tell me Germany are we nuts?? hey guys what's up! it's Kelly again welcome back
to my apartment and welcome to my channel! for today's video I decided to
do a part two or should I say a part two video to my first German apartment video
and if you haven't watched that video yet click pause go find that video and
watch it because I'm going to reference it a couple times throughout this one
and I don't want you to get lost in what I'm talking about. people wanted to
see more of my apartment and less of my face so I'm working on that too! alright
enough about all that... let's get on to the apartment tour! and the first thing I
want to point out during this apartment tour is the front door. the front door to
this apartment automatically locks behind me and I'm not used to that
because everywhere I lived in the States I've had to manually lock the door
behind me which makes it impossible to accidentally lock myself out so because
of that I keep my keys here just to make sure that I never forget them since I'm
not used to it especially when I do something simple like just taking out
the trash. this apartment also opens up right into a hallway which i think is
quite common in germany whereas in the US, i would say it's more common for
the front door to open up right into a living room. we're gonna go into the
kitchen next but before we even go in it I want to point out the kitchen door. I
have never seen one of these before moving to Germany. all of the places I
lived in the States had a much more open floor plan so the kitchen opens right up
into the dining room or the living room or maybe both and if it did have some
sort of separation there was an apartment I lived in in college where it
was separated from the rest of the apartment
it still had these very wide entry ways that were wider than your average
doorframe so this was very different to me that you can just close the door to
the kitchen if you want. so this is my kitchen
and it's quite a bit smaller than what I'm used to having
in the States but I will say that I've never lived in like a major city in the
States and so I know those apartments have a lot smaller kitchens as well. I
thought that I wouldn't like this kitchen because of how small it is I
thought that it would prohibit me from being able to do a lot of the cooking
that I wanted to do but I found that it's actually a perfect amount of space
and I'm able to do everything I want. I'm also just cooking for my boyfriend and I
am so I don't have like a huge family that I'm cooking for so maybe that would
change my opinion. in my first video I talked about how Germans move their
kitchens from apartment to apartment and while I will say that not all Germans
move their kitchens enough Germans do it that I think it makes it culturally
significant to Germany. my boyfriend did in fact move this kitchen into this
apartment from his last apartment which meant that he had to kind of do some
modifications because his last kitchen was shaped differently than this one. for
an example of the modifications I'll show you this...this space here is because this
kitchen was not built for this apartment in this size area. this tile or
splashguard is behind the refrigerator which doesn't really make sense but
again it's because this kitchen was not built for this apartment I would
actually say that the whole moving the kitchen thing was the biggest culture
shock that I had when I moved to Germany and started looking for my own place. I
looked at a bunch of apartments in both rheinland-pfalz and hessen and when I
was walking through them with the landlord or the realtor or whoever, I
was always just so amazed to find this big empty room with no cabinets no
appliances no counters and that was the kitchen. In the US, I have never seen an
apartment without a kitchen it's part of the apartment. this is the only cabinet
that we keep food in all the other cabinets and by all the other cabinets, I
mean this like half cabinet and the two cabinets over here...they have dishes in
them. we have this cabinet here that allows us to be able to store more food.
so we keep produce on the top shelf and the inside we have mostly canned goods.
a lot of places in the States though not all of them will have a pantry which is a
sort of closet dedicated to storing food or whatever other kitchen items you may
have that don't fit in the cabinets but like I said in my first video there
isn't a lot of built-in storage in the apartment I've seen in Germany so
instead you use furniture. also in this cabinet we keep our grocery bags. it is
ridiculous how many of these bags that we have accumulated. if you watch my
German grocery store video then you'll hear me talk about how Germany grocery
stores don't really use plastic bags. they want you to bring your own bags or
they make you pay for paper bags at the cashier. I can't be the only one... like
we're not crazy right? we aren't alone in having an entire storage area dedicated
to these bags like tell me, Germany, are we nuts??
I'm sure you could fold these nicely into here but I just...I don't want to.
