What do the Germans really think of the British?

It always makes me laugh that in Glasgow fizzy drinks (usually Iron Bru) are known as "juice"

Agatha Christie is seen as representing all things English. Good grief! They'll be saying it's Mr. Bean next!

Archie...

I forgot. They DID say Mr. Bean was typically English...

We think that you eat Heinz Beans in Tomato Sauce on Toast. We think that this is yak!
Some of us think that Lea & Perrins Worcestershiresauce is lovely while others think it is a hard drug.
We think that you or your fathers or mothers have liberated us from the Nazis, Most of us think that this is good. We think that you gave us Punk Rock ( a good thing) altough some arrogant Yanks claim that this music was born in Max Kansas City Night Club NY. We think that the Royal family has German Roots and that the Anglo Saxons are Germanic which makes us close relations. Most of us never think anything about ye at all except when there is a Laenderspiel and the British Hooligans plan a second invasion of Germany or when the Brits say that 1966 was a goal which of course wasn't! i will try to be around on this BB from time to time to help us and yourselves out of the worst.

no I think you mean this is yuck

we think this is a yak

Good one !

Ah suren and why should it not be 'yuck'? . That was an easy one. Just wanted to see if there are real Brits on the Board and not just fake ones! We think that Brits are insular and hate the idea of a united Europe. What reason is there to hold on to the most boring currency in the world The £ ?
We think that Binge drinking is a British invention and that cultivated consumtion of alcohol starts east of Landsend. Some of us think that Tony Blair isn't Labour at all, some think that Tony is the Lapdog of the American eejit. What else do we think of ye? I must remember my English Teacher Mr. Barry Boyland from Nottingham a bleeding nice guy, died at the age of 46 on a German Tennis Court. Heart stroke. But this is another story which I'll tell ye some other day. Slan.

Wot do I think about "the english",well...
I do travel to UK on regular basis since 1983 and lived there twice for a short while,so I guess I can say a bit,though it is my subjective opinion/experience!
Wot I like:
1. friendly,polite
2. funny!
3. met a lot! of creative people
3. "crazy"
4. TV program´s are definetely better
5. interesting party´s (i.e. fancy dress) - more rare here,cos Pub´s are open longer!?
6. Food! (more choice of biscuits,crisps and chocolate),I luv vinegar and mint!
7. everything is not so clean and neat,i.e. Pub´s!
8. my ex-boyfriend!!!*yummy*
Wot I dislike:
1. "Anti-Continental"/Anti-Europe,VERY nationalistic!
2. jokes about nazi´s,world war 2,comments like:"We won the war,ha,ha"!!!
3. eating manners "burp"
4. too much drink and violence at weekends
5. bad tattoo´s
6. big women in leggins with far too much make up on
7. weather talking
8. beeing reserved - besides when beeing P****!

Difficult question - better put - what are the British here think about themselves? Hard to define yourself if you are a foreigner. Most here seem to think that Germany is the Matrix.

That I have to agree with to some extent.

However in our defence there is a massive selection of sugar free soft drinks in the UK here in Germany you have nothing but cola light and maybe in the bigger supermarkets sprit and fanta light.

And before you all kick up Apfelschorle etc also contains sugar

actually 'ginger' is the correct term when in Glasgow

My mother who has never been to the UK thinks the British are really scruffy and unpleasant: The only British she ever got to know where tourists in Majorca whose shirts constantly hang out of their shabby trousers and who drank too much. She is convinced that in Britain it rains almost every day. She is convinced that the British have disgusting food though never having had the chance to verify this.

Food
I myself think the British have some nice food, for example curries, dim sum, teryaki.
Their bread is awful though.
British and Americans tend to eat an unhealthy amount of chips, crisps and junk food in general. You need to have good arguments to get them to eat vegetables and fruit. They eat these only because it is healthy, but not because it is yummy.

Alcohol
Many British like binge-drinking. It is one of their favourite weekend activities.

Love for Traditions
The mock-tudor houses, the mock-victorian houses, all that pastiche crap in UK shows that the British try to escape the 20th/21st century whenever possible. They are attached to separate water taps, one with boiling water, the other one with ice-cold water, both so short that you can hardly wet your fingertips. And why? Mere nostalgia.
The MoP sit cramped in oldfashioned rooms; one of the ministers uses to sit on a woolen sack.
They jump from bridges (Oxford? Cambridge?) even if there is not enough water underneath - just because it is the tradition to do so.
One of the British favourite sentences is "it has always been like this".

