EP67: Expect the Unexpected! Culture Shocks That Surprised Us

For Americans, I feel like the personal freedom/responsibility of young people is a generational thing. You can "ok boomer" me now, but as someone who grew up in the 60s in LA, I rode my bicycle everywhere, including 3 miles to school every day, and took public transport (buses) all over. I don't recall people driving their kids to school. And nearly everyone got their license at 16, which made it possible for kids to go where they wanted on their own. I find the idea that kids need to be driven to school weird, too.

Hi! Thank you so much for sharing this episode! I don't usually comment, but some of Feli's points really got me thinking. It's surprising to me how much Russia has in common with the States in terms of guns situation and, for instance, in terms of commuting home late at night. I remember just instinctively asking a German girl to let me know once she gets home safely (it happened in Europe). And her reaction was exactly like Feli had in the video , " wait, what?! thanks, but I'm an adult". And I realised back then that this was smth we would always ask our friends(gilrs, specifically) for, like send a dm about getting home safely or calling back to say that everyting is alright, here in Russia... And I guess that general feeling of how secure u feel in a country is smth that really matters and affects all your life. Smth you should really consider before moving e.g., and, I know, that might sound obvious, but it just made me nochmal darueber nachdenken 👀.
And when you were saying about all gun situation in US-schools, Feli, I just got goose bumps, cause that smth we've been experiencing a lot lately here. For the last 5 years, I heard at least about 3-5 situations of shooting in ru-schools near the area where I'm living and every time there were a few victims and it would make me so desperate that this was actually happening.
p.s. sorry for possible mistakes (English isn't my first language😢)

I would love to be in your podcast! I moved to Munich 6-7 months ago and the adaptation process have been complex! I am from Colombia so the cultural shocks are big! I am not from Clip-Share or anything but I would love to share my experience! 😊

As kids, age 11-12, we were kicked out of the house on a Saturday and told to be home for dinner. Rode around on bikes with friends in our suburb. The hover parent Americans are a newer development. I'm age 50.

When I was last in Germany, I made the unfortunate mistake of joining a tour group where almost everyone else was an American, the lone exception being one woman from Holland. Every day when we met for lunch or dinner, I had to explain to the Americans that the rude, obnoxious behavior they were experiencing from Germans wasn't directed at them specifically; it's just the way Germans typically behave, even toward each other. As often as I told them this, I don't think they ever believed me.

I learned something new since I did not realize how common Whatsapp was in Europe. I have used Whatsapp in the U.S. for 4-5 years and was surprised that I was getting my regular chats on one of my European trips. Now I understand why.

You showed a picture of the US mail truck. Yes, it has looked like that since the 1950"s. The Grumman company made small airplanes before that, some built for the military. When bids went out for mail trucks, they designed on made of sheets of aluminum with a 40 HP motor. These were light and cost efficient, they didn't rust and could be driven around residential neighborhoods easily. The other car/truck manufacturers were already beyond that size and weight. The design still works and serves its purpose and has been a "cash cow" for the Grumman company.

As an American, I've always been told to NEVER send cash in the mail. The post office even says it's forbidden. A landlord can get cash in an envelope delivered in person, but not in the mail. So, even if your landlord tells you to mail cash in the mail, you shouldn't do it.

Great pod as always.
In my experience, WhatsApp came to the public consciousness in 2018 or so and I think I saw a Pew poll that said maybe 20% of Americans use it regularly.
As for the safety and independence topics; it depends on where and when you grew up. Being a millennial in my 30s, I definitely had the "go out and explore", be back around dark mentality.
I live in Chicago which has a bad rep for crime, but it's not something I'm thinking about constantly. I still walk around in the evening and run on the lake path. We have had a wave of carjackings, however generally it does feel safe on a localized level.

(In the US) A friend of mine asked me if I could help her fix something on her iPhone, and I had to tell her that I had an Android, not an iPhone. She responded, "Oh, yeah. All you techno-geeks have Android instead!" And, that's pretty much the way it is: those who know computers and such avoid Apple products, unless work requires them. (And, even in most work situations, our primary, work platforms are Windows for development [and gaming], and Linux for server work, while any work specific to Mac or iOS is segregated, by itself, onto Apple devices. Development tools on Mac are still extremely difficult to use, when they're available at all.)

