Peculiar customs and culture in Germany

I have been wanted to start a thread like this for a long time and perhaps something similar was done when TT was started? Anyway I have been living here ten years and when I think back I find that there are still phenomena that puzzle me.

Here are a couple and I will add more when I think of them, maybe someone else out there has their pet weird German things?

Doors -- what is this penchant for locking everything? Every apartment I've lived in here has had keyholes in every door with large old fashioned-looking keys that work and are not old! I don't understand, why would I want to lock my living room?

Why no doorknobs? -- or is it only me that continually catches her sleeve on these lever-like openers?

Haven't you ever seen Flowers in the Attic or Carrie? It's for witches and mean mothers.

I can't stand how apartments don't have closets and you are forced to buy a wardrobe which takes up half of the teeny tiny space you're given for a bedroom.

The shelf toilet

The German penchant for ironing crap that doesn`t actually need to be ironed (eg. underwear, towels, bedsheets, stretch-knit fabrics, household cleaning rags etc) - or rather their penchant for having other people (like their nanny) iron crap that doesn`t really need ironing.

Screens, why no screens?

I can't count the number of times I've played "stand on a chair and trap the wasp with a glass while alternately freaking out and running around the apartment screaming"

Why is it that every home (be it house or flat) I have been in in Germany has a toilet a mere 3 steps away from the front door? Is it always such an emergency that everyone designs all residences like that?

Thats not exclusive to Germans trust me.
You are describing my mother ironing

getting fined 80 Euros for going over a red light on your bike at 4 in the morning at an empty, meaningless intersection

no decent crackers or cookies

Saying "Mahlzeit" to everyone you meet around lunchtime. Annoying and stupid.

What I reckon is stupid, trivial I know, but pisses me off everytime. Those stupid drink bottle lids where you have to break off the blastic to get to your delicious refreshing beverage and then is either:
1 a fucker to get back on or;
2 got a big plastic sticky outie bit which I always poke myself with.
Done

that's historical. remember Germany's dark times. not everyone has had the opportunity to have a regular meal then. try "Danke, ich mahle meine Zeit selbst".

That sticky outie bit drives me INSANE just ask my husband because he is in charge of sticky outie removals

Edit: Just remembered something that I found weird...laundry that takes like 5 hours to complete. You practically need to set aside a whole day to do laundry (that said, our small top-loader seems to have a 'short' 45 minute cycle which is something I guess). And dryers that wet your clothes further while drying them...seems like cross-purposes to me.

driving on the right

plugs with just two prongs on isntead of 3...whats that all about!!!

national service...we don't need that in the UK cuz we's hard anyway.
we get practise fighting in pubs and within the safety of our own homes.

Lights on timers in the apartment hallways. Half the time I end up standing in the dark outside my door because it doesn't stay on long enough. Then I accidentally buzz my neighbours because I mistake their doorbell button for the light button -- which looks exactly the same except for the little picture on it, which I can't SEE in the dark!!! :-)

My other biggie: No dryers. This business of hanging wet stuff all over the apartment to dry is something I had a very hard time getting used to!

OMG, I have to agree with that - Deutschland, Land of No Doorknobs. I cannot seem to open or close a door in this country to save my life.

No bottle depots

Pushing a door open as opposed to pulling them open. Was really difficult the first year trying to open the door for women to allow them to walk in first until someone told me it's considered good manners for the man to walk in first!

Their agricultural industry, farmers just driving their tractors around their half hectare farms once a month to make it look like they earn their subsidies. And milk cows living their whole lives chained up inside a building with nothing to eat but old rotting grass and nothing to breath but the fumes from their own festering turds.

Who would drink milk here?

Oh and the lack of lighting on the autobahn!

People (mostly men - the women just smile at me now and then) going "servus" to you while you're jogging. I am so bad with faces, always make me worry about having to know them from somewhere and having somehow forgotten them..

@MB

It's German for "How you doin'?" a la Joey Tribbiani. Just giggle like Phoebe...

What is with those toilet pans where you can examine your own shit?

This is the Display-a-Shit©®
I think they are fantastic for when you want to really see the effects of your daily diet

I like lay-and-display better!

Because you have not bought any. They are available.

I don't get the screens thing. Screens for what?

Screen doors, screens for your windows. No one aside from Don Riina seems to have them.

Must keep out the wasps.

When I first came to Germany in 1989 a friend met me and said
"Welcome to the land of shit shoes and large heads on beer"

German insistence that Air Conditioning is bad for you and that they don't need it in Munich because the temperature doesn't vary that much. Do what!!! -28°C to +35°C isn't considered a variation in temp?

So everyone sits here huffing and puffing and complaining that it's too hot to work but feeling smug that they aren't all ill due to air conditioning.

Of course when I was in blighty and we had AC I was ill 3 days out of every 5 due the sheer eveilness of AC.

Oh but the "Zug" can kill you.

I was at OBI this week - they certainly had at least some stuff.
Go here and select insektenschutz. We have serious mosquito problems every year and had to get some screening for the bedroom.

Say what you want about AC and dryers...but at least they don't use up energy over here like they do stateside. I gotta admire it...even if we lose a few elderly to heat stroke along the way!

However, my father in law takes it a bit far when he times how long the heat continues to be radiate from the stove, and turns off my damn spagetti water before I am done cooking.

