Hey guys! How are you? My name is Sarah and
I’m here on the EF YouTube channel to do a bit of guest vlogging.
I am an American who lives in Berlin, Germany
and today I’m going to be talking about shopping in Germany.
There are a few important things that you should definitely know
whenever you’re going shopping in Germany. Let’s get right to them.
First of all, most shops here in Germany are only open until around 8 o’clock.
It definitely depends on where you live.
Here in Berlin, I do have some shops that are open until 9 or 11. It depends.
It’s definitely important to look up the opening hours of a shop.
In general, in Germany, most of the stores are open until 8pm and everything is typically closed on Sundays.
It’s definitely a good idea to make sure you do all your grocery shopping before Sunday comes around.
It will be a little bit difficult on Sundays
because you will have to go to the train station to find an open grocery store.
It takes a little bit of getting used to, but you will eventually get used to the opening hours and if you’re unsure,
you can always just look it up online before you go to avoid any disappointment.
If you are shopping here and you’re looking for something specific and you need to ask a staff member for help,
it’s always best to start with something friendly instead of just going straight into the question.
You can go up to them and say “Guten Tag” or “Guten Morgen”
before you get into what you’re asking, if you know what I mean. It’s always best to be friendly.
Those are my general tips. Now I want to get into my favorite type of shopping: grocery shopping.
There are definitely a few things you need to know when you go grocery shopping in Germany.
The first thing is that you always need to bring your own shopping bag.
If you’re from the United States, you’re probably used to plastic bags for free everywhere.
They do not do that here. It’s very important to bring your own reusable bag.
Otherwise you will have to purchase a brown paper bag for a couple of cents,
but it’s always best to bring your own bag because this is what locals typically do.
Use any kind of bag. People use backpacks or whatever they have.
The next thing is that you need to bring some coins with you –
a one Euro, two Euro or 50 Cent coin because the carts are attached to each other.
I’ll insert a clip here to show how it works.
Basically, you have to put the coin into the shopping cart to release the cart so you can go around with it.
This just kind of ensures that you bring the cart back when you’re done with it
and don’t leave them scattered all over the store or in the parking lot or whatever.
So, make sure you have some coins handy. I often forget this one, so try to remember
to always have some coins in your pocket before you go to a grocery store.
The next thing that’s important to know is how the recycling works here.
Pretty much all plastic and a lot of glass bottles have a small upcharge on them called “Pfand”.
When you buy something, there will be a price and then an additional 10 or 15 cents,
which is basically the deposit to ensure you’ll bring the bottle back.
So, when you bring the bottles back to the store, you will find a machine and you just put them in
and you will get your money back.
It will print out a little coupon that you can scan and it’s just like regular money.
Just be aware that on top of the price you see for beverages, there will be a charge on top of that.
It’s pretty easy to recognize which bottles have the Pfand recycling upcharge because
they’re all marked on the back here, as you can see. It looks like that.
This just ensures that everything gets recycled.
If you’re grocery shopping and you’re a vegetarian or vegan, you’re not going to have any problems
because a lot of products are clearly marked. The markings tend to look like this here.
There are other markings as well, but I would say these are the most common ones.
So, if you’re vegan or vegetarian, just turn the package around,
look all over and you’ll see the marking that lets you know what’s vegan and vegetarian,
so you won’t have to read all the ingredients.
The last thing that you should know is that not all stores accept credit cards or debit cards.
There are a lot of shops that only accept cash, so it’s always best to have a few Euros with you
whenever you go shopping because you never know if they’re going to accept credit card or not
or if the machines will go down. It’s just good to have cash.
A good phrase to know is “we don’t accept cards.”
In German, this would be “Wir akzeptieren keine Kreditkarten.”
Then you know they take no cards here.
If this happens to you and you need to find an ATM,
you can ask where the closest ATM is. In German, it’s “Wo ist die nächste Bankautomat?”
If you keep all these tips in mind,
shopping and grocery shopping in Germany won’t be any problem for you at all.
I really hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you did, give it a “thumbs up!”
Thank you so much for watching and I’ll see you next time. Bye