I am 70 and when I was growing up, most of America was as safe as Germany is now. It began to change in the 1960s.

Everyone should work one year in customer support by law. Then we talk about if you would have the Energy to be overly friendly to every customer after you were insulted and yelled at for no reason multiple times. It litteraly can drain all happines out of you. German and Austrian customers can be very very hard to deal with.

When visiting the US some years ago, one place I stayed was Silver Spring (MD). One day I was strolling along a sidewalk heading in the approximate direction of DC, no signs of trouble anywhere, when suddenly a cop cruiser comes shooting past in the opposite direction, lights and sirens going. I turned around and it was like a scene from an American police drama - cop car screeches to a halt, cop leaps out and grabs a Black man off the sidewalk, slams him down on the 'hood', handcuffs him and takes him away. This happened literally thirty metres from where I was standing and I actually looked around me in case I'd accidentally walked into a film set. Surreal.
The other culture shock was the cost of shopping. I was in State College (PA) and found a record shop. Great - I'd look for stuff by Weird Al Yankovic that wasn't easy to find back in England. I went round the shop, picked up some CDs, totted up the total in my mind and made sure I had the correct amount of cash to hand and then when I got to the counter, the total price went from about $87 to about $95 and I wondered if I'd been double-charged for one of the CDs. No - it was just taxes. Americans take this for granted, but it's completely weird for those of us on the other side of the pond - literally not knowing how much your shopping will cost until you get to the checkout. Utterly bizarre. There might even be laws against it in Europe.

Where I live (Philadelphia, PA), a lot of people will order by saying “lemme get a….” which is Ebonics for “let me get” which just has always sounded so rude to me. I usually will ask “can I have/get a….” We also have a slang word “jawn” which is basically another way of saying “thing” and is really just used in Philadelphia 😂

At least for an US-American, the German way to order bread is as weird as it is for Swiss people.
If someone says "ICH KRIEG EIN BROT" (I GET A BREAD) in a Swiss bakery, it's very rude. We would say: "I hätt gärn es Brot" (Ich hätte gerne ein Brot - I'd like a bread).
Edit: After Josh's praise for the German public transport: guess what...! There is a small country in the south of Germany with great public transport (and no, i don't talk about Liechtenstein ^^)
But yes, holidays in Switzerland are expensive AF, even for me...

I used to enjoy walking in the woods at night. The same old trail which is boring during the day becomes new and exciting at night. Our main rule was no light [flashlights] unless absolutely necessary as it ruins night vision. I once stopped and chatted with a friend on a particularly dark night for about a minute. When i didn't get any response, I slowly reached out my hand to touch them. I touched tree bark. My friend had moved off without my noticing. While not the only time I have ever talked to a tree, it was the first time I was suprised by it. But the sound of something big moving in the brush breaking stuff off to the side of the trail definitely lends excitment. Bears being the main worry. It's very unlikely that a person is hanging around in the middle of nowhere at night. And if so, at least I know they can't see any better than I can.

Back in the day, SMS was a charged service and the cost to SMS across borders in Europe was particularly expensive. WhatsApp was free (minus data charge). In the US, the charge is the same across the country.

back in the 60’s the mailman in the cities walked a lot and delivered mail through a mail slot through the front door. in the suburbs your mailbox was attached to your house beside the front door. now in suburbia, mail are on the street in front of your home and mailmen are in mail trucks.

I think I have a pretty good comparison for how different attacks on campus are handled here. I work at a university campus in Austria and we had an attack this week, a student attacked a professor with a hammer and severely injured him (from what I have heard the professor is doing better already and the perpetrator is in a mental health clinic now, so thankfully nothing too bad). We got an email from the dean about it (I think the last email I got from him was about COVID, so this is rare), a colleague who was not working that day called if everyone is okay and of course it ended up in the national news papers. And I am sure discussions about how to make campus safer will follow...

When I was growing up (in the US) I HAD to start ever request with "May I please....". If I didn't I got a lecture from my parents or teacher. That was decades ago and I don't think kids are taught that anymore. But that stuck with me and I still do it to this day.

