hey guys! come on in! thanks for coming back to my channel and
welcome to my apartment. I thought that it would be cool if I showed you guys
what my apartment in Germany is like and point out some of the differences I've
noticed between your standard German apartment and your standard American
apartment. And the first thing I'll say is that a lot of Germans learn English
from British instructors and the Brits call their apartments flats and so a
German, when speaking English, will often refer to their apartment as a flat
whereas we call them apartments. So when you first walk into your standard German
apartment you'll notice a bunch of shoes on the ground and that's basically
because when a German comes home, they'll arrive, they'll take off their shoes and
they'll put on what they call house shoes or basically just slippers so that
way they're not tracking in any mud or dirt or anything from outside and into
their house. And that's pretty cool but I thought I was a little weird whenever
I went to a German apartment for like a party and I was expected to bring my own
house shoes. Sometimes the host will provide how shoes if they have enough
depending on the size of the party but yeah I had to bring my own house shoes
and when I got there I was expected to take off my shoes and put on slippers to
there and socialize with everyone which I thought was pretty strange. Alright
let's go into the kitchen so German kitchens to me are really really
different primarily because Germans actually move their kitchens which, I
know, it sounds crazy. So I never really understood why when I went into IKEA in
America why there was like this huge section dedicated to kitchens like how
many people are getting their houses built and needing to buy cabinets and
counters and whatever for the house and then I moved to Germany and found out
that Germans will go and buy their own kitchen, install it into their apartment
or their flat and then will actually if they're moving will de-install that
kitchen, take it with them, reformat it because
obviously not every kitchen is shaped exactly the same, and then they will
reinstall it. Now obviously there's exceptions to this some Germans will be
able to sell their kitchen to their landlord or maybe the person that's
taking over the lease after them but for the most part they move their kitchen
with them. Another different thing is that their refrigerators are drastically
smaller than ours and it's kind of hard to show you on this video without doing
a side-by-side comparison but if you think about it I'm five foot seven and
this is the top of my shoulder and this is the top of the fridge, so my shoulder
is actually above the height of the fridge and the freezer is pretty small
too. Another thing is their dishwashers.. so water in Germany is like really,
really, really hard. If I remember correctly when I looked it up our
hardest water is still like ten times softer than German's softest water that's
how hard their water is. So because of their hard water, Germans will actually
add additives into their dishwasher to soften the water and make sure that it
doesn't create this like film or calcium like buildup or residue on their dishes.
Another thing is that I have never seen a Keurig for the entire time that I've
been in Germany. I don't know if they're here or not but I've never seen one but
I have seen coffee appliances from other brands. So, Tassimo is a popular brand
that you'll see in Germany and so is a Nespresso, and there's a bunch of other
ones but I've never seen a Keurig here which is kind of interesting because I
feel like Keurig just like took over America over the past couple years.
Alright I think that's all for the kitchen so let's move to the bathroom. So as I
walk into the bathroom, the first thing I'll point out is the toilet. So they
don't have handles to flush their toilets. What they have are buttons, and
usually there's two of them. And as I always say, the bigger the button the
bigger the flush. And you'll also notice that there isn't that top part to the
toilet that we have and that's because it's like inside the wall there. And the
toilet doesn't sit on the ground, it's basically just floating in the air there.
