Things That Shocked Me In The US After Living In Germany 🇩🇪 (Reverse Culture Shock)
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- Опубліковано 9 лип 2024
- After moving to Germany and living in Germany for 3.5 years, we hadn't stepped foot in the US for 2 years! So, when we finally did leave Germany, we were thrown into a world of reverse culture shocks. 😊
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❤️Aubrey was a Speech-Language Pathologist and Donnie was a graphic designer, but we both had a dream to #travel the world and experience cultures. After three years of being married and dreaming about if something like this great adventure would be possible, we decided to quit the rat race and take on the world. We sold everything we had, quit our jobs, and took off! After 9 months of aimless and nonstop travel, we now get to fulfill our dreams of #LivingAbroad as #expats as we move to #Germany!
00:00 - Intro
1:31 - Thing 1
2:31 - Thing 2
3:21 - Thing 3
4:33 - Thing 4
5:43 - Thing 5
7:16 - Thing 6
7:51 - Thing 7
8:59 - Thing 8
9:55 - Thing 9
10:29 - Thing 10
11:15 - Thing 11
11:35 - Thing 12
12:21 - Thing 13
13:44 - Thing 14
14:28 - Thing 15
16:06 - Thing 16
17:09 - Bloopers
Thanks so much for watching, guys! If you enjoyed this video, you’ll like these as well! 😃
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My American Family’s First Time In Germany 🇩🇪 - What Shocked Them The Most - ua-cam.com/video/qyMgOOxtDJ8/v-deo.html
5 Genius GERMAN Life Hacks Americans Have Never Seen Before & You NEED To Know! 🇩🇪 - ua-cam.com/video/u3vBMMgZJHs/v-deo.html
100 SHOCKING Differences Between Germany and America! 🇩🇪 - ua-cam.com/video/SV3PNyHDGPY/v-deo.html
I have a question about Aubrey's occurrence on this channel: Is her absence a personal decision (e.g. because she wants to concentrate on the baby)? Or is it a legal thing, where she isn't allowed to work during her parental leave and occurring in a monetized video would count as working?
A little reminder: In German we don't say 1st flor, we say 1st "Upper Flor" -> 1. Obergeschoß or Etage (from the French language: étage what means step) or Stockwerk (Long story, has to do with the old buildings, and how they was build).
14:06 min Mowing lawn and raking leaves in public places is a job for Stadtreinigung (city cleaning) and for municipality. If you want that for your private garden of course you can hire a gardener who does it for you (if you can afford it). Exception: When you are a needy/ill person and cannot care for your garden any more you can send an application to the social welfare office and they pay the gardener for you.
Coffee creamer does exist in germany. It is called "Kaffeesahne". You can buy it at any grocery store. i think... im not using it. my grandparents always use it
EU uses SYMBOLS not because of the LANGUAGES and co but because it is QUICKER for the Human Brain to identify a SYMBOL compared to read a Text. That the Symbols are "multilingual", so everybody can understand them, is helpfull too but the Reason why Symbols are used: Symbols are much quicker to identify by the Human Brain then reading Text.
China does the same. I name China as Example since China is also BIG and would not need to translate the Streetsymbols to Foreigners.
Gated communities always sound post-apocalyptic to me. Maybe that's because I first learnt about them in the context of segregated South Africa, a system right out of a dystopian novel. I've never heard of one existing in Germany. If someone wanted to establish one, I'm sure they'd be labelled as mad and paranoid.
Schrebergärten sind teils wie Gated Communities, where you need a key to enter a land which consists of many Schrebergärten. But many are just placed on field without a gate/fence around them all.
they have gated communities here in Germany, named Bundeswehrkaserne ;-)
Nonexistent.. If you can close off the road its not a public road anymore... (this makes a difference for parking spaces, if a shop has a big parking space they need to be able to close it off or its a public parking space)
@@SchmulKrieger Gartensiedlungen sind überhaupt nicht vergleichbar und die "Wege" sind nicht Teil des Straßennetzes (keine SVO), sonst wäre das Abzäunen illegal (wir reden also über ein Privatgrundstück)
@@susannelachmuth3670 yeah no thats not the same. P.G. is not a gated community in that sense what USA means with that term in germany you also don´t have an HOA in that combination, so safe to say that the German understanding of Gated Community and HOA are very different from what americans mean and understand.
As someone British the big difference I notice between the US timber houses and the German/British houses (both use extensively concrete blockwork, concrete roof tiles) is how very inflammable US houses are. In the UK house fires are often confined to the contents of one room. In the US the entire house is quickly involved in fire and sometimes spreads to one or two next door. That never happens in Europe.
I agree, that pile of sticks looks like a giant bonfire to me.
oh yeah, i remember watching some old firefighter documentary. there was this whole bit about an apartment fire.
basicly the whole aparment burned down, everything in it was just black. nothing flammable survived the flames.
here's the things that really suprised me tho. it was just that aparment. the floor it was on appeared completly fine.
in the US the fire would have easly spread across the entire buidling
In places like Florida the only thing that's wooden is the roof. Everything else is concrete or limestone (the inner walls are drywall). I didn't step into a wooden house until I was 25 and moved to Tennessee. Now homes in Florida do have fires move to one room to another, but usually it doesn't spread to another house. The fire department is usually there long before this can happen. When the fire is put out you'll have a concrete shell. The old homes in Florida everything is concrete (rood including roof. You look at these homes and they look like a cereal box. Everything on it is flat. Some of Germany's newer homes are using gypsum for the inner walls. When I lived in Germany we rented a home with gypsum inner walls. The US uses gypsum in their drywalls.
Also, imagine a strong storm happens, in germany MAYBE the roof get taken of but thats it. You dont see whole houses flying around like EVER.
What does a European say, when he needs to sneeze in a U.S.-home? "Well, I'm huffin', I'm puffin', I'll blow your house in."
I grew up in a "Sackgasse" with a "Wendehammer" and after we moved twice we ended up in another one. They're pretty common in German suburbs and smaller villages. I have even seen a couple of them in Mainz where I study. Maybe not in the middle of the city or the Altstadt tho :) But I have to admit you have to live there to recognize them because there is no need to actively look for them.
Me too. I also grew up in one, same with my husband. They are quite common.
they are also pretty common in bigger cities. We have at least hundreds of them in Hamburg. Just look at a map of Hamburg-Sasel or Brahmfeld for example.
There are good reasons for the traffic light being on your side of the intersection. For one this prevents drivers from pulling up too far, thus blocking pedestrians and cyclists from crossing the street. And in a lot of places the intersections are not right-angled which can make it hard to see.
I still stand by in the US there are also not perfectly right-angled intersections and we make it work 😉😅
However, I will give you that Americans do tend to pull too far forward in an intersection and block crosswalks...😅
I think that the main reason why the traffic lights are at the start of the intersection, not across it, in Germany, is that there are many possible problems that can happen if you simply turn right because you do not feel the "red traffic light for going straight ahead" might not apply to you. There can and often will be bicycle riders or pedestratians crossing over that you might simply run over - and this is far less likely to happen in many parts of the US. (Not that the US is "safer" - there's just far fewer bicyclists and pedestrians in the cities!)
I would think that having the light where you stop is just more intuitive. As with a lot of these differences, it might be a matter of habit, but I can think of a lot of german interections where I would have problems identifying which light is meant for me, if they were on the other side of the intersection.
@@guyro3373 The US not safer by any measure, even if you correct for numbers. It's a horrible stroaty mess over there.
Sackgasse: Cule de sac. We have it.
There are professional gardeners or landscape artists that sometimes get hired by private people, but you usually do your garden on your own... it's part of why you have it. Fresh air, some exercise, some fun handling dangerous machinery, and the work you put in makes the end result taste or look even better. But then, it's also a golden opportunity to have your or your neighbor's kids get involved and earn some money.