Most major US banks have Zelle as a feature for people ro send and receive money through their app or online banking. I've used Zelle to pay for getting my taxes done and have received money via it. I also walk to my bank, but I live around the corner from it I personally think this generation should be taught how to write checks or at the very least postal money orders because knowing how to write checks is a life skill worth having. Granted I haven't written a checj since 2017 and a money order since 2020, but I do still do know how to fill out a money order and write a check. Though she'd signed them, when I was growing up, I'd write the offering checks in church , my mom would give her check book and I'd write out rhe body of the check.

The German way of ordering is also considered rude in Switzerland, which is why there is a stereotype that Germans are impolite/uncultured. In Swissgerman you also put a lot of "please, could I, if its not an inconvenience😅

Two points regarding the messaging: Whatsapp only works it you have mobile internet connection so that might have played a role. And it also plays into the finer details of the Apple messaging app where imessage only works to other Apple devices and if you have mobile internet at the time of sending, if you don't have mobile internet at the time of sending the same app sends the message via SMS also to other Apple devices which makes it very confusing

Re: People being more actively involved in politics: The vast majority of Americans are decided on one party or the other. In a multi-party system, there's reason to be invested in each individual election and how the parties compete against each other, but when there's just 2 parties, and it's the same 2 parties over and over again, you really don't gain anything from paying attention to the particulars of the election campaign. It's a logical heuristic to simply not pay that close of attention when the decision is so simple and the parties are so ossified.
There's also, I think, a certain amount of weariness about politics. Our campaign seasons start almost immediately after the *previous* election, unlike in other countries where there is a limited campaigning period, so again after a while it's just like, "I know who I'm going to vote for, and the rest doesn't interest me."
Finally, we have to consider that I think the US is systemically more hostile to voter participation. You don't necessarily need to win a majority, just discourage enough of the other party's voters that your voters consitute a plurality of votes cast. That's a strategy that doesn't work in real multi-party democracies, but it works in the 2-party system of the US. The US has lagged other countries in percentage of the electorate actually casting ballots for decades now, and that has to do with structural discouragement from voting.

Maybe the reason we Americans generally don't use WhatsApp is that since most of us rarely or never leave the country, text messaging is free and easy. For us, WhatsApp sems to make something easy (texting) more complex than it needs to be

Peanut butter celery sticks are a great snack. Feli should try it. :)

Hey, Just a note on circumcision, My personal experience on this came from my father in a rather awkward conversation is this: the removal of the foreskin exposes the head of the penis to an unnatural environment that desensitizes it. It can be described as becoming callous like the heal of your foot. Making it less painful during intercourse. But, less stimulating. Just saying.

Note when you travel that some states require a concealed carry permit to carry pepper spray.

Real estate rental is covered by a lot of laws that haven't caught up to modern payment systems. And the payment systems can be really expensive to small landlords.

I am 71. Checks are still the most common way to pay rent. But .... since I am a home owner, I use few checks these day. 2 or 3 in a typical month.

I’d love to visit Cincinnati. I’ve lived in Arizona but currently in the South. I’ve never had to write a check for rent, I don’t even have a checkbook. My parents have checking accounts though. Maybe it’s true for older cities. Do grocery stores still accept checks?

Deliveries: I recommend a "Paket--Safe" on your door or building. I live in a small town and it works pretty good.
Orders at the counter: I grew up here and I don't like these common orders like "Ich bekomme...". That feels rude to me too. "Ich hätte gerne..." and "bitte" is the least you should say. But I'm just an old (school) guy.
Hello in the doctor's waiting room: my theory is "small community greetings". If you're living in a little village or if you are hiking in secluded areas or if you are motorcycling, everybody "belonging to your community" says hello.

Active shooter drills were not a thing when I was in high school or college, but I was out of law school (at the end of my university trajectory) over 40 years ago.

Everything is small except for the beer mugs in Bavaria :)
To be really sarcastic: How can you bump into someone on the street in Merica when nobody walks?

"Gimme the Bread and nobody gets hurt." 😂

Btw, I prefer my PB on a slice of bread (or, with concord grape jelly, on a toasted pumpernickel bagel) rather than as decoration for a piece of celery.

Feli, Josh, the yellow&blue dutch DMU railway raised some expectation which didn't get satisfied. What was it supposed to indicate?

