Germany vs. USA - Part 1

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Created: Friday, 20 March 2015 15:48

Written by Verena

 Exactly a year ago we were preparing the last things for the biggest event of the year, our move back to Germany. Kind of amazing how time flies. And slowly but surely I start feeling home again. It took a while, I know. I am still homesick from time to time, but Germany is my home country after all.

Of course the most asked question I encountered the last months is: “And, what’s better? Germany or America?” My standard response: “It depends.”
Depends on what? Well, in the first part I am going to try to describe a few things I am missing here and whereby I still have some difficulties adapting to German reality.

1) Plastic Cards

Let’s start with one of my favorite topics. The Germans and I think especially the Swabians love cash. Because with cash you know what you spend. Nice sentence. I actually never understood it. Either I have my finances under control, or I don’t. I also don’t want to advertise to use more credit cards. I never depended on the money being withdrawn from my bank account weeks after I spent it. Either I have money or I don’t. But if not, then I don’t go shopping, simple as that. I am also not a big fan of all the various credit offers you’ll find in the US and that comes up more and more here as well. I’ll take a loan when I buy a house. Maybe when buying a car. But a PC, a TV, a camera or other gadgets I buy when I have the money for it. And not with a credit over the next 24 months or so. But I get carried away. What I actually wanted to say is, that the at times total absence of electronic payment possibilities in Germany is really bugging me. One of these days Bruno and I were sitting in a nice brewery, enjoying a good (and not really cheap) meal and some beer and when the check came and I reached for my plastic card I had to listen to “across the street there is a bank where you can get cash, because here we do not accept this (pointing on my plastic money)”. Similar situation just recently in the bakery. I was buying bread for more than 50€ and again I had to leave to get some cash because “people would by a Brezel with a card”. So what, where’s the problem? Then define a kind of a minimum transaction volume for paying with card or so. I know in Germany it is quite expensive for store owners to have these little machines, every transaction costs money, but for me it belongs to good service to offer the customer cashless payment possibilities, at least with debit cards. Because these cards have been invented for a reason. For people like me. For people who hate cash and who want to have a simple method to pay without worrying if they have enough cash in their pockets and without constant searching for the next ATM. I mean even Aldi managed to introduce card payment. It was only 6 years ago or so, but hey, they got it now. And I wouldn’t have to ask Bruno for cash all the time….

2) Gas

No, I don’t want to bitch about the high gas prices, which kind of moved downwards the last few months, but which are still ridiculously high compared to US prices. (FYI: about 3 times as much).  I want to talk about the fact that a lot of gas station owners were complaining about gas theft before the price drop. Well, it is one thing if you don’t turn on your surveillance cameras. Can’t help you with that. But another, very practical solution that basically doesn’t exist in Germany would be to equip the gas pumps with electronic payment. And here we are again! Put your card in the terminal, pay, refuel. Directly at the pump! And not inside! Gas theft has an immediate end and I wouldn’t have to wait forever to pay my gas, just because a few people in front of me are buying whatever. And please leave me alone with the argument that this is the only possibility for the owners to earn some money (because of high taxes on the gas). If I want a gum or anything else I go inside and buy it. And if not, then not. The strategy to let someone wait forever and try to seduce him/her with sweets and cigarettes doesn’t work with me and is just nerve-racking.

3) Service

“Service Desert“ Germany. These two words get a new dimension after living in the US for four years.
If you go to a store in the US (no matter if it is a supermarket, home improvement or electronic store), you always a find staff within two seconds. If you are looking for a certain product, the employee either brings you to the right shelf or to another employee who knows where to find what you are looking for. Internet requests are usually answered within 24h. If you are calling a service hotline (or live chat service) it is available 24/7 and waiting time is acceptable. You don’t always get the answer you want (or want to hear) but at least you are treated friendly and with respect.

