Discussing expat life in German-speaking Europe


Posts tagged culture shock

Evolution of an Expat

Oct01
2012 Written by JessicaL

I attended a dinner party the other night, at a comfy apartment in a suburb outside of Hamburg. Guests included Canadian (both French and English-speaking), American, and German teammates from my husband’s hockey team, and their spouses. It was a fun, casual evening of burgers and wine. A new woman joined our group that night, having just arrived from Canada a couple of days prior to spend the rest of the hockey season with her husband. It is to be her first time living overseas, and I could see it all over her face. Not only was she still suffering the ill effects of jetlag, she appeared bewildered, confused by the different languages swirling around her, overwhelmed with meeting new people, and uncomfortable in what, for the rest of us, was such an easy setting.

I knew just how she felt.

READ MORE »

Posted in Daily life, Expat issues, German language, Tips, advice, suggestions - Tagged , ,

Homesickness in a Global World

Aug20
2012 Written by Ruth

We have now arrived in Toronto and are busy setting up our new house. Like any move, this one has had its share of surprises, including our air freight sitting in Germany for two weeks because the movers forgot about it. Flexibility is key, and a very long fuse… so far I have managed both quite well, and have just a few more days (hopefully!) until our big container arrives with the bulk of our things, including all the furniture.

As we have explored our new city and found our bearings, we have of course scoped out a few locations that make us feel happy and connected to “home”. That has become a relative term for me, as my upbringing was in the Pacific Northwest in the US but my adult life has been spent in Europe. I am a terrible foreigner, I pick and choose all the things I want to retain from my home culture, and I am equally selective about what I integrate from my host culture. I’m definitely not all-or-nothing when adapting, constantly seeking a balance between retaining my own identity – cultural and individual – and blending in with those around me. I never was very good at fitting into a group…
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Posted in Daily life, Expat issues, History and culture, Miscellaneous - Tagged , , , , ,

Auf Wiedersehen

Jul17
2012 Written by Ruth

This afternoon a crowd of my in-laws converged on our house for the traditional German Sunday afternoon Kaffee & Kuchen. This doesn’t happen very often, maybe once a year, as they all live over an hour away. Anyone with in-laws will sympathize with the latent stress involved in being so outnumbered in one’s one home, and yet, for the first time in the twelve years I have lived here, I didn’t stress at all: I just enjoyed it.

In just a few weeks, we’re embarking on a new adventure and heading back to North America – specifically, to Canada. READ MORE »

Posted in Daily life, Expat issues, Miscellaneous - Tagged , , ,

Good Night, Sleep Tight, Watch out for the Crack!

May07
2012 Written by Ruth

Maybe you have visited Germany on a trip and noticed that the hotel beds were a little funny. Large, generously proportioned, down pillows, down comforters. But strangely, when you sink into the middle of the bed you find, well, it’s lacking. There’s a crack down the middle of the bed! And no covers there either. German “king-size” beds are really two twin beds sharing a frame. What about the covers? Also twin.

And guess what: it’s like this in their homes, too. This was a shock to my newly-married-assumptions-about-life when I came to Germany. Like most young couples, we bought a bed frame at IKEA. We went to the mattress store to buy a good mattress and when we got there I realized we would be buying two good mattresses for our one bed frame. I spent some time thinking about this, then asked if there was some kind of filler for the gap. There was, but it created a speed bump, which to me didn’t really solve the problem. READ MORE »

Posted in Daily life, Expat issues, History and culture, Miscellaneous, Tips, advice, suggestions - Tagged , , , ,

Germans: We don’t need no stinkin’ apartment numbers

Apr23
2012 Written by HF

It never really dawned on me that the Germans don’t use apartment numbers – until I lived in a German apartment house. The only way the postal carrier (Postbote/Postbotin) can deliver mail to the correct apartment in even a large apartment complex is by the last name on the mailbox. In my case, not even my own last name, but that of the people I was subletting the apartment from. And my apartment complex in Berlin even had a Hinterhaus, another building facing a courtyard behind the front building, and all of them were five stories high. Yet the only numbers in sight were for the floors.

My first reaction to the lack of apartment numbers (Wohnungsnummern) was, “How ridiculous is that?” But then I remembered that the Japanese don’t even have street names in most of their cities (except in Kyoto and Sapporo). They use block section numbers in a confusing (to us Occidentals) address system that makes the Germans look like the height of logic and reason. The Japanese also write a postal address in the reverse order of most of the world: starting with the geographic location and ending with the name of the recipient. READ MORE »

Posted in Daily life, German vocabulary, History and culture, Tips, advice, suggestions - Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Dealing with Differences in a Multi-Culti Family

Apr02
2012 Written by Ruth

Not long ago, a German friend gave me a stern warning that I was in danger of teaching my children that all things German are bad. I was perplexed at this perspective, for it certainly doesn’t reflect how I feel.
“If you tell them negative things about Germany, you will eventually build a mindset in them which is negative to their own culture,” she explained.
My only response was to laugh, because not two weeks prior to this conversation, my mother had accused me of having an anti-American household.
“I feel as though you are rejecting your culture, and your family along with it,” she had said.