Or you hire a gardener to do the hard work you can't do on your own any longer once or twice a year, but that is usually ONE gardener, not a whole crew. Certainly not to just mown the lawn...after all, there are robots who are able to do it nowadays.
But what with public parks for example?
As for thing 5: Never travel to Vienna, Austria! 😀 Sometimes, we have: Erdgeschoss, Mezzanin, Halbstock, Hochparterre, Zwischenstock, and then only the first floor. This is for historical reasons, because houses were taxed according to their number of floors at some time. So people became inventive and renamed the floors.
I'm in a hilly region of Canada, and we have a lot of places with multiple ground entrances, like my house for example, where the front door is at ground level, and so is the back door, but the back door goes into the lower level, and the front door goes into the upper level. It gets so confusing, especially when there's large buildings with underground parking or storage, like universities, hospitals, hotels, and convention centres. One building I had some university classes in, had 3 different second floors based on that, and everyone got lost. I said they should rename them with letters so they could just say floor C instead.
😁Love it! Now I'm more determined than ever to go to Vienna!
Same in Berlin. 😉 We have also Tiefparterre for Workshops, Grocers, Coal-Dealers etc.
Except one should really visit Vienna, at least once in their lifetime?
😂
Regarding the construction issue, I once saw a video from a German living in the US who explained it this way - Americans are comparatively mobile, and when you build a house, you don't necessarily don't want or need to build something that lasts a hundred years or more, because in 10 years, you might be moving somewhere else anyway, and after that, the house is someone else's problem. Whereas in Germany, if you build a house, you expect it to last. A house is more of a generational project to pass on to (one of) your children.
Also, when I see that the whole apartment complex I lived in in Dallas doesn't exist anymore and has been replaced by other housing, a lot of the building projects in the US are, I think, deliberately more fleeting so that you can ditch them and replace them with something more to your liking/more lucrative whenever you want. Where Germans would go on a modernization project and ensure even a house from the 1700s has running hot and cold water and electric fixtures, the US are far quicker completely razing something and building something new in its place.
It can be even worse than that. For instance, our home was built in 2004. The builders made sure it would last just a bit outside of the statute of limitations (10 years) before it would start collapsing. We are a very young couple with a 2yo who recently moved far and worked hard to set down roots for our little family, and this house has ultimately destroyed the state of our lives because we are now living in a deathtrap that we can't sell and insurance won't cover. We have nowhere to go. Turns out the company has a track record of skimping on building materials to pocket the difference... But legally there's nothing we can do (except for maybe foreclose I guess). As a foreigner I've always hated US architecture, but now I despise it.
This doesn't make sense to me. Don't Americans sell their house after they move somewhere else?
so the houses are not made to last long, because people can not afford it or companies build crap to sell new ones after 10-20 years. We also know construction defects, but it is not like the building is collapsing or something like that
Houses are also an investment item. Once you want to sell it, you want to sel something of value not a wornout shag that hardly keeps it value.
A quality house gives also a living quality.
The reason we have stoplights only on the near side of the intersection is simple: it keeps you from inching your way _into_ the intersection because you can't see the light there. It thus prevents you from having your front bumper sticking out into the lane for traffic coming from your left. It's quite a good idea.
The only „gated communities“ I do remember in Germany were US armed forces accommodation. 🤷♀️
And we do have Sackgassen 😉
I hated shopping in the USA (groceries and everything else).
People with bigger gardens do sometimes get lawn crews, but they are usually there to care for the flowers, bushes and trees.
Nice to see, that you are germanized like that.
When I visited the USA I didn’t drink coffee, but pretty much everything was too sweet for my taste. My grandma (who drinks coffee) said that US coffee had to be flavored to be somewhat drinkable. I guess it has gotten better over the past few years. And no, Starbucks coffee is horrible.
Regarding your question: one drink group or one specific version? But probably water.
yes, military compounds obviously... not only for American forces, but of course also everything related to the German Bundeswehr. otherwise than that ... a gated community would certainly not be along public streets but would probably need to be a whole neighbourhood in a large privately owned compound, which is surely extremely rare in the context of residential areas in Germany.
@@tobyk.4911 I can’t think of Bundeswehr Liegenschaften where families live. But I do remember seeing families of members of the US armed forces coming to Germany to live in „special areas“. Those areas were (at times) closed for the general German public as far as I remember.
Here in Karlsruhe, the armed forces housing was next door to the actual base, and was completely accessible to the german public.
The traffic light "above" is for all cars that are in line behind you, so they can a) see & prepare for the upcoming "jumb start", while b) the one to the side is for you - and that should be easily to see if you’ve learned to stop correctly "at the line" (that is marking the spot where your car will trigger the induction circuit that will manage the traffic light). Nuf said.
If you're told to go to the second floor, you just press "2" in the lift - it doesn't matter where it is!
I don't think gated communities are a thing in Germany, probably because crime is much less of a concern. I think the closest thing that exists in Germany are "Villengegenden", so residential areas that mostly consist of villas and moderately-sized mansions on big plots of land. But those aren't gated, they're just wealthier people's homes concentrated in one spot.
That's just the thing...you often find these gated communities in the US in areas where crime isn't a concern 🤔 For sure maybe they started as a concern for crime, but now seems like more of just a status symbol (in my personal opinion) 🤷🏻♂️ I hadn't heard of "Villengegenden," thanks for teaching me a new word! 😊
@@PassportTwo A different name would be "Villenviertel". But yes, gated communities are basically noneexistent in Germany.
It seems that Gated Communties might be on the rise in Germany. There are currently three complexes to be considered a gated community. One in Aachen, one in Potsdam near Berlin and one in Munich. I'm pretty sure more will follow.
@@dorisschneider-coutandin9965 No that much... Yes, there are a few, but they sold way harder than the investors expected and the return of profit was not good. And in the end that's what matters.
@@dorisschneider-coutandin9965 What leads you to believe they're on the rise? Are there any articles on the subject?
There's an additional feature of traffic lights in Austria that I'm missing abroad every time: Green light will flash 4 times at the end of the "Green" phase to indicate that "Yellow" phase is about to be engaged. Very useful.
Oh that’s something unsolid like to see here in Germany
ingmargreil Hi! Here in Helsinki, Finland, our green traffic lights start flashing, too, before the light changes, and that tells you that the light is going to change in just a few seconds, so you better hurry if you want to cross, or decide to stay and wait. A very helpful feature. In addition, many street crossings have audible ticking signals so that blind people can know when it's safe to cross, as well.
Flashing at the end of the green phase benefits only one, the bulb manufacturer, because it stresses the bulbs more.
It is the same whether you let green flash for four seconds or simply extend the yellow phase for four seconds. Ultimately, what matters is that there are sufficiently long clearing times.
In the case of pedestrian lights, there is no yellow phase at all; the clearing times are calculated in such a way that a pedestrian who has just entered the road when the light turns red can either cross the road or reach the central divider.
Whereby especially the latter leads to incomprehension with one or the other brainless troll. He has so little brain that he doesn't understand that you can't make the green phase of a four- or six-lane road so long that he can cross it completely, because otherwise the number of vehicles that you bring through in one round is simply halved.
@@wernerruf7761 No, a longer phase of Yellow does not mean the same thing … Our traffice code, at least, demands that drivers come to a full stop at Yellow, unless it's unsafe to do so (in which case they must clear the intersection as fast as possible.) No such rules for Green blinking, it's just a courtesy heads-up that the phase is about to change, but otherwise counts as full "Green". Did I mention we also have this for pedestrian lights? As I've said, very useful, and something that I routinely miss abroad. YYMV.
@@ingmargreil It's no different in Germany, if you can still stop safely, then you must not enter the intersection when the light is yellow. With emphasis on safely, my vehicle rear is more important than a yellow light.
