i've been driving in
germany for a year now compared to driving in new york it is just so fast my little car is literally
vibrating as i'm staying on the right side it's literally vibrating as these fast cars are just
zooming by my little cars and when i mean that they're driving fast and driving safe well
first of all when you go to take your driving license here in germany you have to go through
a lot of processes to actually get your license i can only speak for new york unlike in new york
i felt that it was very very easy there's not a lot of questions to study for in the theoretical
but here in germany i had to take everything all over again so theoretical and practical to
get my german driver's license and it was very very very difficult i failed the theoretical
twice it was like over a thousand questions that you actually have to study for and know to pass
this test and the practical was also you know you really have to know the road and know the
signs and that's what i mean by that it's a lot safer i feel because people study a lot longer
and a lot harder to take i guess i ain't getting no license because i'm good i ain't trying to
remember a thousand questions like do you have to actually get all a thousand correct because
if that's the case i'll yeah i'm good i'll just walk the german driving test and also
there's one thing which i like about the german autobahn is that you cannot you know overtake on
the right side so if you're driving and you want to overtake the car that you're behind you have
to go to the left and then go in front of him you cannot overtake on the right side that is illegal
so the next thing has to do with coupons so as an american and as an american with a mom who
was a hardcore coupon clipper in germany there's no such thing as like big big savings coupons
for example in new york my mom she used to cut a lot of coupons for the supermarket we have a big
family so she would cut a lot of coupons and we would go to the supermarket we would have
like a big cart of food and big cart of stuff and when we would go to check out she would be
going through all her coupons all her coupons and you can you know mix and match and do whatever
and in the end we would pay pennies for a full card of food because of all the coupons she had
and the coupons also extend to you know beauty products cvs but in germany i find that there is
not this coupon culture you cannot save a lot of money at the supermarket with a bunch of coupons
it's just not a thing and i've never seen it if it is a thing please do let me know if there are
coupon clippers in germany let me know because coupons really do help for me personally i love
coupons i'm a big saver so that's why this was a real culture shop for me because i like to save
money on things so the last thing that i want to talk about has to do with the german supermarkets
and this is a huge culture shock for me because shopping at a supermarket for me is a leisure
type of fun thing that you do and get yourself and then you just leave in germany it is calming
when you go to pick out your stuff you know it's a nice supermarket you pick everything up
and you're ready to go to the cash register and you're ready to check out all your stuff is on
the belt and you're at the end and the thing which i found super hard to ingest is that you have to
pack your stuff asap as soon as a woman or the man at the cash register scans your item because
they leave literally like this much space for your items at the end which means they do not
want you to stay there for a long time they want you to pack your stuff that's efficiency though
i can't argue with that that's efficiency because i let me tell you something i'm not a prick but i
don't like to wait i don't have that much patience when it comes to get it done get done right so if
somebody's catching me right now i'm gonna be like all right let me get that all right put that i'm
out we do it fast right so i actually respect that a lot that's pretty tight some speed and i'm sure
there's some reasoning behind why they do that obviously i guess to move quicker but for me it's
a huge culture shock because in america when you go to check out the cash register it's this huge
like runway where all of your groceries go you pack it at your leisure there's no rush there's no
anything no one is looking at you like why are you taking so long to pack your stuff it's just
a long runway you take your time it's a hundred percent different than how it is in america so
look out for that when you're going to go grocery shopping it's going to be a little stressful when
you're checking out so that was the end pretty decent pretty decent i co-signed i co-signed
i i liked it it was pretty decent i ain't gonna lie to you but either ways guys we're gonna get
up out of here it was pretty decent i can't wait to have my culture not so shocked because you know
i already know these things so pretty crazy that i do reaction videos about what i want
to actually experience but anyways guys i'm gonna be out of here man if you have any
recommendations in the comment section down below and i'll see y'all in another video man peace