Housing
The British have a very peculiar idea about housing and often live in small boxes made of plasterboard. They don't mind sleeping in rooms that Germans normally would use as cupboards only, but are keen on multiple bathrooms even in the smallest house. They prefer small houses with private entrance to generous-sized self-contained flats but don't mind living with complete strangers in shared flats/shared houses for years.

Security
They are crazy about security. They insist on washing mashines in bathrooms being unsafe. You can find the allergic warning "contains milk" even on bottles of milk and on packages of cheese. They inform you by big signs that the floor was slippery when wet. - In other words: they tend to think the fellow men being idiots and needing protection wherever they move, breathe, walk and talk.
The British must have installed a million cameras by now, in every pedestrian zone, every station, every train, every main street in towns and on every highway.

Fairness
One says the British value fairness. And indeed, they think it unfair or unkind not to inform the drivers of speed cameras.

Queues
Take 2 British, and they will queue.

They would stand next to each other, and strike up a conversation!

Where to start...

- A lot of british are quite foulmouthed, they swear too much imo
- The food is partly ok but I don't get Marmite, why putting Maggi on your bread?? Yorkshire pudding on the other hand is
- Bread... could be better indeed but then I have seen it is improving here
- Table manners... what table manners??? Burping and picking food out of the teeth with the finger is agenda *insert barf smiley*
- A lot are easily agressiv and tend to violence when drunk, I don't fancy at all going out here as you have to be worried to be beaten up or getting mugged. Experienced three incidents within half an hour in Cardiff after leaving a concert, that has put me off to go there again. Cardiff might be nice at day but is a dangerous shithole in the evening.
- Willful damage to other peoples priority, the statistic must be skyhigh.
- Too obsessed with ww2, we are fully aware of what happened 60 years ago and certainly won't forget about it but it's time to let go of the past we are another generation who still have to carry the burden of ww2.
- Most british people believe we don't have humor, we have humor infact we take humor very serious!
- Pleaaaaase do something about the chav generation or your beautiful country will end up as a chav swamp

...that's a complete fucking lie !

Nice

Sorry, really have to disagree with that one. I've been in Cardiff over a year now and yes you might get the odd scrap or two on a Friday or Saturday night but it certainly isn't a dangerous shithole. If the incidents you mentioned were connected to the concert it could have been that the people involved didn't even come from Cardiff.

And I have to say something about the binge drinking. Yes there is a problem with binge drinking in the UK but when I was living in Germany I saw more kids drinking on street corners there then I ever have here and that was only in a tiny town.

I couldn't imagine a more quintessentially German sentence than this one!
Brilliant!

Bread? I know some natives here who eat pasta with only Maggi. Disgusting

Yeah! The first time I have ever seen someone eating pasta with sugary 'apple' ketchup instead of proper tomato sauce was here in Germany, yikes!

I should have mentioned these three incidents had nothing to do with the concert. they happened independently and the people who caused the havoc where drunk youths (perhaps between 18-23), They passed us in the shopping area harrassing a young men and just 2 minutes later the police turned up and arrested some of them as they got involved in a brawl. Further up three other drunk lads shouted abuse at someone who was riding on his bycicle minding his own business, they kept shouting and threatening him, when we left in our car we took the wrong turn and ended in a dead end street, my boyfriend turned the car and there was a drunk couple standing on the pavement the guy tried to kick in the passenger door, we couldn't easily drive away as there was another car in front of us. So I stick to what I said, imo Cardiff is a shithole at night Period. I have been out in /Germany Hamburg so many times we went to concerts on the Reeperbahn and we never experienced such situtation there.


Ahh I knew some people would get my drift

Well that is obviously your opinion, personally I find it a bit silly based on one night out, but each to his own. And I have been out in Hamburg many times and seen many many fights, but I wouldn't call it a shithole, I would just say it's a few stupid people causing trouble, and you can get them in any town or city.

Although I don't know about Cardiff, but I agree with Andrea.

I lived in London for many years and I never got harassed or attacked or anything like that even when I used to go out dancing with my friends, come out of clubs/bars at 3 a.m. and walk home alone at least twice a week.

I have been in Berlin for a year and everytime I go out with my friends, all of us foreign, there has been some problem or other, 3 or 4 times with beggars getting quite aggressive because I didn't have any change to give them so they'd followed me shouting abuse and spitting at me.
About 5 times with young drunk Germans in the tube & at a bar, some of them because they heard us speaking 'foreign' so they'd start mimicking us, ridiculising us and throwing things at us, some because we didn't like it when they sat at our table drunk and threw money at us because "that's what foreign women want" their money, etc., etc. Or because they were just being rude and obnoxious and we wouldn't take it.

