Staring Germans, why do they do it so?

white - male, you fit in...if you speak german (or not but keep mum) they would think of you as one of them. Try a different shade of skin and stares will follow!

If I catch them at it, I ask them in English if they want something I speak loudly and look angry. They always look the other way and rush off. I find Germans are either at your throat or at your feet with not much else in between.

Just shout back louder than they speak to you works every time. When staff at the supermarket check out start throwing my purchases as they often do. i just shout 'OI NIEN'. They then very gingerly pass the goods carefully. try it it works every time. Next time you go in they they are all over you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoid_personality_disorder

It is true, that does work!

@arshoo - I can see your point, however, at least where I am living and have been so far here in Munich, that there is a rather large percentage of people that are neither male or white. So... is it only non-white non-male people who get this treatment?
As I said, maybe it is different for me, as you said white male and all, but in general I have not observed this tendency yet, in regards to people staring at me or at anyone else for that matter.

What if you never wear a wonderbra and never owned one and they stare anyway!?!

usually when they come to know you are not from here you will get the stare, never bothers me, and no this treatment is not reserved for auslanders but they do it amongst themselves too, just that us auslanders notice it a lot more and we seem to stir more interest and thus get stared at more frequently. my 2cents


then you have the perfect pair! When you coming out to a TT gathering

No one lives in the area I am moving too!!!

Where are you moving to? Rostock?...my brother is near there...Wismar and Schwerin are quite pretty.

Yep in Warnemuende. The area is nice where I will be, my boyfriend warns me about the area his mother lives, basically I can't go out after dark. It is strange considering I live in the middle of a city with the crime rate in the top five in the US and somehow his city is more dangerous. Confuses me...

Ahhh ok... my brother is in the countryside, in a small village so no issues there. Didn't realise that some of those places are that bad...I guess that as it's his home place you won't have so many issues though...he knows his way around and I bet he'll introduce you to tons of people!

It is just too bad that his friends don't speak English! Yea we will be in the city, he has lived there most of his life so he knows it better then me. I guess he worries because my city may be dangerous we have a lot more police but his city doesn't have hardly any. From what I understand many people in the poorer part of the city don't like foreigners too much, and some of the Russians aren't so nice either.

Hmm. All I can say is try not to get to focussed on that (easier said than done) but each persons experiences differ and you might not even notice it so much and have a great time. If you have a car it's best as you can get around to surrounding places...and Hamburg doesn't take too long to get to either...nor Berlin...my brother & sister-in-law go quite regularly.

Yea my bf's father lives in Berlin so I am sure we will visit there a bit. He will be getting a car too, I just have to figure out all those damn signs. Most make no sense to me. Good thing I have owned 3 5spds...so the actual driving of a car will be easy. I am a smart American!

Or how about: Foreigners in Germany lose the right to complain about being stared at in general. Just as ludicrous, isn't it?


Hear hear, Amber -- I'd do anything short of surgery not to wear this cup size

Sensitive much? You said yourself you wore a tight shirt, nothing wrong with that but you have to accept if you're going to wear a tight shirt, men and probably even women are going to have a look at your assets.

If you don't want to be stared at, put on some weight, don't wear makeaup, wear baggy grey clothing and you will fade nicely into the background and won't get stared at.

Take it as a compliment.

I am not sure if you are saying about me in a tight shirt. I have gotten use to the staring, but sometimes people just gawk...its like can you please pick up your jaw from the ground? I just don't like the comments. Other than that if you want to stare..go ahead. I do wear some baggy shirts and sweaters...I know if I wear anything low cut or tight I will get stared at...go ahead and look but you can't touch!

Some days I think about surgery but I am not big enough to qualify for that.

I used to have it bad too, to the extent that I got followed home and around the English gardens by strange men. Not because my breasts were overly huge but because I was young and attractive and I dressed the part. I've gotten a bit older, put on some weight and dress a lot more conservatively then I did back then and no, the stares don't go away completely but it's not even comparable to how it was before. I'm just not that interesting to look at anymore which has both positives and negatives associated with it.

I thankfully have never been followed home, yet...I have had "nice tits" yelled out a car, and currently I live one block from a strip club and one summer I was asked 3 times if I worked there. And a patron from that club decided to tell me I had "a nice rack" ugh...some days you wonder if men have ever seen boobs before???

