Transcription
Germany has never stopped amazing me, although I live here for a while already. And I think the reason is because their people are very particular; they do a lot of things that I have never seen other people in other countries do. Not in a good or a bad way—it’s just a different way. And that’s why, in this video, I would like to go through some of them with you guys and discuss about that. Let’s go!
So the first thing that I find quite weird, and I still don’t understand why it’s actually a thing here, is that when it comes to your birthday, you have to be the one who brings your own cake to your workplace. Like, they don’t prepare anything for you; you have to prepare everything, and you’re kind of supposed to do it. I worked in Vietnam for two years, and the HR in my company was in charge of remembering everybody’s birthday, and they would be the one who bought the cake and prepared the birthday party. And everybody would have a 30-minute to 1-hour off that day just to celebrate and like, giving that person a gift. Also, when it comes to my birthday, normally I don’t even need to do anything. At home, with friends as well, they do everything; they make surprise birthday parties or they prepare something. I just need to show up like a queen and receive the gift. Over here, every year when my German boyfriend has a birthday, I saw him spending hours in the kitchen baking brownies, preparing bread and like, food to bring it to his workplace to share with his colleagues. Also, he would be the one to plan the birthday party and then invite friends to come over. I think in Vietnam we would do that when we want something specific on our birthday, but normally, it’s the birthday; we don’t do anything; other people should do something for us.
When I first hung out with my German boyfriend’s friends and seeing them leaving our house for the first time, it was like a whole cultural shock experience—how different could it be for a German to leave the house compared to a Vietnamese bride? No, it was actually quite interesting to see. So imagine they are sitting here, they’re talking; the conversation started to get like slower and slower, and then it’s time to leave. First of all, they’re going to do this—how do I show you guys? Here’s my leg, right? So when they do this, it means it’s time for them to leave, and then they get up and then they hug you, they say goodbye, and then they don’t leave for like 20 more minutes. The moment when a German said, “I’m going to leave now,” until they actually get into their car and drive home is always between 30 minutes to like 3 hours. They would like slowly get up; they would start to chitchat more on the way from the couch to like the door, and then only at this time they started to do like a lot of juicy gossip, like this is the time where they release like, you know, “What? My brother just got divorced; my ex-wife just like got married,” or something. And that’s the time when they release all of that, when everybody’s just awkwardly standing in front of the doorway to say goodbye. There was a story that my German boyfriend told me one time: after hanging out, him and his friends were walking home, and then they were supposed to part ways in this middle point, and actually, they stood there kind of under the rain and kept chatting for like three more hours and kind of like pouring their hearts out or something. And I feel like those conversations became the deepest, the juiciest after they said they’re going home. I didn’t know that before. So when they said—so and they said they’re going home, I was like, “Okay, it was a nice evening; they’re going home; I’m going to like lie down, brush my teeth, going to sleep; it’s like 12 already in the evening.” But no, there’s one more hour of standing in the door talking to them. At first, I was super confused when it kept happening, but now I’m actually getting used to it, and I’m actually loving this kind of conversation.
I think one of my first cultural shocks in Germany happened in my university. I was there on the first lesson, and after the teacher said, “Okay, this is the end of the class; have a nice rest of the day,” everybody started to do this; they started to knock on the table, on the wood. I was super confused, and I thought they were about to sing a song, or I don’t know, is there like a secret ritual that they’re doing in this class that I didn’t know? But apparently, it’s a very common thing for academic settings over here. When you go to the class, instead of clapping like this, they knock on the—on the table. I find it very cute. In Vietnam, instead of knocking like that, we stand up when the teacher gets into the class; we would stand up to say hi to them, and then when they get out, we stand up to say goodbye, but we don’t knock, and we also don’t make noise.
The next thing is something that I actually wish everybody in the world did. Over here in Germany, men—most of them—they sit down to pee. It is actually very considerate of them. Normally, when I go to someone’s house over here, their toilet is normally quite clean and doesn’t have any odor, and mostly I think because the men over here, they sit down to do number one, so there’s no spilling, there’s no smell, there’s no drop whatsoever. I did not know that men could even do that before I came here. I was really impressed with my German boyfriend when he first did that, and now I have become completely Germanized about that. In my head, I think this should be the norm; that if someone comes to my house, I would expect them to respect my bathroom and keep it clean like that.
