After 7 Years In Germany This Shocks Me About The USA

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You call it "friendliness", Europeans call it "I survived smalltalk" 😂😂😂

Now I understand that in Germany people complain when there are chemicals in their food, while in the US there is a hint of food in the chemicals. I'm shocked at how expensive healthy fruit is there.

As an 18 year old, I enlisted in the USAF and was sent to Spangdahlem AB in the Eiffel region of Western Germany. An amazing, maturing experience! I went from living with parents to paying rent, utilities, restaurants etc in (then) Deutsche Marks! I learned how to work on cars, and so much more in German! I knew auto parts and tools in German. I didn't know the English words! I loved the pride in their local community and how well they treat their elders. My reverse culture shock still remains and it's been decades!

After living for almost 5 years in Germany, words can't tell you how hard it was to come back and living in the US. The culture shock when returning to the US was unreal.

I was buying some cheese in an American super market a few days ago. One label proudly exclaimed: "WITH REAL DAIRY!" Geez, dude, what do you make cheese out of BESIDES dairy? And would I wanna EAT it?

I just got back from Japan, shocked at what groceries cost in Japan vs. USA. Food in Japan is healthy, fresh and cost about a third of groceries in the USA. We are doing something very wrong here.

The whole high school/college football thing is so weird. Nobody in Germany would even think about going to a high school/college game of any sport unless a family member or friend was playing.

It's kind of bizarre, that raw food prices are more expensive than processed food sometimes. Gives me Orwell vibes that everyone has to take his daily dose of "special ingredients"... X-D But as a German, the biggest culture shock when I visit the US comes from that smalltalk thing you mentioned. I immediately feel very uncomfortable when asked "how are you?" because I'm not used to smalltalk and don't wanna lie to anybody. So I sometimes come up with typical German answers like "tired", "hungry", "in a hurry", etc. - which are completely inappropriate because the anticipated answer is something positive with questioning back to give everybody a good feeling. This type of "constructed dialogue" is very weird for me... 😛

When I got close to retirement -- in Switzerland -- I had to decide: Move back Stateside? Stay here? And a stupid little sentence started running through my head: "I do NOT want to grow old and frail in a country without SIDEWALKS!" Here, you can walk (or bike) anywhere. If it's too far, there's public transport. In the States, there are many -- just GAPS -- in the net of pedestrian / bike paths -- and everything is SO spread out!

A friend of a friend, who lived in California for a loooong time, summed it up like this: The US are the most drugged up, worst-fed, most consumeristic country, with the most corrupt and insane politics in the western hemisphere - but he loves and misses all the madness terribly.

My friend was in the military stationed in Germany. He came back to Dayton Ohio after he was out. He stayed home for about 2 months and left the states and moved back to Germany. He has a job there and said he is never coming back😊

As an American new to Germany, going to the local famers market is a gourmet experience. I was so thrilled to discover that they're everywhere, and every week year round! Real cheese like brie, gouda and roquefort and fresh crusty bread are, for most people, special occasion or restaurant foods, not an every day thing. Its just too expensive. Only mass produced american cheddar, grated mozzarella, and preservative laden packaged bread are in the realm of everyday affordable. And the cost of fruit and veg - especially organic - is a top 10%er type of indulgance.

Fußgängerzone...what a word for an english speaking person. Very well done :)

This difference between car-centric and made for pedestrians is incredible.

The culture shock when returning to the US is profound. It's almost impossible to explain to people. Interviewing for positions abroad now. Between the military and later contract work abroad I am more comfortable abroad now than living in the US.

Very astute observation on #3. I think this is also one of the main issues the USA currently faces. People are literal fans (as in fanatics) for their political side and get extremely invested, unhealthily so. And because of the two-party system this leads to a total divide. You can also look at how political campaign debates are handled in the USA. It's totally gamified and presented like an action or sport event. It's also crazy how the same phrases are repeated over and over to really hammer catchy slogans and basic talking points into voters brains.

The politics thing interested me. It always gets me that Americans are actually registered as Democratic, Republican or Independent. Where I live your vote is supposed to be secret although you don't have to keep it secret if you don't want to. It's almost rude to ask somebody how they are going to vote, though.

I'm an American and 8 is a huge culture shock to me too. "Any society where a natural man, the pedestrian, becomes the intruder and an unnatural man, encaged in a steel shell becomes his molester is a science fiction nightmare" -Ray Bradbury

I was in the US a few years ago. My sons begged me to bring back some flavors of M&m’s that we don’t have in the EU. One of them got a major allergic shock to something that was in them. He never had that before. They all went in the bin. I can also confirm I was shocked by the prices of basic healthy food in the supermarket.