Also a lot of German flats will have their washer and dryer inside their
bathroom. So another different thing is that they have these cool heaters inside
their bathrooms, which are basically like towel rack shaped heaters so when you
turn it on not only is it heating up the bathroom but it's also warming up your
towel which is pretty awesome when you're getting out of the shower. What it
is not awesome though is that again because of this hard water thing if you
have a shower like this where it's like this glass wall you are going to have to
squeegee every single time you get out of the shower. And it drives me crazy
because like it's just another step I have to take when I'm getting ready in
the morning is to squeegee down the shower
and if you don't squeegee down the shower you get these really bad hard
water stains on your glass and it takes kind of like a lot of effort to wash
them off. Alright I think that's all for the bathroom let's head to the
bedroom and I'm sorry my place isn't as clean as it probably should be for this
apartment tour but uh truth be told I don't really care. So, the first thing I
always notice about a German bedroom or their hotel rooms a lot of times they
have these two mattresses that lay next to each other to make up, this is
basically like a queen-size bed .And if you notice those are actually two
different blankets too. And when I moved in with my boyfriend I thought it was
like really weird it seemed like I was like what is this the 50s we can't sleep
in the same bed together and I've grown to love it. It is awesome. I sleep so well
and I think it's just like the better way because if you think about it it's
not exactly natural to sleep right next to someone and be able to get like super
restful sleep because maybe they move or making noise or whatever but for some
reason having this like defined sleeping space for yourself you get like way
better sleep. So if you look behind me you'll notice that this is like a
wardrobe and again it looks similar to IKEA, right? What you'd see in IKEA. And
that's because Germans, they don't have closets. They don't do the closet thing.
So you basically have to go and buy wardrobes from furniture stores if you
want to be able to hang up your clothes because there are no other options. There
are no closets. Another thing I'll point out in here
are the windows and I think they're pretty cool. I've heard
that a lot of Americans think that the German windows are super fascinating so
this isn't a window, I mean this is a door, but it's the same mechanism. So you
can either open it completely, right, or you can bring the handle up and it'll
just as I call it I call it the German way of opening so I don't really know
like what a proper term for it should be but basically it just tilts the glass
away from the wall and so you get some airflow without opening the entire
window or door. I think it's pretty cool! Alright let's go into, oh! One more
thing. So their light switches are different. Instead of having like the
actual light switch looking things that we have, they have basically square
buttons as their switches. And they also don't really have door knobs. I've never...
I don't think I've ever seen a door knob in Germany. They mostly have door handles.
This is what I'm used to seeing all throughout Germany. Alright let's go
into the living room. So the furniture in here I think is pretty standard. Again, it
looks like something you'd see in Ikea and I'm sure any German hearing me say
this all is probably really annoyed like IKEA is not the only furniture store and
I got that, but I just think IKEA resonates really well with your average
American because it describes the style of furniture it is not so much the
quality. So as I mentioned, there's not a lot of closets, there aren't a lot of
like built-in storage in German houses and apartments, and so they'll buy
furniture that's much more functional than I think what the average American
has in their home so that they can like get the storage they need out of the
furniture. The other thing I'll point out in here is the heater. So when you look
at the heater, I always think it looks like this old-school again, I'm like
throwback to the 1950s style heater. They don't have like central air here like we
do in most of your new houses in America. They
have these heaters. Actually they don't have air conditioning. I've never seen a
house or an apartment with air conditioning...
they rely on opening the windows and using the curtains and the shades and
the blinds to basically keep their house cool in like a more natural way instead
of using air conditioning. And then again, with the heaters, they have these like
vents and it doesn't really create a lot of airflow and so Germans will, and
there's a term for it but I just don't know it and even if I did I wouldn't be
able to pronounce it right, where they open up all of their windows for a
certain amount of time to just basically like air out the house or the apartment
to get any moisture out and make sure that no mold starts growing. And the last
thing I'll show you in here is the blinds. So most German houses and
apartments will have these roll-down blinds that are basically on the outside
of the window and I did this, it's an electronic function, and so it's rolling
it down itself. I don't think this is anything particularly fancy... it's pretty
much standard. Maybe it's not electronic, maybe you have to manually roll it down
like I did in my old apartment, but for the most part their blinds are on the
outside of the window and they're shaped like this instead of ours which are on
the inside usually and they have like the standard sliding type design where
you can like open them and close them. Alright guys! That's all I have for you
today thanks for joining me! I hope you enjoyed this video and if you did give
it a thumbs up. If there's anything I missed that you know of a difference
between a German apartment and American apartment feel free to put them in the
comments, I would love to learn from you! And if you have any questions from me,
throw them in there too. Thanks for joining me! I hope you subscribe to my
channel I'll be posting videos every week. See you next time! Bye. Bye!
I'm gonna go edit this video now so I need you to go.