The next thing I want to talk about is the raw meat, and before I start, I would like to acknowledge that us Vietnamese eat raw meat too. We eat fermented raw pork; it’s called “namour,” and it is actually very popular in Vietnam. And with all of the safety regulations that Germans have when it comes to their food, I think their raw meat is quite safe to eat too, but still, it is just a very big culture shock when I first saw it for the first time in the bakery. So over here, they eat raw pork, and it’s just like raw; so they take it from the butcher, and then they just grind it, and then they put it into a piece of bread with onion, and then they sell it in the bakery, and you can just buy it and eat it. Sometimes, to make it more aesthetically pleasing, they also create like a hedgehog out of the raw meat, and then they eat it. There’s almost no flavor in there; it’s just salt and pepper and raw meat. I don’t think it’s going to be very tasty; I also don’t think the texture is going to be very good as well. I mean, I do eat raw fish, but I’m pretty sure it would taste nicer. And although I have been here for 5 years, I don’t remember myself tasting the raw pork meat ever; I don’t plan to; it just doesn’t sound very appealing to me.
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One of the things I missed the most in Vietnam when I moved to Germany is the chips’ flavor. The chips over here, probably it is more organic and healthy, and it’s real potato and what’s not, but it doesn’t have much flavor. 80% of what I find in the cheap section in Germany is paprika flavor—um, maybe I’m exaggerating, but it’s kind of like that. And the rest is just salt and onion or barbecue or stuff like that, and it doesn’t hit the same, you guys. The chips in Vietnam, it doesn’t like taste like potato chips or something, but it just has so many fun textures. We have chocolate, we have corn, we have seafood; we have anything you could think of; they put every flavor there; it is insane! But like, the chips over here, is for me, it is the collection is quite sad. The most exciting and spicy thing you could do is like vinegar chips. I don’t know; I have been searching for nice chips in Germany for a while. Sometimes I find those dry vegetables, and then they make them into chips, and it looks—it tastes kind of okay, but I haven’t tasted any good chips over here yet. If you guys have any suggestions, please let me know under the comment section; I would really, really need some help.
Talking about drinking culture in Germany, it is a crime if you do not mention the sparkling water obsession over here. I think I used to make a lot of videos about that when I first came here; now I don’t do that anymore because it became the norm for me, which is crazy, right? Like five years ago, I don’t even know that water could be sparkling, which means they put like carbonated bubbles inside, and it tastes like Coca-Cola, but like, you know, the—the—the sizzling Coca-Cola without the flavor; it’s just water. It was super weird, but now after 5 years, sometimes I find myself just drinking sparkling water. If I don’t find normal water or something, I just grab my German boyfriend’s bottle and drink it, and then I burp a lot, and I could never digest it normally, but I didn’t find it that strange anymore. But at first, it was really interesting to see because in Vietnam, sparkling water is not a thing at all. You could find them in the supermarket for insanely high prices, and they sell like five bottles in total there because nobody buys it except the five German tourists. Anyway, but like in general, no, we don’t drink sparkling water. And over here, not only do they drink it raw—just sparkling water—they mix it with everything; they mix it with apple juice, and they call it “Apfel-Schorle,” and it is actually a very, very famous drink over here; many foreigners love it. I saw so many videos of people saying, “I don’t know what they put in here, but it tastes the best; it’s the best for summer.” I agree! They also put sparkling water in wine, and they call it “Wein-Schorle,” so basically it’s like water that hurts your tongue, and you don’t even know like how fast you would get drunk with that because it doesn’t taste much like wine. And they would put it into a giant cup like this, and you drink it. Anyway, any kind of juice, they put sparkling water in there, and it’s not watered-down juice; it’s a two different kinds of like drink as well.
I don’t think Germans are very friendly towards strangers, at least compared to other nationalities that I have met. When you walk on the streets over here, it is not that easy to have a random conversation with people—like in the supermarkets, in the stores, on the trains. But—and this is a big “but”—if you go and visit a doctor over here and get into a waiting room, everybody is going to say hi to you. And it doesn’t happen anywhere else but the doctor’s waiting room, and I still don’t know why it exists. You walk into the doctor’s waiting room, that 10 people, you’re supposed to say hi to everybody—“Hello!”—couldn’t tag—and then you find a place, sit down, and be silent; anybody says hi back to you. It’s like everybody is acknowledging that you are here because you have a health problem, and they say sorry for you, and they say hi to you or something like that. I’m just trying to find an explanation because if they say hi in a doctor’s waiting room, why didn’t they say hi anywhere else? You don’t really say that at any other waiting room except the doctor’s, and it is still a mystery for me.