Honestly, I see the flashing phase rather as dangerous, since that can lead to the fact that unsafe and overcautious vehicle drivers *), then unnecessarily step on the brakes, in order to be able to stop only yes at the first yellow, although this is not at all necessary. This combined with the opposite pole, which then accelerates, so that he has already crossed the stop line with the front wheels at yellow in any case is rather unhealthy.
In addition, I do not like the blinking for legal reasons, without blinking the legally usable proof that one could have stopped safely, is much more difficult to lead. You are always so surprised by the yellow without green flashing that you can no longer carry out an emergency braking with the danger that the following driver will rear-end you. With flashing it looks already completely different, costs in the doubt money, since estimations can differ.
---
*) So the guy who also doesn't know that every car speedometer has a lead of at least 3 to 5 km/h and therefore annoys all those following because he creeps along at 25 km/h at the permitted 30 km/h and gets everyone on edge. Above all because he does not make himself smart, there is a country wide measuring tolerance of 3 km/h, which is deducted from the actually driven speed. In Bavaria **) there is also a special tolerance of 5 km/h for single-lane roads and 10 km/h for multi-lane roads. Means to remain with the example with the 30 km/h, up to 38 km/h nothing flashes, starting from 39 km/h it flashes and when paying there is only the 3 km/h deduction, speak one pays starting from genuine 34 km/h. With the freeway one has somewhat more air, 13 instead of 8 km/h, which are usually multi-lane.
**) Caution there are 16 federal states each with their own rules and among them robber baron states like Baden-Württemberg with more stationary speed cameras than crosswalks.
The red/green trolls in Munich once laid an egg for themselves, because the spinners wanted to fantasize about a speed limit of 30/40 on main traffic and development roads, there was then a corresponding draft resolution. In the public resolution of the district administration committee of June 7, 2011, one can read why it is not possible and on page 9 it also says
… Die Beanstandungen bei Geschwindigkeitsmessungen bei Tempo 40 in einspurigen (je
Fahrtrichtung) Straßen beginnen bei einer Messtoleranz von 3 km/h und der ohnehin
bayernweit vorgeschriebenen Toleranz von weiteren 5 km/h bei 49 km/h und bei mehrspurigen
Fahrbahnen (vorgeschriebene Toleranz 10 km/h) bei 54 km/h…
can be found on the Internet since then.
I am quite sure that they did not intend to announce to everyone on the net how much you can exceed the speed limit in Bavaria without being sanctioned.
It's just a real problem when the department responsible for road traffic has the government of Upper Bavaria as its supervisory authority instead of the city council, and then the draft resolutions sometimes contain something other than stupidology.
No idea how it compares to US coffee creamer, but in Germany there is "Kaffeesahne". Usually comes in small round plastic cups (about a tablespoon each) with a lid like a cup of yoghurt. These cups are attached to each other in groups of 6 or 8
I think a lot of times Americans really want flavored coffee creamers and the Kaffeesahne don't come in any other flavors if I remember right 🤔
@@PassportTwo Yep, no flavorings. Though it tastes a little sweet and has more fat than milk.
I assume that coffee creamers are very artficial and sweet. Probably that is the reason Germany prefer milk as milk also has fat included to make it more tasty. Or they use whipped cream for your coffee (if they don't need to think about calories)
The German word for it is Kaffeweißer (literally coffee whitener). It was somewhat popular in the 90s but never really caught on. You can still get it, don't think it comes in different flavours though
@@kranzandreas3776 Ich kenne Kaffeeweißer nur als Pulver
Since you asked: water, preferably mineral water, bubbly. Maybe w a squirt of lemon juice.
When I first went back home after a year, my auntie asked, "what would you like to do, something you have missed, some food you'd like?" My immediate response was: "go shopping on Sunday" she laughed and laughed. When I went to visit my mom who had moved to Oregon, a few years later, I was absolutely amazed at all the wood yards we passed.: enormous amounts of wood logs, for miles unending! And of course the same reaction as you when I saw all the timber framed houses as we neared the town.
Didn't the gaps on booths in public toilets bother you? That was something I noticed right upon landing and every time I needed to use one.
Something else was seeing all those people drinking from paper bags. It looked so silly.
I always thought the whole „trafic light high up above you“ was for when you have a long cue of cars waiting, because it is far better visible from further behind, especially if there is something like a truck close to the front, blocking the lower light from view.
Here in Germany, there are strict regulations regarding fire protection, noise protection, environmental protection, and not to forget climate friendliness. We usually don't need air conditioning, as much is already regulated by the building. In addition, it is usually also prescribed which building materials may be used for which type of house in which region, depending on the development plan and the surrounding buildings. Pure wooden houses like in the USA would be accepted here at best as a gazebo or vacation home.
This is not correct. You can build a wooden house, but not with those toothpicks like in the USA. There are some companies, mostly in Scandinavia or in the baltic which sell wooden houses that are very solid.
@@KerstinVomVulkan I had not taken into account that there are new trends that want to allow new ways of building and experiment with different "alternative" materials. In particular, the focus here is on energy efficiency, climate friendliness and also low cost. However, I am aware that wooden houses have been built in Scandinavia for generations.
@@davebesset8150 "alternatives" is a bit far fetched. It is absolutly fine to build with wood here in germany. But the materials are highly regulated like everything else is in germany especially regarding construction. And those wood/timber houses aren't bad in insolation at all at even when it comes to fireproof. So they are not really "alternative".
Its just seldomly doen here in germany - because the wood you need to be inside those regulations is ironically almost as costly if not more than building with concrete // bricks etc but the labour is more intense
You all have heard of "Fachwerk"? Wooden construction is really old in Europe, especially Germany.
@@Zerzayar That is correct. But truss is only the wooden support corset, where the majority of the surfaces are filled with other material (brick, clay, etc.). In this respect, a half-timbered house is not a true wooden building.
This type of construction is also no longer produced today for various reasons. Too expensive, too complex, not necessarily climate-neutral.
Culs-de-Sac do exist in Germany and I have seen them in many places. However, usually they are in locations where it geographically makes sense or something blocks the road like tracks or a park. In my home town there was a pedestrian way and all streets on both sides of that walkway had a large turning bay with a small walkway towards that pedestrian way.
Yeah, in Germany they are called "Wendehammer" due to it's hammer-head shaped road end. However one key difference is that most of theam are non-parking zones and just intended to facilitate reversing on small dead-end roads.
I guess the official name for these kind of streets in German would be "Sackgasse".
@@jhdix6731 I am used to the name "wendehammer", since "sackgasse" could also mean that the road just stops and there isn't a big open area to turn or space for the kids to play.
They are also often placed at the end of a Spielstraße. We have more than one in my town.
Yes, i live in such a road and I now many others too.
I heard that many US houses have a basement and apartments don‘t have access to a cellar room. yin Germany it‘s normal that if you rent an apartment you most of the time also get a storage room in the basement. Perhaps that contributes to the difference on abundance of dedicated storage facilities. 🙂
We have cul-de-sacs in Germany but not as abundant as in the US perhaps because neighborhoods aren‘t often as designed on the drawing board. Yes, when there are new building areas, authorities are looking into how the streets are laid out. So to have access from more than on side you see more often something like a ring street, where a street starts from the main street and gets back to the main street again. So you don‘t have the problem if there are obstacles on the street because of different reasons. All the houses are still accessible because you can reach them from two sides.
Coffee creamer is also much more common in Texas, Oklahoma and the south of the US -- it goes back to the days when refrigeration was less common, so transporting and keeping milk around was harder, especially in the summer. I once went on a road trip through Texas and Oklahoma with a Swiss German couple and had to explain to them that if you wanted milk with your coffee, you had to specifically ask for 'real milk', otherwise they would bring you coffee creamer. In the midwest or the north in the US, they would generally bring you real milk and you had to ask for creamer.
