You know you're from Germany when...
You know you're from Germany when...
- You count on getting 4-6 weeks of vacation a year, which is probably spent on a Mediterranean beach or someplace warm.
- Perhaps you believe in God, perhaps you don't, perhaps you don't really know. You probably don't care much about religious topics. However, if you're from the west you're fairly likely to belong to a church; perhaps because it was still the norm when you were a child, perhaps because in Protestant regions it's a tradition that you get money from relatives at your confirmation.
- You think of McDonald's, Burger King etc. as cheap crappy food.
- It's routine to do large or regular payments by simply transferring money from one bank account to another, and you're surprised when you hear that Americans still send checks by mail.
- You must be 18 to get a driver's license. You have to take paid lessons and cannot practice on your own. This makes getting a license very expensive.
- You can drink beer legally at 16 (and nobody asks for your ID)
- Between "black" and "white" there are no other "races". You don't do race but go by NATIONALITY instead.
- Going to university is [nearly] free. There's no 'college' as opposed to universities (although you can go to a Fachhochschule - the official English term for them is university of applied science; it's a kind of higher vocational school for professions that require some academic training). Everyone goes to school for at least 9 years; but to get into the university you need an Abitur, gained in 13 years of schooling.
- Mustard comes in jars or tubes. Shaving cream comes in cans. Milk comes in glass bottles or cardboard boxes. You recycle everything.
- If you're a woman, you may be topless at the beach or lake or tanning at a public swimming pool. There are special FKK (Freikörperkultur-- 'free body culture') beaches where no one's allowed to wear clothes (to discourage voyeurs).
- You consider yourself middle class and don't care very much what kind of family somebody comes from -- unless you or the other person is an aristocrat.
- You know lawyers mainly from American TV shows. For that reason you might know the American justice system better than your own.
- If male, you are not circumcised, unless you are Muslim or Jewish.
- You think of Americans as people with a high technical standard who are generally nice but all somehow crazy. They live either in New York, Chicago, Miami, or Los Angeles, or on a farm in the middle of nowhere, and seem to think of themselves as cowboys with guns. When politicians or journalists talk about Amerikanische Zustände (America-like conditions) on topics like crime or urban poverty, they usually mean something very bad.