The next thing that I noticed is actually been discussed a lot among the foreigner community in Germany. It is a very common thing and normal thing and not rude at all in Germany to blow your nose as loud as you want in public. It’s like—the thing is, in general, Germans are such polite people; when they sneeze, they make sure to cover their mouth and say sorry; they never open their mouth when they chew; they walk gently; they talk quite low and slow and polite. But when it comes to like nose blowing in public, it’s crazy! I noticed that because my German boyfriend is crazy notorious with like nose blowing in public; he doesn’t care at all, like everybody around; he always has a tissue with him, like a paper tissue, and then he just blows his nose as loud as he wants, and nobody looks at it; nobody is like bad or nice eyes. In Vietnam, I don’t think it is such a big deal as well; we don’t do it as loud as over here, I think, but like I heard that in many other countries it’s just like quite rude, and they don’t do that. And I know that many foreigners were very surprised when they came here, but in Germany, it is not considered rude, and I think the reason is because they consider it as a normal body function; if you need to close your nose, blow your nose, which I completely understand, but it’s just interesting to see many foreigners were really shocked at first when they see that.
Talking about public behavior in Germany, it is completely normal to drink in public. And I’m not talking about just sitting outside of a bar and then drinking it; it’s basically like holding a bottle of beer, sitting in the train, and drinking it, or having a whole wine party on the train as well; it is normal, and nobody is judging you for that. I think that in many other countries, drinking in public is actually banned. In Vietnam, I don’t think it is very normal to see people walking around with a bottle of beer just in the middle of the day drinking. Our drinking culture is different; we don’t need to drink in public because we have so many restaurants where you can get in at any time of the day and then drink there. I find it very cute sometimes when I see those old women in the bowling club; they apparently it’s a thing over here for old people to join bowling clubs, and then they do some trips across the cities on the train, and then they would be on those seats with like four seats facing each other, and they basically have a wine party there. You can smell the wine in the whole coach; nobody says anything; they’re actually very cute. Sometimes, in football season, it could get out of hand; a lot of football fans would bring a whole kettle of beer—like 24 of them—they’re carrying it on the train, and they start drinking it there, and then sometimes they spill it all over the place, and they get really drunk and stuff like that, but it barely happens; normally people are quite decent drinking in public; they have a bottle of beer, and they just drink it. And honestly, I don’t even think that most of them are alcoholics or something because many of my friends did that over here already; they were like, “Do you want to grab a beer? It’s like pretty hot now; let’s get something to drink.” Then they go to the store, they buy the beer, and we walk around chitchatting while holding the beer.
In Vietnam, almost everybody dreams of owning a house, and surprisingly, although our real estate is really expensive compared to our income, I know many people who have achieved that dream of having an apartment or a house in Vietnam, although they don’t even earn that much. I think simply because it is the biggest dream, and everybody feels like they need to have like their own home before they can move on to the next chapter of life, and that’s why it’s like that in Vietnam. In Germany, however, I rarely knew people who own houses, maybe because our friends are not that rich, but they definitely earn quite okay; some of them are earning quite much as well, but most of them are just renting. And at first, I was really, really confused about that, until recently my opinion towards renting houses in Germany has changed drastically in the last 6 months. For the last four years, I’ve been thinking, “No matter what, I’m a Vietnamese; I wanted to have a house; I need to have my own place and stuff like that, and I will work to save to get a house in Germany.” Although I don’t have the money, I still want to dream. Okay, so I was doing research to see what I can afford in the near-term future. Surprisingly, owning a house in Germany doesn’t bring much benefit compared to renting. The thing is, in Vietnam, there’s not much regulation in terms of protecting renters; it’s mostly protecting like the landlord actually. But in Germany, renter protections are crazily—that good; high; what is the adjective for it? You guys know what I mean? So if you are a renter and you got a place, it is really hard to get kicked out unless you have to do something crazily, crazily, crazily bad, and even still, the landlord has to go through a very lengthy, expensive process to kick you out. So that is why, once you have a place, you don’t need to worry, “Oh, what if one day the landlord takes the house back; I will not have a place to live; that’s why I have to buy my own place.” You can kind of just happily stay in your rental place as long as you want. And I just learned recently, owning a house is not that cheap over here, you guys. There’s a lot of things you have to pay, and then when something is broken, you have to fix it all by yourself, and it is expensive to hire anyone to come and fix stuff in your house. If you own an apartment, you still have to pay 200 to 300 every month on maintenance fees for the buildings, anyway, on top of other stuff. And also, honestly, real estate in Germany is really expensive. If you have that money, you can just rent an apartment over here and use that money to invest in other stuff that could make you more money, ‘cause buying a house over here, not only it costs a lot, it costs a lot to maintain it as well. So I’m not really sure about my housing-owner dreaming anymore; I’m pretty happy with my own place at the moment, and I would rather use my money for something else instead of getting into the whole homeowner fiasco.
