That is, of course, if subtle is like a brick to the face.
(This list will be ongoing and frequently updated as I find new weirdness.)
1. Groceries:
Flour: In the US, you can buy things like, "All-Purpose Flour," "Semolina Flour," "Bread Flour," "Unbleached Flour," and so on and so forth ad infinitum. The purpose of the flour you buy is usually right on the front of the bag! Imagine my dismay when I arrive in Germany, need to stock my pantry with some flour, and all I can find is, "Weisenmehl Type 405," "Dinkelmehl," "Weisenmehl Type 1105," etc.
I did some research about this. The article "German Flours" did a pretty damn good job of explaining how the types correspond to the ash content of the flour. If, like me, you are stuck in your American ways and don't really care about ash content, all you need to know is that "All-Purpose Flour" is essentially just "Weisenmehl Type 405" in Germany. You're welcome. (I haven't really explored Dinkelmehl yet. It's from a completely different grain, so...yeah.)
Baking Soda: So, in German, Baking Powder, is called Back Pulver. Easy enough. What isn't easy is that Baking SODA isn't called Back-anything. In fact, it is referred to as "Natron." Also, instead of coming in tubs or Arm & Hammer boxes like it does in the States, it instead comes in weird little paper-ish packages all shrink-wrapped together into a bundle. Useless.
Eggs: Do NOT look in any refrigerated aisle for these. You will not find them. They're usually right out there with the potatoes (Kartoffeln) and onions (Zwiebeln).
**A friend also told me that there is a scale for how "hipster" eggs are. "0" at the beginning of the number stamped on the egg = Super Hipster. These chickies were fed all organic food and lived a free-range life. "1" means your chicky egg-layer was probably free-range, but fed some crazy hormones or something; these are intended for the poor hipsters. "2," a.k.a. the only eggs I can afford to buy, are non-hipster eggs; these are your full-on hormone-fed, caged up chickies.
Cheese: The only one that will be familiar to you is Swiss cheese. Where the f*** is the cheddah and mozzi?! (You can eventually find them, but they aren't obvious like they are in NY grocery stores.)
Peanut Butter: This applies to sweet things of any kind: candies, chocolates, peanut butter, maple syrup, honey, etc. IT IS EXPENSIVE!!! Imagine what you spend on the small-size Skippy Super Chunk in grocery stores in the US. Now charge the same price for an off-brand of half the size. That's how indulgences are treated in Germany. The only exception is Nutella. That's a GIANT jar for half the cost it would be in the US.
General: YOU CANNOT BUY OVER-THE-COUNTER DRUGS AT THE GROCERY STORES. This is very important. You can only get drugs at an Apothecary (Apotheke) here. Grocers can't legally sell them, and convenience stores don't exist.
Furthermore, literally everything is closed on Sunday's. So if you're hemorrhaging from a paper cut on a Sunday, you'll have to pray to the god everyone is visiting that day that you have a "Plaster," or you'll find yourself in the ER for a wee tiny boo-boo.
Wine and Beer: Cheaper than juice. I'm not lying. This applies to purchase in grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants, you name it (and they all sell the same relatively good-quality stuff)!. A .5L of wine will run you about 3,50 at a restaurant, whereas that much will only get you .3L of juice (saft).
2. Living Arrangements:
Unfurnished apartments in Germany are unfurnished to the point that they do not come with kitchens installed. Most people travel with their cabinets and appliances. That probably explains why Germans are so reluctant to move for any reason.
Furnished apartments (at least in our experience) come SO well stocked that you won't need to buy soap or Q-Tips for the first 1/4 year at least.
I learned this from my boyfriend's mother, but apparently watching TV is VERY different here (not that I would know). You never just walk into someone's house, even if they are family, and start watching TV, with or without them. I have no idea why, but it's just something that's not done here. How on Earth do they do Game of Thrones viewing parties here?
Freezers = VERY SMALL.
Espresso machines = VERY LARGE.
Windows open in two directions; they open on the horizontal plane (from the top, into the room) if you only want to let in a little bit of air. They open on the vertical plane (from the center, out into the room, like French doors) when you want to let all that sun-shiney gloriousness into your house.
Window screens are apparently unheard of. At least, I've never seen one.
HOWEVER, most windows have bomb shutters. That's right, all you zombie-apocalypse-prepping geeks out there: BOMB SHUTTERS. Germany really has had trouble letting go of a lot of its war-time memories.
My father has an obsession with the doors here because they have an extra lip that goes over the door frame to prevent drafts. Honestly, all but one of our doors stay open pretty much all the time, so I haven't noticed.
3. Lifestyle:
High-speed internet? As if. If you think T-Mobile is bad, just wait until you move to Germany.