Almost the entirety of my adulthood has been spent abroad. It may well be that I have rejected parts of my own, American, culture and it may also well be that I am occasionally critical of my host culture. In fact, I’m sure both of those are the case. How is a bi-cultural, bilingual family expected to deal with cultural differences? With humor! READ MORE »

Posted in Daily life, Expat issues, History and culture, Miscellaneous, Tips, advice, suggestions - Tagged , , , , ,

Grocery Culture

Feb06
2012 Written by Ruth

There I was on Saturday morning at the grocery store, my cart full, hastily putting my items on the checkout band. I sent two parties ahead of me to the cashier, knowing I would need a little extra time; my weekly groceries still filled the cart and my attempts to organize the checkout band for efficient packing were consuming precious seconds. The people behind me began to move closer, although I hadn’t moved forward an inch. Someone sighed loudly from farther back in line. And I began to sweat.

Finally, my groceries all lined up in perfect order on the checkout band, I proceeded to the cashier, who began her rapid-fire process of scanning and piling them for me to place back in the cart. I wasn’t fast enough, she dumped things in for me to speed things up. Desperate to keep up, I was of course unable to pack things in the cart in the order I had planned while placing them on the band. The heavy things were on top, the eggs near the bottom, and the potatoes just got dumped on top of the yogurt. Eager to end the transaction, I paid (with my debit card, which wasn’t possible just a few years ago!) and made my way to the car, where I again packed the groceries, this time at my leisure and in the order I preferred, into the reusable bags waiting in my car.

Whew. Grocery shopping culture here is so different. READ MORE »

Posted in Daily life, Expat issues, History and culture, Miscellaneous, Tips, advice, suggestions - Tagged , , ,

Homesick?

Jan09
2012 Written by Ruth

As I write this, I am dazed with jet lag. In this haze, the thoughts I had on the airplane for this blog post are distant and somewhat difficult to grasp. The moment we arrived back in Europe, it was as if the trip had never happened. Three weeks of the Great Northwest, soaking in all the local culture, enjoying family and friends and giant parking spaces, all just a dream. I feel homesick for it already.

I love going home, and I love coming back to my home in Germany. One of the strange things that happens when you live in a different culture is that you have selective memory about your home culture. While I am here, I notice all the things that are substandard compared to my home culture; the tight parking spaces, the lack of convenience, the gruff public face so many locals prefer to wear. READ MORE »

Posted in Daily life, Expat issues, Miscellaneous, Tips, advice, suggestions - Tagged , ,

German compartmentalization and closed doors

Jun02
2011 Written by HF

German compartmentalization comes as a shock to most Americans. This rigid compartmentalization is both physical (floor plans, closed doors) and mental (friends vs acquaintances, business vs pleasure). It is a cultural difference that usually becomes obvious to expats in German-speaking Europe early on. But like many cultural differences, it is one that tends to sink in slowly and involves breaking long-established habits.

I have lived in Germany and visited there often, yet some un-German habits die hard. Like leaving doors open or punching the “1″ button for the ground floor. There are many things about daily life in Germany that you can “know” intellectually, yet somehow are slow to be truly absorbed and comprehended.

At various points in an expat’s life there come those certain “aha moments” when you suddenly “get it.” One such aha moment for me came when I was living in Berlin. I was house-sitting for friends who were staying in the US for almost a year. They had a lovely fourth-floor loft apartment with an open, airy, bright floor plan. The only doors are the entrance and two more for the bathroom and a guest toilet/lavatory. The bedroom is set off by a wall without any doors. I loved it. READ MORE »

Posted in Daily life, Expat issues - Tagged , , , , , , ,

Still a Culture Shock: Lack of Personal Space

May01
2011 Written by ginaC

I’d say there are many things that shock me about Germany. The things that I have learned over time have made Germany out to be some odd sort of ‘opposite land’, where everything is, effectively, just the opposite of what I had in America.

Take, for instance, German and American hypocrisy over Gesundheit. In America, everyone will talk to you about why you need to quit smoking, but they’d prefer to do it over a Big Mac and fries. On the other hand, in Germany everyone is so concerned about their Gesundheit that they regularly visit pools and saunas (much more than I ever witnessed from the Americans), but you can’t walk down the street without being in a near constant cloud of second-hand smoke.

To each his own, as they say. I’m a non-smoker, so I notice the stench. READ MORE »

Posted in Expat issues - Tagged , , ,
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