So I'm actually less than three months away from being home and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I am definitely excited to come back and have the comfort of familiarity again but I will also definitely miss being here. I will miss the language most of all, I think. I'm afraid that I will lose all of my ability to speak and understand when I go back to America because I will be so far from it. I'll also miss my amazing German family and friends and maybe the most, I will miss my fellow exchange student friends.
A little bit on the culture
The culture isn't that different. The US and Germany are both western countries so nothing has made my mouth hang open in shock. What small differences that I do notice could just be differences between people and have nothing to do with the country they come from. It's obviously impossible to make any statement about the entire county; it simply won't be true.Also, the first couple of posts on here will just be about my perception of Germany thus far and differences and interesting things I encounter. Maybe I will post about things I have actually been doing? Maybe not. Don't count on it.
People
Before coming here, I was told that Germans are very straight-forward people and that they will tell you exactly what they are thinking. I have not found that to be the case. In fact, the people I know are more gossipy and the kind that are nice to each other's faces and then talk behind their backs, but I think that is only because I go to a much larger school here than in America. I don't think it has anything to do with Germans.One stereotype that I do find to be true about many Germans is that they are tall. I remember one birthday party of a friend where there was both Americans and Germans there, and despite the fact that all of the Americans there were older than the Germans, the Germans seemed much older just because we were all so much shorter than them. Literally every pair of pants I have purchased here has been ridiculously too long... They reach past my toes when I have the ends pulled over my feet, and I cannot find shorter heights. It is not amusing.
Another difference that I have encountered is that many people here really care about their appearance. This could be because I go to a Gymnasium (highest form of high school.) but all of the students dress up every single day. I have never seen anyone wear sweatpants or yoga pants to school and they never would, ever. They would also never wear sweatpants or pajama pants to the store for any reason at all. Also, everyone wears skinny jeans. Not just girls. Not just young people. Everybody. Every single guy wears them (at least teenagers) and even most adults wear them. Maybe not always skinny skinny jeans but always slim leg. Never boot or flare pants. Also, every single guys's shorts in PE only reaches above the knee, which is something I would never see in my american gym class. It looked totally stupid when I first got here. Also, nearly all of the males at my school put gel in their hair. Which I kind of think is a good thing because it looks like they care about their appearance, and 4 times out of 5 it makes them look much more attractive. To be honest, when I first came here I thought that all of the guys were gay because they were wearing bright skinny jeans and had gel in their hair.
Cars
Germans are famous for their Autos. I was really shocked at the cars driving on the road when I first got here because there are so. many. station wagons. (or combies? Or hatchbacks? Or whatever you prefer to call them.) Nearly everyone has a station wagon. I find them incredibly unpleasing to the eye but they are sensible. This also probably has to do with the town I live in, which is no city. When I first came to Germany and spent two weeks in a temporary family in the city-center of Düsseldorf I saw many fancy Mercedes, Audis, and other cars you would expect to see here. I have also seen less than ten pick-ups since I got to this country, which is a huge shock to me considering the amount of pick-ups on the road in North Dakota.Also, almost all vehicles are manual, and all of the kids I know getting their license have to learn to drive a manual. The only people that have automatic cars are grandmas and grandpas (according to one of my German friends). On the bright side, I learned how to drive a manual car now! The roads here are extremely narrow and very twisty. The traffic lights are placed before the intersection, which I dislike because then it is hard to see the light if you're behind any other cars. The Autobahn is really cool, and I appreciate that they have no speed limits there, and people can choose their own preferable speed and take into consideration gas mileage.
Transportation
I have come to love and to hate the public transportation system. First of all, they do not have school buses anywhere in this country. All the students just ride regular buses to and from school, which is weird but also sensible because the buses are running at all times anyways. The schools provide each student with a school ticket, so the transportation is still free as it would be with a school bus. The trains are nice... Meaning, the trains are useful since you can't get your license until eighteen here. One People often don't believe me when I tell them that I got my license when I was 14 and that I am allowed to drive with no restrictions. That's definitely one thing I miss the most--having the ability to get in a car and go when I need to. It's like junior high all over again for me, always having to ask my host mom for a ride when I want to go see friends. Technically, I could drive here because a foreign license is valid for six months in Germany before needing to obtain a German license, but I have no car and no insurance (and it's against the rules of my organization).So, as I have no other option for going from place to place, it is nice to be able to travel with the trains. I find them expensive though. To be fair, they are probably not that expensive to most people. (For example, it costs me $27 to go about 60 miles to Düsseldorf) For exchange students, though, that is what kills us (or at least our bank account balances), especially since we travel so often (again, that could just be me). Germany is only the size of Montana (by land area), so for (some) Germans to travel 60 miles is, like, a pretty big big deal. To them (and I was told this by a German) they think that a distance of that amount is far enough that the people there have an entirely different way of thinking. (Of course this is not all Germans. I am not trying to make any generalizations.) When I lived in North Dakota, I would go to Fargo (an hour away) weekly. Just to buy shampoo and conditioner because I would need to go that far. So, to me (and to most American exchange students that I know), traveling within Germany is no big deal.
There is also not a perfect system for tickets within the trains and buses. As in, you aren't required to have a valid ticket to get on. Sometimes there might be a ticket checker on the train but this is never guaranteed and so many people could get away with riding for free. The thing is, Germans do not do that. They will pay no matter what, even if they know quite surely that they won't get checked. I appreciate that. It's also smart because if you get caught without a ticket you will need to pay a fine of $55, which is probably way more than you would have had to pay for a ticket anyways. Trust me, I know about this one.
Cell Phones
Cell phones are an important part of life these days, whether that is a good or bad thing, I'm not so sure. I know that I depend on mine a lot. It has kind of been my security blanket to home ever since leaving. With it I can keep contact with all my American friends and family. I can also always count on it to get me home when I'm lost (that is, if it doesn't die and leave me in the middle of a field in the dark) or be a quick resource to google an unfamiliar word. I do wish I would depend on it less, though, and have made big efforts to use it less and have tossed around the idea of deleting my facebook in an attempt to be less caught up in online world.Anyways, I would say that at least half of my class (if not more) in America has an iPhone. That is not so here. I know less than ten German that have iPhones here, because they are just simply too expensive. That's because, it's really seldom that Germans have a contract with a cell company. They more often have pre-paid plans. For example, I pay $12 a month for 300 texts, 300 minutes, and 300 MB of data. The text limit is no problem because everyone, including adults and people all over Europe (and the world I think), uses Whatsapp which is a free texting app. It's totally great and uses an internet connection to send messages. You can send regular text messages, pictures, videos, and (my very favorite) voice messages and you can have group messages. It's wonderful and I wish that it was more popular in America.
So if sending messages with Whatsapp requires data, then what do we do when we run out of our 300 MB of data? (which trust me, is not a lot of data. For the first four months I was here I would burn through all of the data in the first two days of the month. Now it will last me like 20 days.) Well, what the magic is is that once you use up your data, you still have data. It's just a little bit slower and costs no extra money at all. So for $12 a month I have a cellphone with everything I would need.
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