People stare for no apparent reason. I wouldn't even mention this, except I'm not the first person to notice the phenomenon.
Everyone does their grocery shopping on a more-or-less daily basis. None of those, "waiting until the end of the month when you're left making freezer fries and mayo sandwiches" end-of-month shopping sprees. This is also how they get away with the tiny freezers. If you have nothing to store, why save space for it.
Wurst-salat is absolutely not what you think it is. If you're anything like me, you imagine a green salad with some kind of cooked sausage sliced on top, likely with some kind of savory dressing and some cheese. NOPE. Wurst salat is LITERALLY shredded bits of sausage and sometimes cabbage to create a weird, cold, meat salad.
Kids can go home for lunch-hour and study halls. I don't know, but Holy Trinity High School would flip a shit if you crossed the street for a donut for lunch, so this came as a bit of a surprise to me. Kids here are pretty much just tiny adults (which explains why none of them smile). They handle getting to and from school and all of the hours in-between. They order their own food in cafes and bistros. They smoke weed (at least some of them do, I've seen it), and they are generally pretty self-sufficient. The benefit seems to be that school lets out pretty early.
Very few people smile, and even fewer have that USA warmth! It takes getting used to (read: I'm definitely still not used to this).
TRAFFIC CIRCLES LITERALLY EVERYWHERE. They replace intersections here. The benefit is that Germans seem far better equipped to handle them than any driver in the US.
Furthermore, Germans always stop for pedestrians in crosswalks. It's delightful.
4. Entertainment:
This is the land of the marching band! Every holiday there seems to be a parade of marching bands. Most recently, I attended the Lörrach, Weil am Rhein, AND Basel (Switzerland) Fasnacht celebrations (which are essentially Mardi Gras parades), and while I was wandering around Basel on the feast day of San Giuseppe, there were even more parades! While all parades seem to include marching bands, 4/4 so far have also included people throwing candy at you, so this is pretty much a win/win.
Movies (like the ones at regular cinemas) have intermissions. Most intermissions are 10 minutes, which is great for taking that mid-movie piss or grabbing an ice cream. Special movie events (so far I've attended the National Theater of London's screenings of Amadeus (Freiburg), and Hedda Gabler (Basel), have 20 minute intermissions, occasionally filled with background information about that particular production. (These experiences are an AMAZING way to see quality live performances for the price of a movie ticket. Hedda Gabler even came with a glass of champagne.)
(This list will be ongoing and frequently updated as I find new weirdness.)
1. Groceries:
Flour: In the US, you can buy things like, "All-Purpose Flour," "Semolina Flour," "Bread Flour," "Unbleached Flour," and so on and so forth ad infinitum. The purpose of the flour you buy is usually right on the front of the bag! Imagine my dismay when I arrive in Germany, need to stock my pantry with some flour, and all I can find is, "Weisenmehl Type 405," "Dinkelmehl," "Weisenmehl Type 1105," etc.
I did some research about this. The article "German Flours" did a pretty damn good job of explaining how the types correspond to the ash content of the flour. If, like me, you are stuck in your American ways and don't really care about ash content, all you need to know is that "All-Purpose Flour" is essentially just "Weisenmehl Type 405" in Germany. You're welcome. (I haven't really explored Dinkelmehl yet. It's from a completely different grain, so...yeah.)
Baking Soda: So, in German, Baking Powder, is called Back Pulver. Easy enough. What isn't easy is that Baking SODA isn't called Back-anything. In fact, it is referred to as "Natron." Also, instead of coming in tubs or Arm & Hammer boxes like it does in the States, it instead comes in weird little paper-ish packages all shrink-wrapped together into a bundle. Useless.
Eggs: Do NOT look in any refrigerated aisle for these. You will not find them. They're usually right out there with the potatoes (Kartoffeln) and onions (Zwiebeln).
**A friend also told me that there is a scale for how "hipster" eggs are. "0" at the beginning of the number stamped on the egg = Super Hipster. These chickies were fed all organic food and lived a free-range life. "1" means your chicky egg-layer was probably free-range, but fed some crazy hormones or something; these are intended for the poor hipsters. "2," a.k.a. the only eggs I can afford to buy, are non-hipster eggs; these are your full-on hormone-fed, caged up chickies.
Cheese: The only one that will be familiar to you is Swiss cheese. Where the f*** is the cheddah and mozzi?! (You can eventually find them, but they aren't obvious like they are in NY grocery stores.)
Peanut Butter: This applies to sweet things of any kind: candies, chocolates, peanut butter, maple syrup, honey, etc. IT IS EXPENSIVE!!! Imagine what you spend on the small-size Skippy Super Chunk in grocery stores in the US. Now charge the same price for an off-brand of half the size. That's how indulgences are treated in Germany. The only exception is Nutella. That's a GIANT jar for half the cost it would be in the US.