I don't think men staring at women's breasts is something bad at all!
THAT kind of staring doesn't offend me, thankfully I have never needed a wonderbra as I have enough on my 'plate' so to speak, in London I got the odd drunken guys trying to chat me up in bars with phrases like: Oh you have the nicest boobs I've ever seen!
And one older Spanish guy said to me here in Berlin while preparing himself a coffee: 'If I run out of milk for my coffee, Would you give me some of yours, it looks as if you have plenty?' while staring at my boobs!
That went a bit far! But in general, guys will be guys and there's no harm in them having a peek and enjoying the view, that is indeed a compliment...

As a feminist, the line of thinking your quote implies is to me one step away from 'she wore a short skirt, of course perverts are going to grope her private bits'. It's not 1950 anymore!

Staring, in any case, I have little problem with. It's men who think they have the right to say 'nice tits, wanna fuck' to women that chafe my ass.

Especially since I like women

I'll be honest, i like to look at a nice pair of boobs but hopefully don't stare.

I think ER had it right when she said that if you have big boobs and wear a low cut top that you are inevitably inviting guys to look but you knew that when you got dressed didn't you?

Btw looking at a lovely pair doesn't equal groping a lady.

If you have big boobs and a high cut top guys will stare as well.

Only if your buttons burst and you have to do a hasty repair with an apron DD . . .

that was not a high cut, button up top. - Hey, you weren't at that oktoberfest tent!?!?!

Legends are created sweetheart to carry on . . . .

That's why i liked it in London - no one ever looked at you in the tube (unless they were tourists). Different here in Glasgow - they look, almost like in Germany.

I dropped someone at the airport few days ago – was saying goodbye and opening the car trunk to unload – all the while I noticed an audience of four giving us the full scan – it didn’t cease so we both turned, stood and stared straight at them – this seemed to shock them and they quickly turned and carried on with their lives.
Interesting thing on CNN this morning about the German woman horse whisperer – she demonstrated the stare at the horse and how it is a sign of aggression and how the horse reacts very unfavourably.

There's a huge difference between staring and groping, the latter being an ILLEGAL action. Men (and women) staring at womens bits is hardly 1950's, it is a reality. Something you might want to get in touch with.

This is like the goth with the black makeup, frilly garterbelt, and the spike through his head who complains about people staring at him. If you want to make a statement go ahead, in fact I applaud you but you have to accept if you don't want to blend in, people are going to notice you.

When a guy stares intensively at my breasts, I start staring at his pants. They usually get very uncomfortable and check to see if their zipper is open or look to see if they have stains on their pants.

I would understand that as an invitation.

I haven't had one guy who understood that as an invitation.

hmmmm ... maybe you have a particulary nasty way of staring? I guess i could tell if i knew how you actually look

do you check to see if its up? then you have an awesome pair

I future ex-wife to be was always paranoid about where I was looking. When we pas-sed a nice woman I would have to exaggeratingly look in the other direction. I eventually discovered a good trick if I saw a babe say in the shopping center that she hadn't noticed yet I would look inventively in a different direction - she would then scan like hell in that direction to see what I am looking at - with this diversion in place then I would be free to look at the babe, especially the tits and legs.
One time in a shopping center with my future ex-wife to be and my daughter always to be, especially financially that is (willingly), they were in a shop for a really long time and I waited outside. After some time I happened to look towards the shop and they were stealthily watching me and checking to see if I was looking at passing women - so watch out for that trap men.

That's what I keep telling people, even in the animal kingdom, any animal interprets staring as a sign of aggression, it is a very basic reaction, if you stare at someone you are asking for an aggressive response!

This horse whisperer aggressive stare was directly into the eyes evidently the horse doesn't mind so much if one stares at its legs, crotch or tits.

If you try to come close to a horse's crotch, he/she will give you a swift kick.

The stares I have received here have been directly into the eyes and with an expression of disdain...

Well then cats must be the most aggressive of pets
And how would that explain the long looks in the eyes that build up or reassure intimacy? Isnt that borderline staring? maybe the intimacy is created by the experience that the otherwise agressive gesture will not provoke violence from the other? Kinda ritual neck-presentation possibly?

Hmm interesting questions. But now to something completely different.