Concerning the buildings: We went to Sweden for some holidays and while they build from wood a lot too, they have a very elaborate construction scheme from lots of wood with the outside walls beeing close to 40cm thick and I would trust their construction very much for a family home with two floors (wood is - thoughtfully used - a great material), I doubt that the popsicle construction of US homes can be close in safety and fire proofness.
Our house in Germany is from the 1920s and the walls are up to half a metre thick.
But I'm sure you don't use toothsticks to build the walls.
As an irish person...i tried creamer in the usa and its disgusting. Its like putting gone off milk into your drink...or protein powder. It doesnt dissolve correctly and it adds a disgusting flavour. Prob full of unneccessary calories like sugar and fat. I drink black coffee...double espressos even better and its about 2 to 5 calories. In the usa...one coffee ends up being a 1/3 of your daily calorie intake with 600 calories or so in them. So us europeans like to avoid unneccesary calories where we can and save it for beer or fresh bread instead
Also if i am to have milk now...i prefer oat milk and not cows milk. Also in the usa "dairy" things are made up of corn syrup...again diabetes waiting to happen
Thing 4 (stoplight placement): Just saw a video which explained, what happens, if you don't put stoplights on the other side of the crossing (like in Germany). It encourages you to NOT move slowly farther into the crossing and therefore invading the place reserved for pedestrians. Not convenient for motorists, but an indirect security measure for pedestrians.
Thing 9 (gated communities) and thing 10 ("culs de sac"?): We don't have these in Germany because generally we don't need it. Both things are kind of measures to create a safe und quiet place from car traffic. Most villages and many cities in Germany are not nearly as car-centered as in the US, therefore it's a lot more common in Germany to live in a street with almost no and very slow traffic and use this space without fear of being run over. Also, parks and playgrounds etc. are always in (SAFE) walking distance from home. The US tries to imitate this with gated communities etc.
3:45 this isn't just a German/US thing. It is a US/most of the world thing.
I'm Canadian and if anyone wore their shoes in my house I would never have them in my house again. I can't understand why someone would wear shoes inside a house.
Indeed, it is funny how much of an outsider the USA is, and how totally surprised they are about the simple dealings of the world.
Same, I get mud and salt all over my entryway, I wouldn't dare get that on the hardwood! I've even seen quite a few houses where there's a place specifically for taking shoes off (example, my dad has a few feet of tile at his back door where he leaves his shoes so the wood around it stays clean). A lot of the things he said are in Canada. I've been bagging my own groceries, and for my parents, since I was little (and I remember the Boy Scouts doing a fundraiser where they'd bag groceries for people and get tips), I've seen button flush toilets, but the buttons are usually on the top of the tank, usually I see handles like the US ones, but you lift up for less water, and push down for more. Then again, my dad sells toilets and I've seen so many different kinds. I'm just glad we don't have to pay for public washrooms, as I've been to some places where you'd either pay at a store (like how some corner stores you ask for a key, but you pay for borrowing the key) or some where you'd put a coin in. That was one that I had a hard time with when in some parts of Ireland. I guess some parts of Canada are like that, it's just not common.
It is a climate thing. Rural or not or personal.
The reason traffic lights are placed before the intersection is for safety. This way you keep your eyes on the intersection. Proven to be much safer. Greetings from Rotterdam, Netherlands
I prefer it because this way you have a clear(er) idea of *where the damn stop line is.* Mind you, my only experience with US-style traffic lights is American Truck Simulator, but I really hate that style. The only good thing is that sometimes, here in Europe the traffic lights are hard to see. That *could* be solved (by putting up US lights too… maybe smaller-ish so there's no confusion about which lights are the main ones).
Three comments if I may:
1. Gated communities. We do have them in Germany. We call them prisons. 🤣
2. Light switches. It's too simple to just look at those switches. Just visit your local hardware store and have a look at the display of switches, power outlets, antenna outlets, telephone outlets and the like. There are hundreds, in different colours, in different materials, in different forms, and in various different price ranges. People take care that they buy items of the same series so that these items fit together optically and technically. What do you think, how many people live off such variety? And if we look at the safety side of American powerpoints and plugs? Good Lord, that's medieval junk.
3. Coffee whiteners - we used to have those here in Germany, some twenty or thirty years ago. The big thing which petered out quickly. Indeed, we still have condensed milk, "Bärenmarke", heavily sweetened and sometimes used as an alternative for vanilla sauce on chocolate pudding.
Oh, and by the way, our house is situated at a cul de sac. Just do yourself a favour and look up "cul" in a French dictionary. You will realise quickly that such an address might be somewhat dubious 😉
In sweden one has time to pack the groceries because they have two lines per cashier. In many swedish places of course you just pick up a hand scanner and scan the things you put in your cart yourself. The scanner contains your shopping list you may have prepared and sorts it in the correct order of the items in the shop.
I want to say, that there is something like coffee-cream in every supermarket. You find it in small tin-cans or tiny bottles under the name of "Kaffeesahne" or "Kondensmilch". The main brand is "Bärenmarke". Not everybody uses it, but it can still be found nearly everywhere.
Lawn crew: in Germany you have the occupation of 'Landschaftsgärtner' which entails ground keeping, designing gardens and yards (carports, front-/ɓackyards etc.) and such.
You hire them to trim hedges, clean your garden pond, remove old, unwanted and/or dead trees aso.
Many things are just not the scale you are used to from the USA. They are there though 😉
I have one of those in my area and you recognize them by their dark green LKWs and work clothes. Maybe that is why did not notice them. They are camouflaged 😉
Most Germans do their gardening completely on their own, unless you'd have to do a total remodelling that involves heavy landscaping with machines and the likes. So, gardeners and landscapers do exist, but they are very expensive and therefore not widely common with the average home owner.
@@dorisschneider-coutandin9965 Yeah, I agree. And they work at cemeteries, mostly.
You can see such lawn crews (Landschaftsgärtner) mostly a around apartment buildings and on campus grounds and such. They take care of green areas that don't belong to a single household.
@@dorisschneider-coutandin9965 I think the explanation is twofold: first, as you say, gardening companies are vey expensive (since people are usually better paid, with more free time and more benefits), and second, homeowners can actually do their gardening on their own because they also have a lot more free time. For many it's 104 days of free weekends in a year (with 52 Sundays when you even can't go shopping), plus a handful of public holidays, plus 30 days of paid vacation, plus all those evenings after the 7,5 hour day of work.
I just moved to Switzerland and noticed the no coffee creamers too-I think because they have a lot of hydrogenated oils, which they don't seem to use as much in Europe. I think there are stricter rules about using that in foods.
The European union is much stricter with chemicals than the Food and Drugs Administration in the US. And the German Lebensmitttelrecht is still a little stricter. Internationally, German food has the fame to be extremely safe. This even led to Chinese people buying German baby formular and reducing the amount here in Germany significantly. There was even organized crime to smuggle baby formula to China for a while....
I lived in a cul-de-sac when I was little. Then we moved - into a house in another cul-de-sac. They are not rare at all and can usually be found in newer residential areas (anything built after the 60s, I think). There is even a specific road sign at the entrance to each cul-de-sac telling people about it. It‘s a blue sign with a white street on it that ia blocked off at the end with a red symbol.
about the trafic lights: on austria when they go from green back to red, the green light flashes 4 times indicating "hey, I'm about to go to yellow and the red very soon". this makes it super easy to know wheather or not you can make it or already start to break.
Austria wanted this system to be same across the EU but it didn't get the vote sadly.
Yes- I love that too! Plus the green arrow sign for turning right on a red light
Das mit den Straßenschildern ist sehr interessant. Habe ich noch nie darüber nachgedacht. Der "cul-de-sac" ist im deutschen eine Sackgasse oder mit dem runden Endbereich ein Wendehammer.
BTW, I was told by an expat that Maresi comes close to what he used as a creamer. Have you tried that? It's a liquid coffee creamer. If I want my coffee creamy, I add a bit of liquid cream ( lactose free in my case) to the milk in my coffee. Almost the same as half and half I used to have in USA.