Now we have to face the brutal German reality again: hours in the waiting loop on the phone. If you are lucky and get a real person on the other end, you are often treated like shit. Online service requests usually are ignored. It can happen in the restaurant that you have to wait for 15min until your order is taken and again 30min for the check (which sometimes you can’t pay with credit/debit card).
If you are lucky and you can find an employee in a store, you either get the standard response which is ‘this is not my responsibility, please ask my colleague’. Which colleague? It took me forever to find you! Or you get the feeling to be annoying. Oh no, customers!
Sometimes people here say that the friendliness in the US is just superficial. Well, yeah, sometimes it is. But what do I care? I don’t want a relationship with the salesman. As a customer I just want to be treated friendly and politely. Am I asking for too much?
It sounds a little worse than it actually is. Thank god there are exceptions to the rule. But these are rare and unfortunately not daily routine (yet). And if the exception happens, you will remember it forever.

4) Sunday shopping

A very difficult subject in Germany. Very difficult. I still remember the times when stores closed around 1pm Saturdays. No, no typing error. I meant Saturday. When stores where opening their doors until 4pm on a Saturday it was almost considered a revolution. Now they are open until 6pm or even 8pm if you are lucky. Sundays however everything is closed. Everything.
I understand all the arguments against opening stores as well on Sunday. On the other hand I enjoyed it a lot the last four years not to be forced to get everything done on Saturday. One part you did on Saturday, the other part on Sunday. According to your time and mood.
Daily life in Germany is not really different from the US life. During the week you are totally filled with work and you only have time to buy some food in the evening real quick. If you decide to go skiing (or any other cool activity) on Saturday because the weather is great and you didn’t do your grocery shopping on Friday, well, good luck. Sundays all stores are closed. Same situation if you get back from vacation on a Sunday afternoon. The fridge is empty and there is no possibility of refilling it until Monday. Not only a pity, but also bothersome. I wouldn’t care if stores were closed one day during the week, if I had then the possibility to go shopping on Sunday.

5) Burger…

…and sandwiches. No, I am not talking of the yellow M, or the red B, or the green S, or the red K. Unfortunately we have the tendency in Germany to only import the crappiest fast food chains. There are really good ones, where you can eat good and fast and not too unhealthy. Well, that’s over now. Not that I really need a lot of this stuff, but sometimes you just get hungry or you are not in the mood for cooking. And then the difficulties start here on the countryside. Especially when you get cravings at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon with an empty fridge and all stores closed…
Not too long ago I couldn’t take it anymore and started preparing homemade cheese burgers. They were awesome. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture, my hunger was faster.

6) Shopping

Oh yeah, what would that blog be without a love song on American supermarkets and malls. Let’s start with the supermarkets. Here in the middle of nowhere you can look forever for something as big as an American supermarket. I don’t want to whine too much, the selection nevertheless is generally very good, however a few things that are kind of a standard there, are either hard to get here or overly expensive. It is also a pity that there are basically no Mexicans in Germany. I really miss the shelves with Mexican food. I even had to make tortillas on my own, because wraps became an integral part of our eating habits while living in New Mexico…aahhh…Aurora.

Let‘s continue with the malls. I have to admit I love malls, where you have all kind of stores bundled together and free parking. Two hours later I’m done and usually have a bunch of new clothes for a fair amount of money. Getting to the prices. I never really understood why a jeans (no defined brand) costs about $30 in an American mall, sometimes you even get 2 for $40, and here I have to pay basically 3 times the price for the exact same jeans. Both are probably produced at the same time in China…
Shopping here isn’t just that fun anymore. You have to look for an expensive parking spot in crowded cities at totally unpractical times. Usually you have less stores and less choice and of course the same type of cloth is more expensive. But at least it is good for Bruno, so he doesn’t have to make more room for my clothes.

With electronic gadgets the situation is slightly different; I think I mentioned this before. Also here the American prices are sometimes considerably below the German ones (also depending on the current $-rate). A small, but very important difference however is the warranty. If you want, as common here, 2 years of warranty, you pay the same price.

