Things I Miss About America

Since I've been here for over a month now, I feel I'm justified in missing a few things from the homeland. Don't worry, I'm loving it here in Germany, and the pros definitely outweight the cons, but there are some aspects of life in Germany that I'm not a huge fan of. So, in no particular order, here is a list of things I miss:

1) This one actually is the most important: the sun!! Germany is extremely dreary in the winter. While I was visiting Pascal in Essen we actually had a string of about 3-4 sunny days, but in the 2 weeks since I've been at the Goethe-Institute I've literally seen the sun twice. No joke. Why oh why didn't I study abroad in Australia or somewhere??

2) Another weather-related one: normal forms of precipitation. Schneegen (see post below) sucks. Living in St. Louis the past 2 years has gotten me slightly acclimated to gross slushy weather, but not really. Spokane has it right: it's either snowing, legitimately raining (none of this weird drizzle/mist crap) or nothing. Period. Oh, and no humidity: Germany is far too damp.

3) I'm not used to European measurements yet (aka the metric system, Celsius, the Euro). I miss knowing what all those numbers actually mean. If somebody says to me that Cologne is 20 kilometers from Bonn (I have no idea if that's right, by the way), that means nothing to me until I pause to do a rough calculation. It's slightly better with the temperature, but I still have to sometimes convert to Fahrenheit in my head. And with money, if I see a price of 5 Euros I automatically think "5 dollars", but that is actually incorrect because the current exchange rate is 1.2637 dollars for every euro (according to Yahoo Currency Converter). So I end up spending more money than I think.

4) Doors. All the doors have handles on both sides, so sometimes it can be difficult to tell whether to push or pull. Nothing like running into a door in front of a bunch of foreigners because you pushed instead of pulled.

5) TV program times. I actually watch very little TV here, but when I do want to, I can never figure out when anything is on. The reason for this is that, unlike in America where every show starts on the hour or half-hour (you know, normal times), the shows here just start whenever they want to. 8:10 maybe, or perhaps 6:07, who knows!

6) Salad. Seriously, is it so hard to put a damn salad on the menu?? If you do manage to find a restaurant that serves salad, it's way more expensive than in the US. I miss the salads in Hilltop :(

7) Store hours. Up until a year or two ago Germany had very strict laws regulating what hours stores were and were not allowed to be open. They could only be open until 5 or 6 on weekdays, 8 on saturdays, and not at all on Sundays. Most of those laws have been abolished and stored are generally open until about 8 on the weekdays (the grocery stores until about 10), but they haven't really caught on to the being open on sunday thing, which sucks, because that's usually my prime shopping day. Where's a 24-hour Walgreens when you need one?

8) Going with the store/shopping theme, I miss going into a store and being familiar with the brands. Here when I go grocery shopping I don't recognize any of them, so I don't know which products are good or not. I am slowly gaining some familiarity though; for example, "Ja!" brand products are my favorite. They make everything, and the products cost 1/2 the price for about 2/3 of the quality, so not too bad.

9) I miss having people bag your groceries at the store. Customer service in general sucks in Germany. You can seriously wait 45 minutes to get your check at a restaurant. The cashiers at the stores are usually unfriendly if not downright rude, and you have to simultaneously pay and get your change while bagging your own groceries (have to bring your own bag, of course) and trying not to get in the way of the customers behind you. It makes shopping so much more stressful.

10) There is a serious lack of signage in Germany. There are no big, clear, neon signs telling me where to go. It can sometimes be extremely difficult to find shops or restaurants, because they're all just mixed in with apartments and houses. I also almost couldn't find the Goethe-Institute when I first arrived because the only indicator was a small placard which attached to the house and half-hidden behind a bush. I think the Europeans do this to toughen their kids up, lol.

11) And finally, this may sound strange, but I miss jaywalking. NOBODY jaywalks here. Now, I know that in the US you're not supposed to jaywalk either, but everybody does, especially when no cars are around. But here, even though the crosswalk lights (Ampel) take forever, nobody will cross the street on red, regardless if there are no cars for miles. I jaywalked once and got the dirtiest look from this German grandma, and my friend actually got yelled at once. I guess Germans just follow rules better than Americans :)

Mahlzeit (dinnertime)! that's all for now!