About Coffee Creamer: Der Grund ist einfach: obwohl es sich vermeintlich um ein Milchprodukt handelt und es nur in Kühlregalen zu finden ist, ist hier keinerlei Milch enthalten. Das Produkt darf also rechtlich nach Europa eingeführt werden und kann so schnell nicht schlecht werden - denn eines muss man ganz klar sagen, es handelt sich hier um viel Chemie. Darüber sollte man sich im Klaren sein.
So, not very likely it will be loved here in Germany.
Lived in Dresden for nearly four years (I somewhat regret moving back to the US) and I can't recall seeing much lawn equipment ever... even when I was outside the city (which was often). I feel like my apartment back there was quieter compared to here in the US despite having lived on the first flow along a tram line on a brick street. Here it's constant leaf blowers, lawn mowers, and hedge clippers.
The lawn crews are quite common in places where there are big block buildings (esp. in the east). It's usually two or three guys doing the mowing and leaf blowing and such.
I've definitely seen city employees that are crews that maintain lawns but maybe what you are describing are not city employees but rather lawn care services...I guess it still seems like maybe private individual homes don't hire lawn care services 🤔 Thanks for the info! 😊
@@PassportTwo Oh yeah, I'm not aware of anyone doing it on properties surrounding single family homes. The people doing it around the blocks are paid by the owner.
@@PassportTwo I guess there is people from middle class or higher that have somebody doing the garden mowing for them etc. - like some have a cleaning lady. Or some will pay a neighbour teen or older man in the neighbourhood to do that and cleaning the street from snow. And you for sure have bigger appartment complexes (if it is not the Hausmeister doing that) or businesses where companies do that work.
these culs-de-sac or Sackgasse are everywhere in Germany too, just not in the town or the area you live in :D. Most streets in towns and villages are like a few main roads and the living blocks are silent of any traffic anyway and they are often formed in big circles or like one street straight and multiple Sackgassen to the left and right, so there is no traffic going through, the only traffic is by people who live there. I live in one of these street-complexes and Sackgassen.
I can imagine though, that having this in perspective while planning a city in modern times, in a very young state like the US, that you might find more areas built in that style than here; for most cities, towns and villages in Germany (and the whole of Europe) are at least 1000 years old and grew with the centuries and back then, there were no cars.
Even the small village I grew up was a settlement already 3100 years ago ( 1100 b.c.), although the oldest building still standing today is from the 17th century, so pretty young. But the roads from back then are nearly the same streets connecting the neighbouring cities and villages during the bronze age.
Sackgassen are everywhere, but not in this shape. I've never seen this shape before!
@@fairphoneuser9009 that's a point, yeah I've looked up some pictures, it looks a little different apparently in the US, but the principle is the same
Sackgassen like the US Version here do exist, but they are a comparatively new concept, so you find them in newly constructed quarters. Or when it‘s a holiday apartment area.
@@fairphoneuser9009 We've got a few in the town I live in, all built within the last 20 years. The older Sackgassen are more conventional with a Wendehammer.
When I was a kid we had apillar-type hydrant in front of our house. Some years later they changed it to an underfloor type because it was always a bit of an obstacle on the walkway 😊
11:11 Yes, we have "Culs-de-Sac" here in Germany. The German word for a Cul-de-sac is "Sackgasse", and if the "dead end" is a bit wider in order to enable an easier 180° turn of a car, this space for turning around is called a "Wendeplatz" or "Wendehammer".
(They are maybe less frequently than in the USA, and certainly much less clustered ... instead of having a whole neighbourhood full of them, there are rather one or a few "dead end roads" in a neighborhood)
Stop lights - once more:
- German intersections aren't as spacious as in the US or Canada. Having stop lights on the opposite sides would become confusing as they would be hanging too close together then.
- in case of a power outage, German stop lights indicate where you have to stop - right in front of them. That keeps the intersection free. American intersections would be clogged if you'd do that.
- Snowfall - no road markings visible, how does mine know if they are in the correct lane or spot with the american system?
- There is no need to bend forward in order to see the lights hanging over you when you're the first vehicle at the stop light. The lights above are for the drivers farther behind you. There is stop lights on the side which are usually EASY to see - unless you are sitting backwards.
What on earth is so hard to get? I'm driving here for 40 years and it never crossed my mind ONCE that I wished fthe lights were on the other side.
I'm going to die on this hill! 😂
@@PassportTwo let's maybe examine the number of crashes on intersections in Germany and in the US. If the american system is so much better, there should be WAY less accidents.
@@PassportTwo Of course you are. Not like you could see the stop lights turn green so you're stuck.
@@furzkram Good idea:
US numbers:
Every year, the Federal Highway Administration (FHA) reports approximately 2.5 million intersection accidents. Most of these crashes involve left turns.
Nationally, 40 percent of all crashes involve intersections, the second largest category of accidents, led only by rear-end collisions. Fifty percent of serious collisions happen in intersections and some 20 percent of fatal collisions occur there.
An estimated 165,000 accidents occur annually in intersections caused by red-light runners. Fatalities caused by red-light runners run from 700-800 a year.
Germany Harder to find
German authorities for statistics said in 2022:
Deaths in traffic - 1756 on out of city roads and Autobahnen, And there are next to no Traffic lights on the Autobahn - unless you have a construction site. Andn a lot less on the out of city roads.
and 708 0n innercity roads - which are not all witih traffic lights, of course.
I think we can safely say that intersection less or intersection poor roads have far more deaths than streets with intersections in Germany. So our traffic lights do not seem to have the bad impact.
I actually haven't seen a gated community in Germany yet. I don't think that this is even legally possible. Of course, we do have cul-de-sacs here in Germany, too (they are called "Sackgasse" here). There are I believe three or four of them in my immediate neighborhood. Yes, there are lawn crews in Germany. But they are usually only contracted by elderly or sick people who can't do their gardens themselves anymore, or by the very rich who are not bothered with doing physical work. I would drink pure water, btw.
There is ohne gated community near Freising in bavaria I know of. But is definitely not the norm. Luckily
@@bigmikenbr the only gated communities I know in Germany are prisons or military bases. 😉
Lawn crews are mostly found at community fields or at companies.
@@reinhard8053 These are usually not external contractors, but employees of the city or the company. My wife worked at such a department for many years.
Schrebergärten sind häufig in einer Genossenschaft und manchmal sind sie mit einem Zaun und Tor abgeschirmt wie bei einer Gated Community.
Cul-de-sacs do exist in germany, they are called "Sackgasse". But they usually are not rounded off and don't have houses in a radiary pattern. We even have a street sign for it ;)
People are commenting that coffee creamer is Kondensmilch or some other cream: no. Kondensmilch is condensed milk, cream is whipping cream, coffee creamer is a powder. I actually have found coffee creamer here where I live in Hessen - when I looked at the ingredients list I was shocked to see that the biggest ingredient was sugar. If I wanted sugar in my coffee, I would just buy sugar, not these expensive powders.
I‘m torn between water because I should and coffee because I … well… coffee.
Btw, try it with actual cream. I used to before I stopped using milk products. Now I make my own cashew milk creamer, which is really good.
Ah, Donnie. I haven’t been back to Britian for over a decade. I’m actually worried about going. Last time was so weird. The bit that hit me hardest was the chatty cashier, I feel you.
This was fun, thanks, I needed this!
We are on the same page Lauren, i would also pick water as its the best you can drink even if i would miss wine.
🤗
We do have cul-de-sacs in Germany = Sackgassen. They are actually quite common, especially in suburban areas.
The specifically unique part about cul-de-sacs though are the circled ends...my understanding is that sackgassen would be more translated to just 'dead end' which lacks the circle feature at the end. What do you think? 🤔
@Passport Two The Sackgassen I know almost always have the circle at the end, sometimes just a wider square. But many do look the same in my opinion. Might be regional, though?
