{"id":116507,"date":"2023-04-21T14:57:26","date_gmt":"2023-04-21T12:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/the-fizz-old.testpage.click\/?p=116507"},"modified":"2023-08-21T15:54:07","modified_gmt":"2023-08-21T13:54:07","slug":"culture-quirks-and-cliches-some-unexpected-things-about-living-in-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-fizz-old.testpage.click\/en\/culture-quirks-and-cliches-some-unexpected-things-about-living-in-germany\/","title":{"rendered":"Living in Germany: Culture, Quirks & Clich\u00e9s"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Moving to a new country comes with so many challenges! Besides all the normal issues, like getting your stuff from one flat to another, getting to know the area, finding new friends and\u2026 what was the topic? Right – New countries! New language! New culture! So many things at once. But these huge factors are not the trickiest. In fact, the real difficulty lies in the details. In every culture, there are some quirks you simply can\u2019t be prepared for. You just need to learn them from living there. Since we have so many THE FIZZ locations in Germany, I want to aid a little with this. So, I\u2019m going to give it a try and explain (or at least present) to you some of the weird quirks you can find in German culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019m sure you know the clich\u00e9s: Germans are humourless, efficient and always punctual. They need to get everything in order at every time. I can\u2019t say that all Germans are humourless but if I think about punctuality or organisation\u2026 well, there is always a spark of truth in the clich\u00e9s. If you are signed up for a sports course and it is supposed to start at 19:15? Better be there at 19 o\u2019clock or they might start without you. It\u2019s quite tricky to figure out when you\u2019re expected to be there ahead of time and when you are not. But if you want to be perfectly sure just be 10 Minutes early. I know that\u2019s easily said. Sometimes being actually punctual is enough of a challenge. But in case that makes things better: Yes, there are some of the \u201calways-late-people\u201d here in Germany too (yeah\u2026 you\u2019re talking to an insider).<\/p>\n<\/div> <\/div>\n\n

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So, what else is a typical (southern-) German thing? Right, the \u201cOktoberfest\u201d! People drinking lots and lots of beer, wearing leather pants and celebrating October. Not quite\u2026 Well, the part with the beer and the leather pants is true. But the famous \u201cOktoberfest\u201d doesn\u2019t really take place in October! (That\u2019s a bit exaggerated, it usually starts in September and ends around the first days of October) As I said: Germans are more likely to be early than right on time! And just because we\u2019re already talking about it, did you know that the \u201cOktoberfest\u201d dates back to the year 1810? It developed out of the festivities for a royal wedding in Bavaria, which actually took place on the 12th of October and after a few years they just moved it into the last days of September because of the good weather on the last summer days. But the \u201cOktoberfest\u201d is just one of many cultural festivities in Germany.<\/p>\n<\/div> <\/div>\n\n

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Among others, we\u2019re also celebrating New Year\u2019s Eve (quite surprising, isn\u2019t it?). Of course, that\u2019s barely interesting, but what\u2019s weird about it is, that one of the most popular traditions on New Year\u2019s Eve in Germany is watching \u201cDinner for one\u201d. \u201cDinner for one\u201d is a comedy sketch from the 1960s which was produced in Britain. And while no one there seems to know it, every German could tell you about it. We don\u2019t even watch the German dub, every New Year’s Eve hundreds of German families watch the original English sketch and its low-quality black-and-white recording. And they laugh about it more than any person from Britain could. That truly is a weird quirk about German culture. (Though amongst younger people \u201cDinner for one\u201d is losing its popularity, maybe that\u2019s understandable compared to the current technology.)<\/p>\n<\/div> <\/div>\n\n

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Definitely last and probably least I want to tell you about the \u201cDeutsche Bahn\u201d. Because if you come to Germany, you really want to be prepared for the more or well\u2026 less understandable ways of the German train agency. First let me introduce you to the simple concept of: \u201cWhatever it says on your ticket – it\u2019ll be different.\u201d It\u2019s a little lottery where you can win everything from a delayed train, changed platform of arrival or randomly cancelled trains.<\/p>\n

For the perfect train experience of course there is a wide variety of circumstances to choose from if you want to make your travel even more uncomfortable. What would you like to order with your horrendously priced ticket? We have Overcrowded trains, not-working heating or air conditioning, wondrous reasons why you can\u2019t get a coffee at the train bistro and so on. As a customer-friendly extra we serve every travel with a non-understandable announcement whether it is at the platform or on the train itself.<\/p>\n<\/div> <\/div>\n\n

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I must admit it\u2019s hard to be patient with the \u201cDeutsche Bahn\u201d sometimes, especially given the circumstance, that going by train surely is the most sustainable way to travel (if you shouldn\u2019t be inclined to travel by bike or start a trekking tour). But even if we all have frustrating experiences with the German train agency sometimes everything goes well, surprisingly well even. And who knows, maybe the trend of more sustainable travelling will bring some innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We both know that this is not all there is to learn. Every culture has so many special quirks and they even vary from region to region. No one who lives in Germany knows everything about German culture – sometimes we don\u2019t even understand each other fully, because of some very different dialects. You see, Nobody knows everything so you don\u2019t have to be scared about learning new things about a (maybe) foreign country. Because one thing is true in all corners of Germany: There will be people to answer your questions and though you might not like all of them, some wills surely become very good friends. And in addition, I can guarantee you that the FIZZ community is full of wonderful people who bring together many quirks of many cultures!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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All photo rights by International Campus GmbH<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In every culture, there are some quirks you simply can\u2019t be prepared for. Learn some of the weird ones you can find in German culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":116537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"city":[53,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76],"custom-author":[191],"class_list":["post-116507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stop-en","city-aachen","city-berlin","city-bremen","city-darmstadt","city-frankfurt","city-freiburg","city-hamburg","city-hanover","city-munich","custom-author-hannah"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-fizz-old.testpage.click\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-fizz-old.testpage.click\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-fizz-old.testpage.click\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-fizz-old.testpage.click\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-fizz-old.testpage.click\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116507"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/the-fizz-old.testpage.click\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123271,"href":"https:\/\/the-fizz-old.testpage.click\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116507\/revisions\/123271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-fizz-old.testpage.click\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-fizz-old.testpage.click\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-fizz-old.testpage.click\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-fizz-old.testpage.click\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116507"},{"taxonomy":"city","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-fizz-old.testpage.click\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/city?post=116507"},{"taxonomy":"custom-author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-fizz-old.testpage.click\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom-author?post=116507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}