Confuse a cat

I know my fair bit about cats and they do assume you are going to attack them if you stare at them...
You need to half close your eyes if you are looking at them or look calmly and every 2 seconds or so look away, like that back and forth so they know you mean no harm, they can also sense your intentions by the rest of your body language, now staring between lovers is DIFFERENT, you know the person, have shagged them, you touch them as you look at them so the signal is completely different!

Yes, if they dont trust you. However they themselves can stare at you for hours from the other end of the room. You think they sleep but when you check, they are watching you. Ane even when they sleep, they still watch you.

You make it sound like it's an episode from the Twilight Zone.

Have you ever tried to sneak up on a sleeping cat?
The thing with cats is, their brains auditory centre doesnt sleep along with the rest of the cat. Okay, that hardly qualifies as staring, but given the fact that their primary sense is hearing, there still is a certain equivalence

I always sneak up on my cat. Since he is a male cat, he claws and tries to bite me. (Playfully that is) I also sometimes like to annoy him by tickling his belly. He tries to hug my arms with all paws and pretends to bite me.

Our physics professor used to demonstrate the Doppler effect by swinging a cat around his head in a circular motion - I thought it was cruel thing to do.

MEEEEoooowww... MEEEEoooowww ...
Nah thats not funny. really. not.

Yeah, thats how we male cats play it, especially if we get annoyed by having our bellies tickled.

I think the classic German stare is different from the kind of staring you might experience in other countries. They stare at you with a kind of morbid fascination, the way they might stare at someone on a TV screen, safe in the knowledge that you can't see them, as if they're somehow not fully aware that the object of their attention is physically there right in front of them. Which is why they suddenly get embarrassed and look away when you stare back or otherwise react.

I've been living in Munich for over 30 years now, and I don't notice the staring nearly as much as I used to. Maybe I've just got used to it, but I think also that younger people in Germany are more relaxed than, say, the over-50's - who were of course the younger people of 30 years ago. Back then, if you did anything in public that was even slightly unusual or unexpected, all eyes would be fixed on you. Examples: getting on the U-Bahn carrying a medium-size leafy potted plant. Everyone in the carriage would fix their eyes on your face, then on the plant, then on your face again, as if expecting your bomb-disguised-as-a-plant to detonate at any moment. Or accidentally dropping some innocuous object, like a book, or a briefcase falling over with a bit of a thud. Panic! Even after people realised it wasn't a bomb that just went off, they would keep their eyes riveted on you for the next 5 minutes, just in case.

Then there are the ones who take an avid interest in your conversation. I was once chatting with a colleague on the U-Bahn on the way home from work, talking (in German) about stuff that would be meaningless to an outsider ("my boss just had a right old set-to with so-and-so in the finance dept, blah-blah"). The colleague was sitting opposite me, and next to her was a young woman who was so mesmerised by our conversation that she was leaning forward toward me, eyes riveted on my face. After 5 minutes of this, I felt it was inconsiderate to leave her out of the conversation, so I turned to her, leaned forward and looked her straight in the eyes while continuing straight on with my story as if I was telling it just for her. Result: she was suddenly totally confused and embarrassed, and my German colleague was completely bewildered. Hilarious!

The staring seems particularly prevalent at airports and during air travel. Like the girl sitting facing me, about 5 yards away, at the departure gate, whose moronic stare wandered from my boots to my face, then back to my boots, and back to my face, over and over. Probably had to do with the fact that my boots were rather striking and unusual, and hers were very similar to mine. So I started to play the game of staring back until she looked away, then looking away myself, and after a minute or so, very suddenly looking back at her to find her staring again. So I give her the intense, direct stare. She gets embarrassed and looks away again. I look away. Wait another minute. Suddenly look at her again. She's staring again. Stare her down again. Repeat the cycle until it gets boring. Great way to while away the time. To end the game, catch her staring, and flash a really huge, beaming grin. Result: total confusion. Great fun.

Or the girl in the seat next to me on the plane, who was fascinated by the contents of my handbag. I was looking for something in my bag, so I put it on my lap, opened it and started rooting around inside. Suddenly my neighbour is leaning towards me for a better view, peering down into my handbag, then up into my face. I wasn't sure whether to offer her a free guided tour of my handbag, or charge a fee for access to the more intimate secrets.

It really is weird.