@@PassportTwo Yep, I think German suburbs mostly feature dead ends, although you'll stumble across a cul-de-sac every once in a while. They're usually smaller though.
@leDespicable Several of my relatives live at German cul-de-sacs, they all have that circle but are probably smaller, I agree on that.
@@PassportTwo All three mean the same thing. Cul-de-sac is simply French for dead end. They all refer to the fact that the road does not continue further, not whether there is any Wendemöglichkeit at the end.
The circled end is just one specific design meant to avoid people getting stuck.
The one thing I noticed first , when coming back to Germany after a time, was how standardized the streets are. Sidewalks with a standart width, everything using the same building blocks, drainage and stones.
As others already said, we have culs-de-sacs in Germany. The round bit at the end is usually valled "Wendehammer", because it's not always round and the older ones are squares that make the street look a bit like a hammer from above.
When I lived in Germany my first apartment had a toilet with the water tank mounted on the wall about 1.5 meters above the toilet bowl. To flush you pulled a chain that hung down from the tank. My second apartment was more modern, it had a knob in the middle of the tank which you pulled up to flush. This was forty years ago so both types of toilets are probably not seen much anymore.
That's a pretty ancient mechanism. I have only seen such a thing once sometime in the early 90s when visiting older relatives. So I don't even really remember who or where that was. Let me guess, cheap rented apartment in a big city, in a big about 100 years old building?
Lived in something similar until recently. Cheap development of the late 40s with the bare legal minimum of renovations.
@Someone You are correct, it was in a Altbauwohnung in München.
Never saw a single gated community in Germany in my whole life. There are places where the 'richer' live, but there every property has a big fence. But no gated community.
Also never saw a lawn crew 🤷🏻♀️
We have whether the 'Hausmeister' do it or you ask the local gardenexpert to do it. But never in large amount of people- it would be incredibly expensive.
We have 'Sackgasse' which is similar to dead end roads, and in recent years the communities started to build them in a way you have shown in the video in new construction areas.
Coffee is always a matter of discussion between our countries. We have 'Kaffeeweißer' and 'Kondensmilch', but in general we to not favor flavoured Coffee. It's just not our thing 😉
And the one thing to drink is: water (not Sprudel)
I'm just back from the US, and I can tell you to be happy that I didn't have to drive there, because it's never clear which traffic lights apply to you due to the fact that they are anyway but direct in front of you ;)
The place of the stoplight is a safety feature. Placing them on your side of the crossing ensures that you notice crossing pedestrians and bikers.
You block the shoulder with your car so bikers can't get past you when you are turning. Pedestrians won't be crossing when traffic can hit them (usually). Some roads are so huge that small kids and elderly people can't cross the street before the light turns green for the cars. You do get pedestrians who illegally cross the road. You aren't allowed to cross the road when the crosswalk light is red. You'll also find people who are to damn lazy to walk to the intersection to cross. They will cross where there's no lights.
@@jessicaely2521 What do you want to tell with this comment are you for placing stoplights before a junction or against it?
Personally, i think you're against this practise but I cant make sense from your comment.
11:05 not exactly the same thing but we do have the so called "Wendehammer" wich is ment for streets who end in a dead-end and are not wide enough to turn around easily so people drive to the end of the road and can easily turn around in 3 steps to be able to drive out of the road again. They can look different depending on what type of road or street it is. Where I grew up for example we had a Wendehammer next to the property of my family inbetween our property and the one of our neighbor. So basicly most of the gardens we have touched but a tinly section did not touch eachother. Or better said we had a parking area next to our house with a big hedge that we planted so that people do not drive around on our property when going into the Wendehammer and behind the hedge that the city planted on 2 sides of the Wendehammer was a 4th hedge planted by our neighbor to keep his own garden private.
Somebody else commented the Wendehammer as well and I had to look it up because I don't think I have ever come across one and therefore never have even come across that word 😅
@@PassportTwo I grew up in a house at a "Wendehammer". There were 5 homes situated around it. It is really common in Germany, but most of them in more suburban areas which are only for living. In the city centers you will rarely find them. And you won't find them in areas with Mehrfamilienhäusern, because the roads where modern houses with appartements for rent are built will not be as narrow as older roads with Einfamilienhäusern. :)
So, to me they appear very common. Maybe you simply did not stumble upon them often - but they are definitely existing and not rare.
@@PassportTwo the german word for culs de sac is „Sackgasse“ and there are actually lots of them in germany. At least in my perception. But they often look bit different. :)
And there are Wendekreise which are a sort of Wendehammer where you're ment to drive around. They are nearly the same thing.
We do not have gated communitys in Germany. OK, to say, that something did not exist is impossible and it could be one exist. But i never heard of one. And in my Geography studies in my City-Geography course we were taught that gatet communitys are not worth mentioning in Germany.
Thanks for the perspective 😊
Cities even go through great lengths to prevent these types of segregated communities. Planners will allways try to put low income housing mixed with housing for the more affluent. This is done in an effort to prevent different social classes from drifting apart.
You can only gated private streets. The streets in German villages and Cities are normaly from our Community and Open for all.
Most houses in New Zealand are built from wood, but that's because brick houses tend to fall down in our fairly regular earthquakes, also we have lots of forestry plantations, so it's relatively cheap in comparison to concrete or brick. Commercial buildings will be concrete but massively reinforced to earthquake standards which would be out of the reach of most homeowners, there are some brick houses in areas not subject to quakes.
Same here in California. No one usually acknowledges earthquakes on these European comparison videos.
The overhead stop lights are more fo the further away waiting vehicles whilst the stoplights on the side are for the cars in front.
Thanks for adoring our stoplight sequence! I guess we have it because most of our cars are manual, so it gives you a second to prepare, shift in gear and be ready to drive off once the light is green!
Concerning the Culs-de-Sacs: We do have these, but they're not that common. If you're living in a suburb, you might see these. They may look a bit different though and the end is not necessarily round.
i´m enjoying your videos a lot, regarding the cream: Germans may use milk a lot, but there is also "Sahne" and a very old product named "Kondesmilch" which is way more creamy than anything else. There was even a famous product made of condesed milk and sugar called "Milchmädchen" - it was literally condesed milk and sugar in one, either in liquid form or in a tube (like tooth paste).
Haven´t seen it for a while, but i prefer to drink my coffee black, anyways^^
"Milchmädchen" does still exist, but is rather hard to find. If you heat the closed can at slow heat for an hour or two, the sugared milk (this is, what sets it apart from other brands) inside partly caramelizes and becomes sticky, making it a cheap, but not as good, alternative to imported "dulce de leche", which can be used as a topping for toasts or used as ingredient for cakes, desserts and home-made ice cream.
Nestlé also sells "Milchmädchen" in Mexico and the US. The label is identical, and is sold as "La Lechera". In Germany, I have only seen it at Kaufland.
Creamer is just Kondensmilch, you can get it everywhere. It's often next to the sugar etc. in the supermarket. You also sometimes get it in Cafes, Hotels or Gas stations in those little plastic containers.
Culs-de-Sacs exist in Germany. Sackgasse is a ending street most often with a small place to park and turn around.
I can relate to this a lot! We definitely experience a reverse culture shock when we went back to Germany for the first time! I mentioned a few things you talked about in my video about American vs. German houses 😁 One thing that really hit me was that Germans are complaining a lot more than Americans do 😉I never noticed it before, but I can confirm (without judging) that it is a THING in Germany that cannot be denied 😉
Ask a German if everything is fine and he will give you a list of shortcomings.