7) Attitude

If you are living long enough in one country, and most of us are doing this usually in the country they’ve been born and raised, very often you’ll get a kind a tunnel vision. Same phenomena if you are working a very long time in the same company without having seen something else. This usually gets intensified if you never left your home country long enough (no, two weeks of vacation somewhere else don’t count) to develop another perspective. You get the tendency to see the negative worse than it actually is. And we Germans are the known world whining champions. And unfortunately this is so true. I would love to shake and yell at some people and tell them how good the situation for them actually is in this country. Of course not everything is perfect, but we have a reasonably functional social system, health insurance for everyone, paid overtime and vacation. This is not normal everywhere….
I miss the friendliness and especially the positive attitude of the Americans. Of course they also whine and moan a lot. But nevertheless they still try to spread good mood, hey it is going to be ok somehow.
If you get into a train in the US it doesn’t take 5min until you get into a conversation. If you go jogging or biking you’ll always get a hello. If you look disturbed someone is asking you right away if you need help. No matter where, you are always greeted friendly and with a smile. This is truly something we have to learn here!
Just recently I said that I am a little bit afraid of having an accident here, because I am not really sure if anybody would stop and help me. People around told me not to exaggerate. Well, only a few days later there was a bad accident on the autobahn which was extensively discussed in the media, because people were just driving by and even taking snapshots instead of giving first aid.
When I go jogging here and say hello to people, usually I don’t get a hello back. Some people even look away. In the bus or train it is common tactic to ‘reserve’ the seat next to you with your backpack so nobody gets the idea of taking that place. Talking to foreign people sometimes is almost considered as a crime. Uahh, just a little more openness would be good. And a few more smiles wouldn’t hurt either!

8) Netflix und Co.

Slowly we get more and more streaming offers in Germany, too. We even have Netflix now. Unfortunately contents are still quite limited. To get the same choice as in the US you probably would have to register with at least 5 different services. It’s a pity, but maybe we’re getting there one day. Some people just don’t know it yet, but streaming is the future, TV with endless stupid ads is the past.

9) Weather

What I really liked about Chicago weather was the stability. Nice and warm in summer, nice and cold in winter. Constant, easy, projectable. Of course there were rainy days here and there, but we never had cold, rainy weather lasting for weeks in the middle of the summer. I think this continuous rain contributed a lot to my bad mood last July and August.
I just enjoyed the fact that no matter what weekend you chose for a certain activity, bad weather basically never crisscrossed your plans.

Well, and here the weather is doing whatever it wants. Cold and rainy in the middle of summer, springtime temperatures in winter. To say it with the words of a radio host: some months have identification issues and think they are April.
You just never know which month will be the one, because one year you’ll have the best weather in May, the other year July will be the sunniest month. Sometimes you get the most snow in February and the next year you have to go skiing in December because in January the snow is gone already. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have great weather periods. You just don’t know when they will be and how long they last. But hey, compared to the Midwest we definitely have the nicer and more versatile landscape. But more next time!

10) Lifestyle

It is obvious that I am missing our friends and all the activities we had with them. But I already talked about this. The other thing I am missing is the lifestyle we had over there. Everything was quite simple. We only had us and a few friends. That was it.
Bruno and I used our weekends for all kind of activities. Biking, diving, inline skating, sightseeing, nature…a get away from daily routine to recharge our batteries. Very often we asked ourselves why we didn’t do this so extensively in Germany as well. It was one of our good resolutions to continue this after our return. And as far as I can judge it, we are following the plan quite well.
Of course you are always kind of trapped in the daily routine called work. Additionally you have some ‘old’ responsibilities back towards family and friends. Responsibilities we didn’t have the last four years.
I don’t want to say that it is not nice to live closer to family and friends again. On the contrary. But I think also Bruno can confirm that our life in the US (except for work) was quite pleasant and very often also simple and very convenient. We only had responsibility towards ourselves. I miss this simplicity.
We are in our new apartment for more than 9 months now, and we still haven’t managed to invite everybody. There are still people on our reunion list, we haven’t seen yet. You get a bad consciousness, because you don’t want to offend anybody. I can only say sorry! We’ll get to it one day!

So, enough talking now! Next time more about the things I love in Germany. Things I missed a lot in the US and whose absenteeism or ‘otherness’ got me sometimes close to the border of desperation!