More ketchup, less traffic, and other differences of living in Germany

Culture shock.

That's what I felt when I walked into Walmart after not stepping foot inside that kind of super store in well over a year.  My eyes got really big as I passed by the friendly greeter to see aisles and aisles of everything; a dozen different kinds of everything.  One-stop-shop. Five minutes from home. Always low prices.  All your errands at one store.  Never leave empty handed.

That's what happened last November.  Since I've been back in Germany I've been thinking about all of the cultural differences.  They all became more apparent after a short stint in the States.

      

Sticking with the theme of stores, in a German store there are no bags provided and no baggers.  You will find shoppers holding their own baskets (literally, baskets) frantically tossing in items as soon as they're scanned, then scurrying to pay while they're grabbing the last few items.  Stressful.

And while there are several dozen kinds of ketchup and sausages at the German grocery stores, there are still certain items that I just cannot find, like low-calorie yogurt-based salad dressing or tomatillos.  Once, I did I Google search for the most recommended shampoo/conditioner that you could buy at the drugstore. Hoping to err on the safe side, I write down 5 of the recommendations and headed to the store to see what I could find.  And I found nothing.  I had to turn to Amazon, which is where I end up doing 75% of my shopping.

In those instances, I miss the variety you can find in the states.  Some might call it unnecessary complexity (really? 50 kinds of toothpaste??) but try living without it and you realize its role.    

[Also, good luck here finding a store with a greeter.]

Going back to Amazon, and online shopping in general, I've discovered that products can take a looong time to arrive.  I'm lucky enough to have an APO address, which allows me to have things shipped to me at normal postage rates (not international.)  HUGE lifesaver.  Shipping just takes forever.  In the middle of January, I shipped boxes from Utah to Germany.  I was beginning to wonder if they were lost in transit, until they showed up over a month later.  Occasionally I will ship things to my mom's house [to have her send to me] because companies won't mail to APO addresses.  [dumb.]  The other day I ordered a baby carrier, and it showed up in 2 days.  And it wasn't even Amazon Prime.

Speaking of mail, our post office is open M-F from 11:30 to 5:30.  Which means I can't run errands in the morning if I have a package to pick up.  And no boxes on the weekends.  Basically same hours with the library.  In the States I enjoyed being able to go to virtually anywhere between 9 am and 6 pm.  Also, restaurants here tend to be closed on Mondays.  And it's not uncommon to have a restaurant only be open for certain lunch or dinner hours.    

Movie theaters are also very different.  I don't have much experience with non-military movie theaters, since I don't think there are any within 30 minutes of my house, but the on-post movie theater we have is one screen with 2 employees.  One at the concessions.  One selling tickets.  If you blink, a movie can come and go before you even make it to the theater to see it.  Gotta make room for the next movie.  I had the opportunity in Utah to buy movie tickets at a kiosk (didn't even have to go inside) and choose which seats we wanted.  Then we enjoyed the movie in terraced seating.  Only there was no National Anthem before the show like we get here.  Its nice to feel a little patriotism before enjoying a movie.

One more negative difference to get out of my system.  Because of our German IP address, I can't access Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, or any other good site that most Americans can't live without.  [No international streaming rights.]  Or sometimes when I go to play a YouTube video, it tells me that the video has not been authorized to play in your country.  Awesome.  This problem is compounded by the face that we don't have tv channels, because we don't speak German.  Netflix would be so perfect.  [You can buy an IP blocker, but our

router and BluRay player don't allow you to change the IP address.  So sad!]  When I was staying at my parents' house they have "TV On Demand" which basically meant I could watch any show, whenever I wanted.  It was great!

The other day I was looking up ways I could watch the Olympics online.  One article said that Eurovision was doing free live broadcasting within Europe.  I thought, Great! The one time this IP address will be to my advantage!  But then I saw this.  Seriously?!?  There is no winning.  Unless we're talking about supposedly illegal streaming websites.  But we won't talk about that.

Despite everything I've complained about, I was still happy to come home  I Love so many things about where I live.

For starters, there are a billion kinds of ketchup.

And travel opportunities.  I won't expand on that, but it's the best part of living in Europe.

I love my little town that I can get around on foot.  We have a bakery, a train station, two butchers, a dentist,  a cemetery and a super-old stone wall circling in the old town.  It doesn't get much quainter than Vilseck.

Part of our city wall.

Vilseck has its own Night Watchman.

I love that wherever I go, I see beautiful scenery.  In the States, it feels like you can't get anywhere without passing by Taco Bell, or Walmart, or RiteAid.  None of that here.  I pass by way more tractors and fields than chain stores.  So the lack of shopping does come with its advantages.

And while I'm driving through beautiful scenery, I rarely see traffic.  Unless you consider it "traffic" to have 8 cars backed up while waiting to get through our town's one-lane arch.  Or having cars get stuck behind a slow-moving farm vehicle.  That happens on occasion.  But there's certainly no "rush hour" in these parts.

When I do venture further afield, we have the autobahn.  No speed limits.  Enough said.

Freeway driving here is much different than in the States, and the concept of drive on the right, pass on the left carries much more weight!  If you stay in the left lane for 5 extra seconds you might get run over by a BMW going a million km/hr.  And as soon as that BMW passes you, he gets into the right lane, even if its only for 15 seconds until he passes another car.      

One last thing I've been loving more about Germany is the weather.  While it seems like Mother Nature has unleashed her fury on Americans, she is smiling down on Germany.  I listen to reports of 'coldest weather in 30 years' on AP Radio News, but here we have only seen snow fall a few times this winter.  And unlike last year, the sun has stuck around instead of disappearing.  I'm loving this winter.

So while it's convenient to live in the good old U S of A, we are enjoying our time overseas which will be over before we even know it. There will be the rest of our lives to enjoy a 24/7 Super Walmart and a large, cheap gas-station fountain drink with a squirt of mango.  Unless Germans catch on soon, which would be awesome.