Ask a US American the same thing: "I'm fine" "We are the greatest country in the world!" "All is fine"
"we don't want socialism european things!"🤣
@@arnodobler1096 My friend Arno 😁🤗 Hello again 😊🤗
Did you also notice how much Germans stare? That's always my biggest reverse culture shock when I visit Germany... so creepy... I probably used to do it all the time too! 😄
@@ronja988 YES! 🤣🤣🤣I mentioned this in my video about 10 things Germans should never do in the US 🤣🤣🤣 Believe me, my mom would win every staring contest 😂🙊 And I am guilty too! I have for sure stared at a lot of people without even knowing 🙊
@@ronja988 You notice people staring when you stare yourself.
Hello you three.... really a great video from you again.
Because of the coffee creamer, I think you should
test MILCHMÄDCHEN..this is thick sweetened condensed milk and this is also available with caramel flavor.😉
Can some at home now actually! Great option to get close, but still different of course 😅😊
Also if you boil a can of Milchmädchen for an hour, you'll have a delicious caramel cream. You'll get fat but it 's delicious.
The Ampel thing is, that you actually could drive to the streetlights on the opposite of your actual road. So that's why there is mostly always a sign attached to drive just to the white line when red light. So in combination, the line and the streetlight have a legal term. That's also a reason why you always see two line, one after another street crosses yours and one before that to let a gap so that people can drive out, but you aren't forced to wait at the line before the other street when the streetlight comes after it. That's why streetlight cannot be put on the opposite street.
With the switches, I remember that in the 1970s there were light switches with a little bulge like a reminiscence of a peg like structure, but most switches where small wipp style thingies like \/ and then in the 1980s the flat large switches of today arrived.
We had American colleagues here in the Netherlands as well. It takes a while for the massive indoctrination to wear off. Once it did, most were quite sad to see the reality of America.
Tell me your German without teelling me you're German: I would choose sparkling water as my go to drink. ;)
Had to chuckle from time to time when you noticed how germanized you've become :) The part with the supermarket cashier. I saw a youtube short or tiktok from uyen nimh lately about the same topic, and she's from Vietnam, so this has to be a thing not only in America. I think I would be puzzled if the cashier wanted to chitchat about my groceries. Would you mind your own buisiness here and speed up a little bit?
Haha, oh no!! Sparkling water forever?? 😂 I couldn't do it!
I actually JUST saw that same video from uyen nimh! I was so surprised how similar her experience was in Vietnam was to mine in the US 😅
@@PassportTwo well, maybe I'd switch to Apfelschorle. But I don't like coffee and in90% of the time I just drink sparkling water unless I'm at a Restaurant or bar.
@@PassportTwo I would dispair if I had to drink still water for the rest of my live.
I find it so funny that sparkling water is often considered something so German. In Argentina, it is ubiquitous, far more than in Germany. It is traditionally not bought in bottles (though they have become more and more common in the last years), but in "sifones", which are refillable bottles with a handle and an outlet on top to dispense the water (do an image search for "sifón argentina", and you'll understand what I mean).
Regarding the checkout process: In all countries, I have lived (including here in Switzerland, that's why I prefer the self-checkouts), it is painstakingly slow, compared to Germany. Remember the "old days", when they didn't have scanners at Aldi, but the cashier just typed in three digits codes? They were incredibly fast.
@@mina_en_suiza yeah, I remember those days and sheesh, they were so fast.
I have a sodastream device at home. I wouldn't say that sparkling water is something unique to Germany but almost every American in Germany UA-cam Channel had made a point on this topic.
Those lawn crews are common here at apartment buildings taking care of the shared green spaces and shovelling snow in the winter. Not so much for private homes. And we do have powdered coffee creamer, look for "Kaffeeweißer", available at any grocery store.
The "american" light switches used to exist in Germany, I remember them from my grandparent's house where the electricity was installed in the 1920s.
Storage units seem to struggle here in Germany. The one that's near me here in Hanover has had three or four different owners, each time under new names, in the last ten years or so. As you said, I think Germans just don't tend to own more stuff than they can keep in their own house or apartment. 😉
Geez, I would freak out in a US supermarket. And I would certainly not have a stranger bag my stuff, since I wouldn't trust them to do it as well as I. It starts on the conveyer belt, where I place the items in a way that I can bag them just the way I want to and how it works best, with the heavier items first and the lighter items last.
So true! I also always sort. And if I have them the bananas are teh last thing, because the cashier has to weight them, that's the time for you to get out your wallet.
Most supermarkets have check out by yourself lines so you don't have to use the human cashier
@@patrickw123 In Germany that would take way longer than have the cashier check everything out.
@@kaesebrot73 That's funny and probably true cuz German stores don't have the space to install around 15 self-checkout registers like we have in America. However NO-checkout options seem to have arrived, how cool is that.
Yeah! Especially german ALDI cashiers are well known for beeing Super speedy in germany! The give u the return money even before u pay because they 'know' how u will pay. Before barcode they had no price Labels on the goods - they had ALL (!) prices of the goods in the brain. Outstanding!
Thank you for the interesting video. My parents house is at a turning circle, but its most of the time used as parking lot, due to the lack of parking space. The closest to coffee creamer in german stores is "Kaffeeweißer", in my opinion.
Love your vid as always! Topic "creamers". We do have something like that in Germany. It´s "Kondensmilch". It´s available in differnt sorts. Even very dense and sweet versions. Ask for them in a store.
At least in California and especially the San Francisco Bay Area, wood frame houses can move around in earthquakes without being damaged. You should bolt the house to the concrete foundation so the house doesn't move on the foundation. Unreinforced builds made of bricks or concrete blocks would require you to tie the walls to the roof and floor and a steel frame to tie the walls to the steel frame. It is cheaper and easier to just make the houses out of wood. Building codes here are very much influenced here by earthquakes.
lmao stop making excuses
the shoe thing is not only in Germany, I adapted this when living in Austria and later on Finland. My family when visiting took over that custom and now does the same in Belgium.
There's something called "Kaffeeweißer" in Germany, which is pretty much the same as creamer. It usually comes in brown, semi-transparent containers and is also a powder, but it's not always lactose free and I've never seen it with added flavour, like in the US. You can find it pretty much in every supermarket and it's usually found either where the condensed milk is, or where you find pastry incredients.
One area of my city was designed w/ a lot of cul-de-sacs in the 70s. Super inconvenient to navigate b/c you can't just drive through there to get to another part of the city, you have to go back and around. And roads are public property, you can't just fence it off. Even outside the cities, you can just walk or bike on the roads between the fields. Gated communities would have to be on private property which would make the development super expensive for the owners if they want to have water, waste-water, electricity and gas lines in the ground.
As for traffic lights, the one on the right side of the road is the actual sign, the other ones up above are just "repeaters" for the cars in the back, behind trucks etc (so they can see the traffic light). Sometimes there are "repeaters" on the opposite side of the crossing, but not often.
Oh and storage units: most houses in Germany have basements and/or attics. No need for off-site storage... :)
about the stoplight question: Pls look up videos from “not just bike” since there are “not just cars” as traffic participants.
On the topic of lawn crews: Yes, we do have them, but we (as in our family) only hire one when the hedges need trimming, which is just a couple of times a year. For all the other stuff, like lawn mowing, etc., that's what Saturdays are for. SATURDAYS! NOT SUNDAYS. NEVER ON SUNDAYS!!!!!! ;-)
Hallo, in lifts the buttons for the floor have abbreviations for the word "Geschoß" (= floor). So it is EG for ground floor ("Erdgeschoß"), then Obergeschosse (1. OG, 2. OG...), basement is usually UG for "Untergeschoß", if necessary UG1, UG2... Variations are possible: "A" for Ausgang (Exit), "T" for Tiefgarage (car park in the basement). System comes from the time when most houses had a stone ground floor and upper floors were made at least partially from wood, these floors were/are the "Stockwerke". ("Stock" can also be a piece of wood).