Nearly every Sunday while out with my family we dread taking the tube at Zoo Garten as it is choc-a-block with football hooligans being quite drunk and violent and although there's police everywhere they are always very intimidating.

Now, I never experienced any of this in London, it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen there, but maybe I was lucky not to see it, the same way some people here are lucky not to have had any problems in Germany, maybe I have been unlucky in Germany but it certainly doesn't look very peaceful or safe to me.

Maybe it is all about being in the wrong/right place at the wrong/right time!

To be honest I am not really sure the two experiences go hand in hand. I used to find when walking home somewhere on my own in the UK if I was approached by a (generally very drunk) bloke as soon as I told him to leave me alone he would just wander off in a drunken manner and try it on with someone else. However I have been approached by a few undesirables here in Frankfurt (none of them German though) and have found they do not leave you alone when you say no and there have been two occasions where I have made a run for it. I guess lucky for me I am reasonably fit and able to run in stilettos

So to be honest I wouldn't say that either the UK of Germany is more safe or unsafe. Let's face it wherever she is a woman is more at risk walking home on her own late at night. I would never let it stop me doing it though.

This is exactly what i said in my previous posts, I said IMO it is a shithole at night and this comment is based on my personal experience. I didn't say that any other towns are better but it is true that I never experienced such situation in Hamburg.

what do "the Germans" think of the "the British"?
don't we love generalisations? when reading the thread, i had to laugh as people seem to throw their experiences at each other. all the drunk fights i have seen where in england, but then they happen in munich too especially at the octoberfest, so it happens everywhere.

I, personally, like "the British" a lot including their obessions with WW2, 1966, scones, questions about david hasselhoff, their celebrity gossip mags, their different accents, their clothes and shoe shops, their humour, their attitude of life, work life and their love of teasing the hell out of the Germans. how many times have their managed to annoy me? a lot but forgiveness is gift

Ahhh bless...

So many comments to address, so little time . . .


Have you considered that perhaps the Germans don't glorify and sensationalise war like other nations do. They have such an interesting and colourful history and the only thing the tourists seem to be intereted in is concentration camps and swastika's. Don't you think there's something very wrong with that?


What exactly do you mean by "totally correct English"?

Why is it only snotty when the Texan says he's Texan but not when you say you're English? Is it somehow less accurate?

Further can you name all the states or all the Canadian provinces and territories? Americans aren't any more ignorant of world geography than anyone esle.

totally correct english, not the mumbo jumbo you canucks spout

Yes, it is less accurate, England is a country, Texas is a state.

Oh screw off, eh?

I've been told that the American pronounciation is closer to original language anyway and you lot just went and poshed it all up.

EDIT: smiley added so wee mun can tell when I'm joking around

excellent english...

"Oh Screw off, eh?"

So it's snooty for a Bavarian to say he's Bavarian?

Only if he says it snootily

is it less accurate than saying he's German?

its a tadge difficult to glorify the loss of a quarter of your territory, a tenth of your population, and the destructoin of most of the cities even though you built shit hot tanks.

zee germans have an image of the brits that is either hooligan or hooray henry.

they laugh about english food but have never eaten a proper roast meal, nor had mint sauce. and are realy pushed to cooked anything "german" themselves.

they like to think england has lots of unemployed and a non-functioning economy were everybody is still strikeing four days a week, it hurts them to see its rather the otherway round at the mo.

they can't work out the difference between england and britain. they like beeckham and the premiere league. they think cricket is weird, the concept of playing for 5 days and drawing doesnt work for this nation.

they think lady di was a saint. they cant work out why certain ales and beers have to be warm. the find us all relaxed and crazy. they can not get to grips with the britsh attitude of taking things a little less seriously than they do. they do not understand that when we say "all right" we mean understood not its all ok.

they think we drive on the wrong side of the road.

they'd much prefer us to the french.

Don't twist it around. I was saying it is less accurate calling an englishman british than calling a Texan american. Anyway, Germans are great, it is fun teaching them rude words, then they use them at totaslly the wrong time, it is more fun than clubbing seals!

I was really just wondering why it's snooty for Texans to say they're Texans, that's all.

actually, I have heard the opposite. I have heard many Germans complain that the British (but I'm sure they meant the English) are rather two faced. One friend on mine describes the Brits as the world's best hypocrites. I'm sure that's because they don't understand the rules of British humour.
Also, they are confused by our chit-chat about the weather. I've seen many Germans confused by "nice day for it, isn't it?" as they try figure out what "it" is and how they should respond. They basically think we are excentric talking in riddles about the weather when we're not really interested in the weather at all. Back to being hypocrites again ???
BTW I've often heard them refer to British women as the most two-faced & bitchiest women on this earth !! Not my opinion, but there you go.