General: YOU CANNOT BUY OVER-THE-COUNTER DRUGS AT THE GROCERY STORES. This is very important. You can only get drugs at an Apothecary (Apotheke) here. Grocers can't legally sell them, and convenience stores don't exist.
Furthermore, literally everything is closed on Sunday's. So if you're hemorrhaging from a paper cut on a Sunday, you'll have to pray to the god everyone is visiting that day that you have a "Plaster," or you'll find yourself in the ER for a wee tiny boo-boo.
Wine and Beer: Cheaper than juice. I'm not lying. This applies to purchase in grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants, you name it (and they all sell the same relatively good-quality stuff)!. A .5L of wine will run you about 3,50 at a restaurant, whereas that much will only get you .3L of juice (saft).
2. Living Arrangements:
Unfurnished apartments in Germany are unfurnished to the point that they do not come with kitchens installed. Most people travel with their cabinets and appliances. That probably explains why Germans are so reluctant to move for any reason.
Furnished apartments (at least in our experience) come SO well stocked that you won't need to buy soap or Q-Tips for the first 1/4 year at least.
I learned this from my boyfriend's mother, but apparently watching TV is VERY different here (not that I would know). You never just walk into someone's house, even if they are family, and start watching TV, with or without them. I have no idea why, but it's just something that's not done here. How on Earth do they do Game of Thrones viewing parties here?
Freezers = VERY SMALL.
Espresso machines = VERY LARGE.
Windows open in two directions; they open on the horizontal plane (from the top, into the room) if you only want to let in a little bit of air. They open on the vertical plane (from the center, out into the room, like French doors) when you want to let all that sun-shiney gloriousness into your house.
Window screens are apparently unheard of. At least, I've never seen one.
HOWEVER, most windows have bomb shutters. That's right, all you zombie-apocalypse-prepping geeks out there: BOMB SHUTTERS. Germany really has had trouble letting go of a lot of its war-time memories.
My father has an obsession with the doors here because they have an extra lip that goes over the door frame to prevent drafts. Honestly, all but one of our doors stay open pretty much all the time, so I haven't noticed.
3. Lifestyle:
High-speed internet? As if. If you think T-Mobile is bad, just wait until you move to Germany.
People stare for no apparent reason. I wouldn't even mention this, except I'm not the first person to notice the phenomenon.
Everyone does their grocery shopping on a more-or-less daily basis. None of those, "waiting until the end of the month when you're left making freezer fries and mayo sandwiches" end-of-month shopping sprees. This is also how they get away with the tiny freezers. If you have nothing to store, why save space for it.
Wurst-salat is absolutely not what you think it is. If you're anything like me, you imagine a green salad with some kind of cooked sausage sliced on top, likely with some kind of savory dressing and some cheese. NOPE. Wurst salat is LITERALLY shredded bits of sausage and sometimes cabbage to create a weird, cold, meat salad.
Kids can go home for lunch-hour and study halls. I don't know, but Holy Trinity High School would flip a shit if you crossed the street for a donut for lunch, so this came as a bit of a surprise to me. Kids here are pretty much just tiny adults (which explains why none of them smile). They handle getting to and from school and all of the hours in-between. They order their own food in cafes and bistros. They smoke weed (at least some of them do, I've seen it), and they are generally pretty self-sufficient. The benefit seems to be that school lets out pretty early.
Very few people smile, and even fewer have that USA warmth! It takes getting used to (read: I'm definitely still not used to this).
TRAFFIC CIRCLES LITERALLY EVERYWHERE. They replace intersections here. The benefit is that Germans seem far better equipped to handle them than any driver in the US.
Furthermore, Germans always stop for pedestrians in crosswalks. It's delightful.
4. Entertainment:
This is the land of the marching band! Every holiday there seems to be a parade of marching bands. Most recently, I attended the Lörrach, Weil am Rhein, AND Basel (Switzerland) Fasnacht celebrations (which are essentially Mardi Gras parades), and while I was wandering around Basel on the feast day of San Giuseppe, there were even more parades! While all parades seem to include marching bands, 4/4 so far have also included people throwing candy at you, so this is pretty much a win/win.
Movies (like the ones at regular cinemas) have intermissions. Most intermissions are 10 minutes, which is great for taking that mid-movie piss or grabbing an ice cream. Special movie events (so far I've attended the National Theater of London's screenings of Amadeus (Freiburg), and Hedda Gabler (Basel), have 20 minute intermissions, occasionally filled with background information about that particular production. (These experiences are an AMAZING way to see quality live performances for the price of a movie ticket. Hedda Gabler even came with a glass of champagne.)
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