5:15 the point of the small light pole is also so the pedestrians can see easily what the lights for cars are, so you are more aware of when is safe to cross, usually you have also the pedestrian signal right below the car one
It's really exciting how much you learn in just a few years! The circuit of the traffic lights is the same in the Netherlands, on the first trip I was mega confused. In bright sunshine you can see the traffic lights there also much better, as if they have installed stronger bulbs? Here it is really sometimes a disaster to estimate whether now is green or red. But maybe that's just my imagination. 😂
Cul-de-sacs and garden services also exist in Germany, but they are less noticeable because they are not as present. Cul-de-Sacs are often quite small hidden in side streets and for garden service often a small van and two people are enough because the plots are much smaller. Because the lots are smaller, fewer people have garden service booked.
The father of my friend is American and one day he found imported Coffee Creamer from America with hazelnut flavor and he was very excited, I should also absolutely try it. I didn't like it because it was unbearably sweet and he just said "What is this crap? Yuck! I used to put it in my coffee every day before I came to Germany." ... he was very disappointed. 🤣
It's interesting how a lot of things here in Canada is somewhere in the middle. I've seen both types of toilets, some people take shoes off, others don't (I require it in my house as that's how I grew up, and I garden, so I have a place to leave to leave shoes), some buildings have two "ground" levels like my house on a hill so each building is different and it gets more confusing with both. Here, most grocery stores are bag your own (especially at the Loblaws owned ones, so I'd usually bag my mom's groceries as a kid, and Scouts would fundraise by bagging groceries for people), but we have the same construction where most new places are just screwed together plywood, and it makes me glad my house was built with better materials (a food thick foundation, solid wood supports, and the floor is insulated between levels). I'm not sure about coffee here as I don't drink coffee myself, but I have seen both milk and cream offered at cafes. If I had to drink one thing, it would probably be some kind of lemonade. Lately I've been into flavoured lemonade like watermelon or raspberry.
Canadian houses are quite flimsy as well compare to most Europeen houses. Insolation with foamplaatis is good.
Many years ago, when we still drank filter coffee, we used "Maresi" as a coffee creamer. But from the 00s onwards, we switched from filter coffee to fully automatic coffee machines and only used milk, sometimes foamed. I don't know if "Maresi" is or was a thing in Germany. Greetings from Austria.
Accordingly to german law of guaranteed public access guarded neighborhoods would be illegal. It depends on the official Bebauungsplan für Wohngebiete (plan of allowed constructions in the particular residential area) of the city and areas in it. So you normally can fance in your own property with a 1.5 meters high fence or wall (you must sent in the plans to the local construction office and it must be approved) with a maximum up to 1000 m². But a whole living area you can't fence in because the streets are payed by all residents (partly by with funding of the German government), so every citizen has the right of free access to the streets.
To understand the thing with the 1st floor, you have to pronounce it completely in German. Below is the ground floor and anything above is called the upper floor. So the 2nd floor for you is 1st upper floor for me ;)
About the numbering of floors:
There is a way to better memorize the numbering and make sense of it. In many buildings, the "first floor" is called "ground floor" (Erdgeschoss). After that come the "upper floors" (Obergeschoss), and those have numbering. So you'd see EG = Erdgeschoss (first floor), OG1 = Obergeschoss 1 (upper floor 1), and so on.
About gated communities:
I don't know of any gated 'living' communities, but many garden communities in/around cities are gated.
Don't you say Stock? Erdgeschoss, 1. Stock, 2. Stock?
@@SchmulKrieger Yes. As with many things, there are multiple ways to call something. Stock is also possible and is actually short for Stockwerk. I'm just not sure if it's region-dependant or just personal preference on which word is used. There are also other words like Etage or Geschoss.
we have lawn crew firms in Germany, but people here have pride in their own garden works!
did you ever heard about Kondensmilch???
When we like it creamy we use Kondensmilch ( our condensmilk is different though... You might want to check it out, if you like the taste of your coffee better with it. - There is a certain kind of coffee that requires Schlagsahne on top. It is called Pharisäer, and we got acquainted to it in Schleswig-Holstein..... Lol. The Schlagsahne hides the rum in the coffee, therefore the Name. 🤣
That was a fun video. 😀❤️ Please say hi to Aubrey.
5:32 In Austria they have the best traffic light sequence: additionally before getting "YELLOW" the "GREEN" light does blink 4 times. So you can estimate from a distance to be able to cross with "GREEN" or not.
there are culs-de-sacs in germany. we call them Wendehammer. They are usually either in a very quiet end of town or in a very old part, often at the end of a Spielstraße. Ans they are usually not big enough for bigger cars, LKW to turn around and you see warning signs at the entrance
"We" is where? Because *I* never heard that.
Hi
We had the light switches too. I don‘t know when they went out of fashion. Maybe in the 80s? I remember both versions.
Culs-de-sacs are called Sackgasse here. We do have them and even street signs for them. It‘s a blue sign with a white vertical line and a red horizontal line forming a T. They don‘t always have enough space to turn though.
I don‘t know what creamer really is but we have at least something similar. You probably did not see it because it is smaller than yours are. It is called Kaffeesahne. Ask for in in your supermarket of choice.
On the topic of traffic lights: I fully agree, I MUCH prefer the placement of the traffic lights in the America, where they’re on the other side of the intersection. What I prefer about German traffic lights, however, is that for turn lanes, the green AND the amber AND the red lights are arrow-shaped/have an arrow on them. That way it’s super clear who the light is intended for. In America it’s only the green light that is arrow shaped. So when the light is red it looks exactly like the light for the lanes going straight. To make it clear that it is, in fact, for people wanting to turn left they then have to put up a sign next to the traffic light saying “Left Turn Signal”. Which just seems so needlessly cumbersome and inelegant.
I'm from Seattle and I would never choose to live in a home made of anything but wood in the PNW, cuz wood can withstand earthquakes. The only buildings that fell down during the Nisqually quake of 2001 were brick. That's why my parents taught me not to go outside during an earthquake, because the chimney bricks will come crashing down. The rest of the house shakes and all your cupboards open up but you can survive in there.
In my area in Tennessee they have a stop light on the side and one across the intersection. This area is on a curve and you can't see the stoplight across the intersection until it's to late. Since this was the case there were a lot of car accidents. They placed an extra light at the middle of the curve.
The combined system for traffic light sequence and opposite lights is how it is down in the UK (which also has the ones at the side).
gated communities are not a thing in Germany because you can not gate public roads. Netherthe less, often former military sides (with all the workshops and buildings) were sold to investors with the fences and gates still intact. They converted them mostly to industrial/ commercial areas but there are some that converted them to "gated communities". The whole area is private and all the streets, cables, pipes, etc. has to be maintained by the owner. Also for most of them it is just cheaper to stay with fence and gates (that never close) than get rid if them
My parents have a gardener coming over, because the garden is quite steep and they've gotten to old to cut their grass. We do it occasionally, but they don't want to be a burden, so they don't let us - unless we insist. But then again my dad might try to tell us, he didn't know where the key to the shed was. Yeah, right. 😂
Once a year the gardener trimms roses, trees and bushes, because he knows best.
Usually he comes alone or with one co-worker. I've never seen more than two gardeners work a normal-sized garden of 800-1000m², definetly not a whole group of workers.
Cul-de-sac is Sackgasse in German! I live in one - granted our circle for turning is more of a square.... also, there is a foot path that leads to another road.
Yes, we have cul de sacs, "Sackgasse", bag alley, because a bag also has one entrance.
Living as a Dutchman in the Dominican Republic, all the walls of our house are like the medieval city walls in Europe. Even the inside walls are 10" of stone. On the ground we have tiles everywhere. In the Netherlands and in the Dominican Republic we wear our shoes in the house, with tiles it is no problem. I remember from the past, even with carpet it is no problem, if you wipe your feet on the doormat. In the Netherlands we have 0.5 liter bottles with creamed milk for the coffee, but most people like coffee and thus they drink the coffee without any milk.