The next thing, I don’t think it is just a German thing because I heard they are doing it in the UK as well, but they don’t do that in Vietnam, so I still want to talk about it: it is paying for public broadcasting. Everybody who comes to Germany and lives here is obliged to pay for the German TV broadcast, no matter if you have a TV or not; it doesn’t matter; you still have to pay. And I don’t know how, but like in other broadcast-y parts of Germany they’re very slow, but like in this freaking part they’re so efficient. If you forget to pay or you didn’t pay for a while, somehow you just didn’t know you had to pay, they will make sure to find you and send you the bill; nobody can run away from this. One of the reasons why you have to pay this fee is because they want to keep the public broadcaster not being influenced by politics or by the government; they would like it independent, and they can make their own opinions and things like that, which is a nice thing, and I’m happy to pay for it. In Vietnam, we don’t do that because our public broadcaster is already paid by our taxes, and actually, they have not been doing very well in Vietnam recently; a lot of people just get fired, and they are trying to like changing everything to like make it more efficient and save money as well. So I see the reason why Germany decided to do that because I don’t think they make enough profits, and they actually need support to keep going and deliver news and stuff like that to people. For me, the most impressive part is just how they always remember who is not paying or stuff like that and then accurately checking them down and send them the bill, where in other parts of Germany, of like other sectors, the accuracy and the efficiency is not that high.
I have never seen a country that does recycling better than Germany, and I have traveled to quite many—even Switzerland, a very developed and rich and top-of-the-world country—and Germany still does a better job with recycling. Dare I say, and this thing, it’s probably not weird; it’s just special, and I have never seen anyone do that: it’s the Pfand system in Germany. When you buy like a bottle of water, always keep the plastic bottle and then bring it back to the supermarket, and you get around 20 cents back; you deposit it when you buy it, and then you get the money back. Honestly, when you get used to the system, it’s just surprisingly easy, and I feel like many countries in the world are quite organized as well, but actually somehow this practice is not that common. Also, it works with glasses, like beer bottles as well. And sometimes when I walk on the street, I find it’s very sweet when people, instead of bringing their bottles to the supermarkets, they just put it around like the area, the rubbish bin, the public rubbish bin area, so that people who need the money could just walk there and collect it and then bring it to the supermarket and have some money. When I first came here, of course I didn’t have much money, so it was always kind of like a nice treat at the end of the month when we were collecting and keeping a lot of different kinds of bottles for a month, and then we bring them to the supermarket and have around 10, sometimes 15 euros back. It’s like suddenly money out of nowhere; sometimes actually, when money is tight, the bottles could actually buy you a meal. I also enjoy the way you put the bottle back; so every supermarket which is big enough would be installed with a bottle-collecting station; like nobody is standing in the front to get the bottle; it’s all automatic. You put the bottle into like this hole; they spin the bottle to read the barcode, and then they just crush it immediately, and then they push it to the back of the supermarket where someone is working. Also with the beer, with the glass of beer, they would put it down there, and then they push the whole thing—crazily smart, you guys!
Actually, making this video made me realize I am slowly integrating into Germany because I think years ago I also mentioned some of those things in some of my videos, and for me at that time it’s still like mind-blowing—“Never seen anyone do that; why did they even do that?”—and now after 5 years living here, a part of my brain was like, “Of course, you should say hi to people when you go to the doctor’s waiting room; of course, you can blow your nose loudly; it is completely normal to drink beer in public.” Like all of the things that I used to find weird, now I kind of find it normal. So yeah, it was actually fun to sit down and reflect on it again. I am very happy that I made this video, and I really hope that you guys enjoy watching it too, and maybe you learn a little bit.
About how special Germans people are, anyway. This is the end of the video. Thank you very much for watching. If you enjoy this video, please give me a like or subscribe so you can support my channel and I can keep doing this. Have a nice day, and I'll see you in the next video. Bye-bye.