I think it was my dear friend Neola, who after I first moved here 5 years ago, said I should be taking notes on what is different about life here. Well after 5 years it is all still pretty clear, if not clearer than 5 years ago.....so here goes.
1. Notes on traffic - Traffic lights are too close to your car when you stop at a red light. You have to strain your neck in some direction to see them, and between red and green lights the yellow light comes on. This is a sign to rev your engine and release the clutch, otherwise the guy behind you is going to join you in the front seat of your car. No one in Germany can stand to ride behind another car (also true in France). They will pass you whether or not there is reasonable room. Audis go too fast on the Autobahn and my otherwise very normal and mild mannered husband is prone to complete meltdowns when he is behind the wheel.
2. We have strict noise laws which means that unless you don't work outside the home, the likelihood of getting any yard work done is slim. There are some hours on Saturday where you can freely run your lawnmower, but it rains every Saturday so there you are.
3. Meat does not resemble much of anything you have ever seen before. It is all called something mysterious and comes in pig and cow size chunks in the refrigerated case at the butcher. Butchers are nice to me about my total ignorance.
4. Garbage - We recycle everything you can possibly imagine, and we wash a lot of our garbage before it hits the recycle cans. Our community did such a bang up job of this last year that our garbage collection rates were lowered for this year.
5. It costs ~$250 to have your dog neutered. All vets charge the same with little variation.
6. Gas costs $6.50-$7.00 a gallon and no one whines about it.
7. In every household (and mostly I get my information from the middle class), when the kids are in their mid to late teens, boyfriends and girfriends move in part time and start spending the night. This is seen as totally normal. American mothers here have real problems dealing with their teenage daughters who want their boyfriends to spend the night....and their battle cry is "Everyone else is doing it." Uggh. There are no taboos about teenage, unmarried sex. I would almost call it encouraged. My husband's comment was that they have to learn it somewhere, sometime.
8. Germans walk their dogs faithfully at least twice a day. My dog is half German so he demands a walk every morning at 6 a.m. and my husband faithfully responds, regardless of weather.
9. The weather here is so iffy, that everyone heads for the great outdoors at any opportunity. People are on bikes everywhere. My mother in law, age 86, just gave hers up this year. People are on bikes in rain, hail, sleet, and snow. After biking everywhere you are too tired to complain about the price of gas.
10. Grocery store notes - There are no bags at the grocery store unless you pay for them. No one does this. When your groceries have been checked, everything goes back into the cart, and then you take the cart to the car and pack it into boxes or bags in the back of the car. You must throw everything that has just been checked by the cashier back into your cart at warp speed, or the person behind you in line will run over the top of you. This is especially true at Aldi where the lines are moving extra fast. Taking your good old time works only to a point, and you must be prepared for dirty looks. When there is a big line for one cashier and another cashier opens up a register, there is no order to the scramble to be first in line for the new cashier. People will shove their way in front of you with no shame. It is important to be able to say "I am next" in German.
11. Beds have cracks in the middle and a queen or king size bed takes two sheets which are hard to put on. Everyone has their own comforter which is the size of half the bed. We have a normal mattress without a crack, but it had to be special ordered along with a very expensive blanket which fits the whole bed. It cost so much that we will have to use it for the rest of our lives.
12. Life here is in grams, kilograms, kilometers, and temperature is in Celcius. I still don't exactly know the Farenheit equivalents, but I'm clear on what clothes to wear per degree in Celcius.
13. Dogs here speak German. If you want a barking dog to leave you alone, it is best to know how to say "Go home, and fast" in German.
14. People seem to feel that they have a God given right to give you advice or in general butt into your business. For example, someone told one of my friends that her grass was too short after she mowed the lawn. Then, the following week, someone else told her that she was mowing too often. Another friend was told by someone at a train station that it was not ladylike to whistle. I was walking the dog this spring and someone came out of a house and told me that I could not walk in the fields because it was the time of year when this is verboten. Turned out that he had his dates wrong and I was still free to use the fields for 2 additional weeks.
15. It costs a small fortune to get a German driver's license depending on where you come from in the states. I had to only take the written exam and I think the whole shebang cost about $800. If you fail the exam 3 times you have to go to counseling. I made sure that I passed on the first try. The thought of a German counselor talking to me about why I was too stupid to pass the test was a great motivator.
16. Normal people speak 2, 3, 4, and 5 languages. They are kind about Americans only speaking English, but I think they think we are pitiful in this regard (I've heard some jokes about if you only speak one language then you must be American). I heard before I moved here that Germans were unkind about you messing up their language, and that you better get it right. Nothing could be further from the truth. They have a good grasp of how complicated German is, and have been quite helpful and kind with my daily struggle.
17. Anything you are looking for and can't find is probably at the Apotheke. Ant spray for example. Cream of tartar. You name it. The days of pulling a cold remedy off the shelf have not yet arrived here. You have to got to the Apotheke and ask for it. This is especially bad when you have a yeast infection, as the name of the medicine that is the cure, is the same name of the medicine sold here for Athlete's Foot. Sometimes you just have to point to the affected area.
18. Produce in general has to be eaten fast. Until recently, the only store here in Icking (a Plus) had mostly rotten produce for sale. Our post office recently closed and happily reopened with a fruit and vegetable market along side the scales to weigh your mail. This stuff is fresher and will last a few days. This is the only place I've ever lived where carrots go bad within 48 hours.
19. We sometimes have to make fires in the summer to heat up the house. Sigh. Coming from California I still have not adjusted to freezing all summer. When it rains here it not only cools off but it stays cool or cold for several days. This place does not reheat itself normally. So is life near the Alps.
20. Nothing is open on Sunday. Nothing. Unless you need gas.
21. You know how in America when you go to the Dr. and have to remove some or all of your clothes, there is always either a gown or a paper something to cover yourself up with? Well not here. This was really a shocker since my first experience with this was at the gynocologist. You can kind of choose whether to get naked from the waist up or the waist down first, but there is always that stroll across the exam room with nothing on, and I think I'll probably never get used to the waist down nakedness. The doctors here seem thankfully pretty discreet about it all, and are not staring or laughing, but still.....what's up with this?
22. And while on the topic of nudity, here in my little village there is a river, and kind of a lake near the river. You have to hike to get there, and it is kind of over the river and through the woods, but a nice walk, and the dogs love it there in the summer. But here in my little village, the attire at the lake is clothes optional, which means that everyone (except me) is nude. After a few minutes of shock at my first view of this (my husband did not warn me on purpose for his amusement) you do tend to get desensitized to the whole scene, but there is a certain immodesty associated with this Icking brand of nude bathing. Many (not all) of the men and women alike seem to prefer to recline spread eagled. I take this a little bit hard, and my only comment when I first saw all this was that I had never in my life in one place seen so many scrotums. And a few years later I can only add that they are proudly on view. Pretty racy for the very conservative little world that I live in.
23. Washing machines, dryers, and refrigerators are smaller than American models. Every American woman that I know here complains about having to constantly do laundry. The size of the washing machine really can't be about saving energy, because they run forever to do a load, and you have to do 3x the loads that you would in an American machine. You can find American size refrigerators here, but they tend to be expensive. I dream of a big washing machine and dryer, but the refrigerator is hopeless as there is not a space for this in our kitchen. Sigh.
24. Most everyone here uniformly thinks that Bush is an idiot, and have no grasp of why anyone would support him in any way. This works well for me and I appreciate the sympathy.