one thing in my apartment that we do use those bags for aside from groceries, is we
have what my boyfriend calls a pfand bag and it's basically where we put
all of our recyclable bottles. In the US, I've always had or seen people have
like a little maybe it's a trash can or sort of bin or like an actual like
sanctioned recycling bin that you throw away your recyclables into I'm sure that
Germans have those things too but we in this apartment use a bag and when I say
pfand bag, it is filled with what are called pfand bottles and I show a little
bit about this in my German grocery store video but basically a pfand bottle
means that you put a deposit onto the bottle when you purchase the product and
then you can take the bottle back to the grocery store, I think every grocery
store has a bottle return, and you put it into the machine and it gives you your
deposit back to be able to use in that grocery store towards your groceries or
you can I think just get the money back in cash. and you know it's a pfand bottle
if it has this specific symbol on there and the Machine actually reads that
symbol to make sure that you're feeding it pfand bottles...and my boyfriend really
hates it when I put non-pfand bottles into the pfand bottle bag. we're gonna head
to the bathroom next. this is our bathroom. it's a little narrow and tight
so sorry I can't really get the best framing but I wanted to point out that
after I'm done with showering in this bathroom, I go over to the windows
and I kipp them open or I tilt them back so that fresh air can get into the
bathroom and moisture and the humidity that accumulated in the bathroom from my
shower is able to escape and that prevents the growth of mold whereas in
the US, of the seven houses I lived in and the five different apartments only
two of those had bathrooms with windows so opening the window to get the
moisture out wasn't exactly an option for me. instead I would turn on the fan
or the ventilation system to get that moisture out which isn't an option for
me here because there is no fan or ventilation system. all I have are those
windows. in my last video I talked about how a lot of German apartments will have
the washer and dryer in the bathroom I've also seen them in the kitchen but
when they're in the kitchen I usually see it being just the washer
or I've seen washer and dryer combo machines? which is really new to me. I've
never seen a machine that's like two in one like that. I'm actually really
curious about that so if you own a machine like that or maybe you've used
one if you can put in the comments what you think about it. is it more efficient?
are you able to get your laundry done like as quickly if you have a couple
loads? I'm just really curious about it because it's very different to me.
another thing I wanted to point out about this bathroom is this window right
here. I've never seen a window like that and I didn't really understand its
purpose. it is to help get natural light into the hallway. the hallway doesn't
have any windows of its own so the light that comes into the bathroom can then be
transmitted into the hallway through that window even when the door is closed
which I guess is a nice feature but I don't know if maybe I just don't put a
lot of priority on having natural light in the hallway so it's still kind of odd
to me. actually if you go out into our hallway you'll notice above our front
door there is another window very similar to
that and our front door leads out to the apartment buildings like community
stairwell and it's really well lit with these huge windows that are out there
and so that light is able to transmit through that window into our hallway.
before we leave the bathroom I wanted to point out one last thing and that is the
hot water heater. so this is an electric hot water heater. in the states we have
like these giant giant tanks that are just like full of gallons and gallons
and gallons of water that are kept hot inside of that tank and when you call
for hot water at your faucet hot water will flow from the tank and to your
faucet. I never really thought too much about our style of hot water heaters
until I moved out of my parents house and was out of my own paying for my own
electricity bills and started to wonder how much
electricity I am just wasting on this hot water heater that is clearly losing
heat because it's not really well insulated and it is heating up water
that I might not even use at all that day whereas with this it's quite a bit
different. whenever I call for hot water at a faucet
in this apartment water will flow through this machine heat up someone
instantly and come right to my faucet. I'm not losing a lot of energy and I'm
only heating up water that I'm actually using. another great thing about this hot
water heater is that you never run out of hot water I very clearly remember
growing up in a house of four and we were all getting ready to go to school
or to work and we're all taking showers and inevitably the person taking the
last shower might have the hot water cut off like halfway through the shower
because the tank went dry of hot water and it can't heat up the water fast
enough to keep up with our usage whereas here because it only heats up it as you
use it you never run out of hot water. okay let's move on to the bedroom. there
are a couple things I want to point out in this bedroom but first I want to talk
about this electrical outlet. so a commenter on my last video pointed out
this outlet to me and said that it is put here up off the floor so you can
easily plug in your vacuum cleaner and I laughed when I read that comment because
that's exactly what I use this outlet for and it never even occurred to me
that it was all part of the plan that it was put there for that specific purpose
and I'm trying to think of places I lived in in the US and if there were any
outlets up off the floor like that and aside from bathrooms and kitchens I
really can't think of any so it's a tiny difference but it's a difference. and I'm
gonna talk about the bed because it is very different from the beds that I've
seen in the States. this is the type of bed we have in our bedroom in this
apartment. I'm sure there are all different styles of beds throughout
Germany but this was extremely unique to me because I've never seen a bed style
like this in the US and also I noticed that a lot of the hotels in Germany have
very similarly structured beds in me it was somewhat culturally
significant if you notice we have two different blankets one for me and one
for my boyfriend well I actually have to because I get really cold at night
so he has his own blanket and I put on two different colored fitted sheets ooh
you could really tell the difference that there are two different mattresses
here the benefits of this is that if I like a softer mattress I can have a