Had a bunch of colleagues who attended ICF in that nightclub, and we also still supply coffee to their café.

Per Statistica, the percentage of Americans who have iPhones is 49% as of 2022. I have an Android phone and use SMS and WhatsApp with family and friends in the US and overseas, and am in groups with a mix of IPhones and Androids in both apps. In a large corporate work setting, it seemed that most people used Android phones.

Don't live in Germany anymore, but hey while I'm here let's just do all these check ups and niceties that in the US would cost me a fortune.

All of those little boxy US mail trucks were made around 1986-1988 by Grummen, the aircraft manufacturer, so they are all old. Cincinnati is a drivable city? Whenever I've driven there it's been an absolute headache, completely chaotic and disorganised. Messaging... for me it's either a standard text meesage or Facebook messenger. `

Ein Kanaldeckel dürfte ein "manhole" (eigentlich keine Abflußeigenschaften) sein, aber ein Gully (wo das Regenwasser abgeführt wird), dürfte doch eher als "drain" übersetzt werden, oder? 🤔

Servus griast eich :)
Oh ich liebe eure Kanäle. Ist wirklich sehr interessant wie unterschiedlich doch die Staaten und wir in Deutschland leben.
Macht weiter so :)
Ein großes Danke an euch beide... Beim zuhören kann ich auch meine Englisch Kenntnisse verbessern :)

@1:07:40 I never heard of celery roots and just googled it! If celery root + peanut butter is really good, I wonder if celery root + nutella is really good too! lmao!

SMS is the best communication method ever. If anything works it does. It is outrageous to require everyone to use a private service like Whatsapp (and usually Germans are SO against giving up their privacy!)

Regarding geography, it has been interesting how our exchange students from Germany seem to have no concept of direction. Here in rural America north, south, east, and west are simply and integral part of life even at a young age.

I agree about the us centric comment.... even as a canadian travelling to the USA, we notice it too....

It's totally different to have "strong public transportation" when your country is the size of a state, and the population density of the entire country is higher than many cities here.

I pay my rent by cheque....but it's the only thing I've used a cheque for in 20 years

Sorry, but i do have to comment on the personal space topic. I do apologize in the supermarket or elsewhere when i accidentally bump into someone, but then again i don‘t live in a big city 😊

In many cases in the US, the doctor will even circumcise male babies without even asking the parents.

How about a family behind bmw? That's a good conversation. There's plenty of Germans hiding here in the Midwest. That would be more honest than talking about poop.

Well, I'm still using SMS with family and friends.

Komischerweise hört sich Josh an wie ein Deutscher der (fließend) Englisch spricht. Geht das nur mir so?

Das Geheimnis heißt: Abstellgenehmigung

Ngl.. But as a North German I demand 1,5m personal space! That's seen as polite here

Americans are taught to not talk about religion and politics

re circumcision - is usually for sanitation. not custom.

Strangely enough, I think the closest I have been to any kind of terrorist activity was in Munich.

Okay, who is looking at guys' perinkies to learn that they got circumcised?

I think ordering bead with „Ich krieg oder ich bekomme„ is kinda rude

La Condesa ist auch ein guter Mexikaner in München. An der Münchner Freiheit oder Implerstraße.

Manhole LOL what a word for a gully. New vocab learned yaaay

What is the advantage of using whatsapp compared to just using sms?

And again i see the huge differences between southgermany, and the North!
Sadly many Americans move to Germany, mostly in the South, because the high american influence.
And then talk about, "in Germany is...","the Germans are..."!
Most of the "typical german habits", from american Clip-Sharers, i never heard/experienced... 🤷🏼‍♂️
But I am just a Fischkopp...
For me, USA and Southwest-Germany have much more in common, than the USA and North-Germany and/or specifically the former GDR!
But still every time interesting, entertaining Storys!
Ihr könnt ja nix dafür... 😜✌🏼

"Promo SM"

My German friend abandoned WhatsApp after it was bought by Facebook. He uses Threema and loves it.

On friendliness and customer service:
Germans just get used to that being a bit disfunctional here.
As an example I've appended a link to an episode of a series of comedy of the radio station SWR3.
"Höllentrip bei Feinkostzipp" (clip-share.net/video/WgaLEjeINo4/video.html)
... please mind it's quite strong accent.