Ass grabbing and über PDA.

Anytime a couple is walking down the street at least one has a handful of the other's ass.

At concerts, couples go for the full-blown make out session. No hands up-shirts or down pants or anything fun like that, but they tongue wrestle until the show is over, then grab ass and go home.

the guys in nice dark suits and BROWN SHOES!! what is it with the dam italian brown shoes you dont have to wear them with everything even if they cost you a bunch

hehe, I have to admit that i've ironed both underwear and t-shirts (and socks once)... but it was because I needed them right then and there, and the 5 hours in the washer/drier made them about as dry as a fish.

As to the spending of Energy, I got yelled at by multiple Germans for leaving my fan on at night... sorry if I like a little bit of a cool breeze to help me sleep when it's uncomfortably hot... then again, one of them also leaves the hall light, bathroom light, and her room light on in the mornings, even when she is the last to leave... So being yelled at for using the fan when I'm actually there just kinda goes in one ear down my arm and inflates a single, centerally located digit on one of my hands .

Edit: I must be blind. I'd also like to second (third?) the notion of the Poop Shelf being the most annoying aspect of Germany.

Try German toilets - "Lay and Display".

@jip - ok I too have ironed things just to get them dry however after spending week after week in German households ironing underwear, tea towels and baby clothes (which are going to get all crushed up anyway) I find myself thinking `People, could you pick a more futile and tedious activity for me to do?´ Cotton things I understand, jeans, work wear ... no problem ... but who really gives a shit about ensuring that the underpants of a three year old are crease free when, lets face it, they are going to crap or piss in them five minutes after they put them on anyway?

In the first household I ever worked in, I was presented with the Mt Everest of ironing baskets on my second or third day and told by the mother ´YOU ARE IN GERMANY NOW. YOU WILL IRON!!´ (this was after I quickly surveyed the aformentioned basket, found that most of the items were undies, towels and the like and made the tragic mistake of asking if she really wanted the family knickers etc starched cos you know we don´t really do that kinda shit back in Oz. The result was an ear bashing and then she took away all my free time for the afternoon and gave me more ironing as I apparently needed the practise. Needless to say I am quite good at ironing now).

This actually makes loads of sense. Pulling the doors also means pushing them as you go out, i.e. into the corridor. This means that someone walking in the corridor could accidentaly get the door in his face, as has happened when I was living in the US where you pull doors. Victim lost a tooth. The odds of someone standing close to a door from the the inside are much smaller.

Hell! Don't let him near my belly button!

(j/k, I've got an 'innie')

And not just on the beer.


You can do my work if that is really what you are looking for.

My contributions:
This country is the land that taste forgot. I mean in terms of taste in fashion, hair 'styles', etc.

The young women (and men) are about 8ft tall and way too skinny. The older people are 4'6" tall and about the same across. What happens? Is there some pupal stage that we aren't aware of?

wearing shorts , along with jesus shoes , with socks for gods sake.saw quite a few today.

white pants and black shoes! Major Fashion faux pas!

Scarves all the time- because of the draft in the window. I have actually had patients want my window closed on a warm day (20-25°C) as the draft will give us all a cold and bad neck muscles!

Booking a laundry room, what's up with that! I am a last minute person, no clothes, then lets do laundry! But actually booking the room, I have to book about 2 weeks in advance, or I cannot get the machines. So, I do lots of washing at midnight.

ha ha ha - hubby is in the other room - Ironing (but only his work shirt). My mother in law comes over every Wednesday and complains that I didn't leave any ironing out for her (I hide all the laundry - she was ironing my bras and tights!!!) and I do not see the point of ironing the boys underwear - and then folding it? Nope - our undies get tucked into nice little self-containing balls that can be chucked into a drawer from the bedroom doorway.

Meetings - and "Protokollen" with more meetings with 3 page "Protokollen" - I would rather let my mother in law iron my sweaters than read another 3 page protokol. gag.

I just got back from Germany, and as far as I'm concerned you live in the greatest country in the world. My ancestors left Germany in the late 1800’s and I wish I could move back. You may not like the toilets in Germany, but we have Mexicans that don’t know how to use a toilet. I would gladly trade places with you any day.

John from California

Please don't, you sound like a racist pig.
Germany doesn't need people like you!!

Banks that don't want your money

I went to three different banks yesterday and all refused to take my money!!!

That is indeed what they say, 'it is bad for you if it's cold inside and warm outside', b/c it's so unnatural.

But: They turn on the heating in winter, don't they? So how come it's not bad for you then if it's warm inside and cold inside? What's more natural about that?

Silva, I'll take your money.

I was wondering about bushjs post myself. Is it really racist? Mexican is a nationality rather than a race isnt it? So wouldnt it come under the category of friendly inter-country fun-poking, like between the Aussies and the Kiwis, or English and Welsh, or Germans and Austrians? I dunno, how is it in those parts of the US near mexico? I could imagine making some similar jibe about Aussies but not intending it to be racist.

Why is this different?

Were you trying to open an account?

Banks don't make any profits running current/checking accounts and many will turn away potential customers if they only have small ammounts of money.
This particuarly applies to the bigger commerical banks and it is not just a German phenomenen.

The Sparkasse group has a policy of taking ANYONE to open a basic account with them.

www.sskm.de