softer mattress and if he likes a firmer mattress he can have a firmer mattress
and each of us can kind of accommodate our sleeping area the way we want it to
be and the mattresses themselves not only is different that there's two of
them laying right next to each other on the same bed frame it's not two
different beds it's one bed frame they also are way more flexible and pliable
than the mattresses that I'm used to in the u.s. in the u.s. we have a lot more
sturdy mattresses and I think that a lot of Americans looking at this might think
that this is very uncomfortable because if you were to put you american-style
mattresses next to each other it would be uncomfortable you have like really
hard corners or edges that you would just be driven nuts by I'm sure but
these mattresses are really soft they don't have those like there's a seam
here but it's not like the really hard edge to a mattress like we're used to in
the States another thing I want to point out is that these mattresses are sitting
on wooden slates whereas in the US were used to putting our mattresses on
box springs there are also these metal brackets on this bed that allow you to
be able to raise or lower the foot of the bed and the head
the beds and we each have our own little wooden slate thing yes so I can raise my
side without impacting my boyfriend and vice versa. another thing is how short
this bed is. so this bed comes up to like mid-calf for me whereas in the US. I
would say that most beds come up to mid thigh my bed comes up to like my waist
the only person I've ever seen with a bed this low is actually a friend of
mine who is half-German and grew up in Germany so I don't really think it's the
greatest comparison. but I would say that most American beds are way higher up off
the ground compared to this bed and many of the German beds I've seen. the last
thing I want to point out about the bed are the pillows. these are square pillows
and I see these at a lot of the stores here in Germany. in the US I've only seen
square pillows for decorative purposes usually the pillows that we use to put
our head on to go to sleep are rectangular shaped. another thing I
wanted to talk about in the bedroom are the style of lamps. this lamp has the
switch on the cord so I can easily turn it on and off whereas I think in the US
it's still more popular to have the on and off switch on the neck of the lamp
itself. there are a lot of lamps that are exactly like this in the States but I
wouldn't say that they're more common whereas here I would say that this style
is more common. all right I think that's all for the bedroom so let's head to the
living room. something I want to point out in the living room are these light
fixtures. my boyfriend installed that light fixture himself and actually he
installed all the light fixtures in this apartment when he moved in just like he
installed the kitchen and I think that same with the kitchen a lot of Germans
look at light fixtures as being part of
their property part of their furniture. they choose the ones they like and of
course they're gonna move them with them apartment to apartment whereas in the
US, to me at least, light fixtures, the kitchen ...all of that is part of the
apartment. I look at that stuff as the same way I look at like the toilet, the
sink, the bathtub... so when you look at apartments in the US, all of that stuff
is already there. in fact a lot of apartments in the US even come with a
washer and a dryer. another thing I learned when I came to Germany is that
they list their apartments as like "two room apartment" "three room apartment" and
to me that meant "two bedroom apartment" "three bedroom apartment" when I started
going and looking at these apartments I quickly learned that included in that
number of rooms is the living room. that's very different to me. in the
states it's always assumed you're getting a living room in your apartment
and you don't have to list it separately unless it's a studio apartment which is
like a little bit of a different case, it's always assumed you're getting a
living room in addition to however many bedrooms is in the apartment. so we would
say a two-bedroom apartment to mean there are two actual bedrooms plus a
living room or a three bedroom apartment... there's three bedrooms plus a living
room. also about this living room is that just like the kitchen there is a door
and again that is different to me. I've never seen a living room with a door
because it's usually a more open floor plan and if there is some sort of
entryway just like the kitchen it's usually just an open entryway and maybe
even wider than like a normal doorframe would be. so that's all I really have to
say about this living room but there are a couple more things I want to say about
the differences I've noticed between German apartments
and US apartments. one of those things is the security deposit. in the US I'm
used to paying one month's rent security deposit. here in Germany, I've
noticed that the security deposits are quite a bit higher. in my last apartment,
I had to pay two and a half months worth of rent for my security deposit which is
way more money than I'm used to putting down and I don't know if that's because
of I heard that it's a lot harder for landlords to be able to kick out tenants
that aren't paying or are causing issues in the apartment and so that money is
set aside to be able to help offset costs with issues with renters I'm not
really sure what the reason is I just know that it is a lot higher from what
I've experienced. and the whole utility thing here is way different than it is
in the US. and I could probably spend a lot of time talking about it but to just
put it as simply as I can... in the US I would pay my electricity bill every
month for the exact amount of electricity that I used for that last
month. here in Germany, it's very different. every month, I pay a set amount that is
sort of in advance towards the electricity bill that I actually get at
the end of the year when they do a final meter reading and so if I put down... let's
say 50 euros every single month which is 600 euro for a year and then that final
meter reading is done and maybe I use more electricity than 600 euros worth I
used 800 euros worth of electricity then I would owe the electric company 200
more euros. I'm not the biggest fan of this system because I really would
rather just pay exactly what I owe every single month but that's how they do it
here I'm sure there's a reason that I'm just not knowledgeable about so if you
know why that is done this way or if you have an opinion
on why it would be better than how we in the US, put it in the comments I'd
be super interested to read your perspective. alright guys that's all I
have for you today I hope you like this video! if you haven't subscribed to my
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