I lived in Asia for 17yrs , and lived here for 8 yrs , people are the same all over the world, if you are friendly then it comes back. First rule . learn to speak German, get in there heads. I teach English in a kindergarden, the children love me. I am a hairdresser and have loads of local customers i think they like me because its cheaper to get your hair with me than the local salon, always helps to be liked when they get it cheaper!!! One old man did tell me he was in a prisoner of war camp in England, I told him he was very lucky he was not in a Japanese one , he agreed with me. I have some good German friends.

I’ve been to Britain several times and studied there for a year => I truly love the English, Welsh and Scots and always found them extremely helpful and friendly, but:

- why oh why are they so keen on separate water taps?!
- The same question applies to those old-fashioned spiral-hotplates (I hope you understand what I mean...)
- Some of them (and especially the media) are obsessed about WWII (probably because it was a war which is easy to condone and also their finest hour in the 20th century…) and can't understand why the Germans are sensitive about it
- I don’t mind the food – apart from the bread – but deep fried Mars bars are certainly something the world can live without
- The class system is much more apparent in daily life (e.g. even at university it seemed to me that the sort of accent you speak or the school you went to really defines you very much socially - much more than at university in Germany)
- I loved all the university-related traditions, even when they were cheesy (gowns are great )
- In an academic surrounding (e.g. at a conference) it’s often hard to figure out what they really think of your work because they’re always very positive about everyone’s work
- It took me some time to figure out that if someone asks you “How are you?� you aren’t supposed to really start telling how you are…

Texas was its own country before it chose to join the United States. So it probably is correct as an analogy of England to Great Britain.

I'm confused ...easily done. If your English, Irish, Scottish or Welsh, does that not make you British.

I myself am British but wouldn't deem myself any of the above. I was born in Malaysia, my father was half Irish and half Scottish and my mum was half English and half Welsh.

Sounds like you maybe a feallaire, erchyll, warlock traitor, then

I get the impression that most Germans like and admire the British; and British to them means English. In a historical way they feel as if the English are their quaint cousins. They do get annoyed by the constant referrals to the war and the 1966 World Cup, which the English propound as a lack of understanding on the Germans´part to the British "sense of humour". I do not think "sense of humour" is the correct analogy although I often found it quite amusing when sportsmen/women from Northern Ireland performed well they were "British" and when they performed badly they were "Irish". I worked in England for a long time and I have a genuine affection for the English, Scots and Welsh even though I would consider myself an Irish Nationalist.

I found the harshest response to the English to have been in Southern Ireland although this was never direct to their faces. I was relocated to the Dublin branch of an international insurer on a two year project, probably because I was Irish. I had an English registered car, which I was made change right away, since it was perceived by my Irish colleagues that any relationship to the UK would be a barrier to doing business in Ireland (considering I commuted at the weekends to Northern Ireland an Irish registered car was certainly a danger to my health). When English colleagues attended meetings in Ireland, they were treated with the upmost respect but as soon as they were gone they were "those English bastards". I was shocked not only by the attitudes but by the sheer duplicity. Indeed, at one meeting, I was outlining how a similar project had been launched in the UK and I referred to the UK as the "mainland", I thought I was going to be taken outside and shot for treason.

I suppose all our attitudes to others are dictated by where we come from and I understand the British sense of humour. We may have won the war but we lost our way after it. Germany is cleaner, the standard of living is higher, its people are generally better educated, more conscientious, hardworking, more polite and simply kinder than we are. And off course I get defensive about this and rant hysterically about not being able to get a proper loaf of bread, that the traffic lights are totally confusing and that they need roundabouts and that you should be able to pay for your drink as you get them and buying rounds is more social than just paying for your own and so on and so on... I can only think of two areas where the British are better- music and television, and thankfully the Germans are completely rubbish. So we revert to our sense of humour, we glorify past glories and we come first in oneupmanship and ill-informed nationalism and all the while our German cousins smile and try and understand where we went wrong.

TC1 - I'd only disagree that the Germans are 'more conscientious, more polite and simply kinder than we are.'

Where, where? I don't want to miss that!

@hams

We are nearly always in full agreement so it is useful that there are some paradoxes between us to ensure self sustaining vitality

@TC1 - variety is the spice of life and all that.