Arrival in the Land of the Free and the Home Of The Daft.

That title refers to two separate places, by the way.

As you may know, folks, I have recently "upped sticks" and wandered my way over to Germany. It was a good decision. I'm glad I made this decision. Even though the weather is too hot to function.

After a week and a half of living in a Youth Hostel, I finally moved into my actual flat last Thursday. It's great. I get my own bedroom, and food, and a bathroom... And I'm living with a dude*, which is new and weird. You don't think it's going to be a big deal until you realise there are certain things you can't do any more. Don't get me wrong; I shared a house last year and I know how to be a vaguely tolerable housemate. I don't walk around naked or anything, and nobody has ever walked in on me in the bath. But there really are things you take for granted when you live with four other girls that you can't do if you're sharing with a guy.

Anyway, that's not what I was pondering. I was actually pondering the small differences that exist between life in Germany and life in the UK. They're silly things really, stuff you'd never even think of. But they exist nonetheless, and they make everything seem that little bit more alien. Here is my rundown:

They say you never forget your first -
Braunschweig's Amplemann.

Crossing the Road
This might seem like a weird one, but it's a serious consideration here. Jaywalking is illegal, with an on-the-spot fine of up to 25€ (as far as I remember), which is particularly enforced if you're caught doing it in front of children. Some days, this can add five to ten minutes onto my walk into work. You don't realise how often you cross a road before the lights go green in the UK. And it's a pain in the tush if there's no traffic coming and you still can't go. (Equally, traffic turning right onto the road you're crossing can still turn right. It just has to not hit you in the process, even if the little green man is showing.)
Also, I've found my first real life Ampelmännchen. :D EXCITING!

People
This is the bit where I talk about the dude I'm living with. He is the MOST GERMAN man I have ever met. Seriously. How is anyone even that German? His surname takes up two lines of space on the letterbox. He wears almost entirely black and listens to scary metal music. He does one of the most efficient sounding jobs I have ever heard of. He drives a van (I don't know why I find this particularly German, I just do) and last week he literally ate a singular sausage with mustard for dinner. He even suffers from what my father affectionately calls "The German Affliction" (smoking).
And the lady dudes at work aren't much less stereotypical. They've all got incredibly German names, like Annika and Britta, and they do that German lady thing of always wearing scarves and vests and getting into work really early to make sure they reserve their desks with towels...
Plus, most conversations I have with them are about food. Or alcohol.**
Stereotypes. They really do exist for a reason.

Breakfast
What sort of self-respecting country eats breakfast off a board? Germany, that's who.

Pasta
Apparently, pasta sauce made of beetroot, hotdog and whatever other vegetables and spices you have in the sparsely-stocked kitchen is a typical DDR meal. Apparently.
I'm not sure I believe that but, unlike some people around here, I wasn't actually born in the DDR. Something something communist rant.

(It was actually really tasty, I just wasn't expecting it.)

Mealtime Manners
You don't eat until everyone has their food. Obviously this is the same in the UK, but you always get the sort of "please start, don't all wait on ceremony" fandango going on. In Germany, you wait until everyone is seated and ready to actually begin the eating process, then you say "Guten Appetit" and then you eat. It's nice really, then everyone feels like they're included. (NB. My main experience of this is in a cafeteria, where you have to wait for everyone to sit down with their food.)

Flexitime
Awesome. This is a great idea. I know it exists in the UK, but it seems to be more common/widespread here. There are certain "core times" that you have to work (where I am it's between 10:00 and 15:00), but otherwise you can do whatever, as long as you average your total number of hours per week.
The only problem I have with flexitime is that I don't always have enough to do at the moment. Because we're not in our peak season, there isn't always enough work for me to be getting on with. This means that there is a lot of time where I have to make my own work to ensure I'm filling the minimum requirement for the week and not slacking off at 4:30 every day. Regardless of what my workload is, my hours are still the same.

Supermarket checkouts
Anyone who's used Lidl or Aldi in the UK will have a vague idea of how this works. German supermarkets don't usually have that nice long space at the end of the checkout that means you can take a bit of time packing your bags. Everything is thrown at you and pay is demanded as soon as the cashier is done. If you're not packed by then, you're in the way of the next person.
However, unlike in the UK, the person behind you is probably not going to be sympathetic of the fact that you're only twenty and haven't had to do your own shopping for much longer than a year.
You're a strong German woman, mein Gott, can't you go any faster?
I'm not German, I'm a Brit. I get sunburn and I apologise for literally everything.
Literally.
Sorry.

Achso ja, that's it really. They're the ones that immediately spring to mind. I'm sure there are others, like not walking in the cycle lanes, but you'll probably hear about those over time. My plan isn't to turn this blog into a year abroad blog, but I am now living in Germany, so you'll have to get used to the fact that I'm going to talk about German things a lot. ("What's new?" I hear you say. Yes, I can hear you through the internet.)


*I often use "dude" as an agender epithet, but for the purposes of this blog post, "dude" is male and "Lady dude" is female. I don't have to refer to anyone of any other gender in this post. When I do, I'll think of something.

** I'm fully aware that these aren't all standard German stereotypes, but they exist a lot throughout Germany, so I'm using them.




EDIT: Daniel gave up Smoking about two months ago, and he's doing really well. He's not killed anyone yet or anything.