Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Why Europeans think America is crazy

Moving abroad does a lot of things to a person. It teaches you about other cultures and customs, allows you to travel to exciting places, and lends you new perspectives, traditions, and habits. It also forces you to more closely scrutinize your native culture, since you are constantly surrounded by people doing things differently than you do, and they question your methods, which no one at home would do because they all do it your way. In turn, you get to share your methods with them.
"No one understands me here."

Your mentality begins to change, too – after living in a foreign culture for a while, you find that you start to adopt certain thought patterns.And you start to forget a little about how you used to think when you were living at home. At some point, I realized I no longer saw anything abnormal about kicking off a night of dancing at 1 in the morning. I long ago stopped thinking it strange to drink beer in the streets. Customer service doesn't exist here. Staring is totally allowed. I no longer feel any rage when I read motorist vs. cyclist articles like this one, because it's a non-issue in Berlin. These are all things that are normal for me now.

In Europe, cyclists only ever get yelled at by other cyclists.

It's still interesting to me, however, to encounter negative stereotypes about my native culture. Many people I meet in Berlin are internationally-minded and try to focus on the person instead of judging them on the culture from which they hail. But stereotypes still pop up, even if people generally don't believe them to be true. I appreciate these alternative views, even if they are in part totally misguided (one German guy I met was under the impressions that no American has ever cooked, ever, and we all opt for drive-thru burgers and fries for every meal; another was pretty sure that bicycles don't exist in the States). It's good to be able to view your culture through a foreign perspective. And some of them I absolutely agree with, because if you examine the idea of America for too long, it becomes really difficult to explain to Europeans how you could even think that Americans are not completely off-the-wall crazy.

European artist's rendering of what America looks like at ground level.

I've collected a few of the more extreme examples of good old patriotic insanity for your enjoyment.

Obesity (and general over-consumption). Have we been told enough that we're the fattest nation? After living among the generally-slim Germans for two years, I can say with some certainty that they may have a point. When your body is used to you putting a lot of food and drink into it, it expects to always get that same level of continuous intake. It doesn’t help that consumption is encouraged in more ways than one: economically (“the more we buy, the more our economy flourishes”), socioeconomically (“the more I possess, the more I am valued/envied by my peers”), and by all forms of advertisement (of course this drives people’s businesses – the more you buy, the more they make).
And don’t even get me started on ways that American culture encourages everyone in the society to consume food and drink. In every office at every meeting, there’s a box of donuts or a tray of bagels for the attendees. Walk into any college party, you'll be greeted by beer bongs and beer pong, and there’s always that guy next to the keg encouraging you to chug. It’s offensive to refuse cakes and cookies that were lovingly made at home by coworkers and friends.

Quick! Have another before someone else eats them all.

This social pressure starts at a very young age. In the cafeteria at school, boys show off their masculinity by eating the biggest hamburger they can get their hands on, and soft drink vending machines line the school corridors. Eating a whole pizza at a sleepover is seen as an impressive feat, not as a binge of revolting proportions. Groups of teenagers make a pit stop at 7-Eleven after a trip to the drive-thru at Jack in the Box to see how many different Icee flavors they can pack into a 64 oz Big Gulp. Meanwhile in Germany, eating at your desk while working is almost a social faux pas, and schoolchildren don’t eat at school – classes end at 2pm and they go home where a home-cooked, (hopefully) healthy meal awaits them.

American culture doesn't define “hunger” the same way that Europeans do. When someone in Europe says they are hungry, it’s not because the food looks so delicious that it absolutely must be eaten*, or that boredom is the motivating factor, or that it’s been 4 hours since the last meal so logically they should eat again. It’s because they’re actually hungry. And they don’t sit and desperately shovel piles of food into their mouths, or tear into a buffet, or hit up a drive-thru ASAP. They sit, they converse, they enjoy their meal along with their company and the atmosphere. There’s no hurry to get the meal over with. What are you doing afterwards, anyway? Most Americans probably budget no more than an hour for dinner at a restaurant and have plans to go do something else afterwards. Europeans have made one plan for the evening: dinner. Thus, no rush.

You might have to deal with a lot of this on an evening out in Europe, though.

*Side note: There’s actually a special word in French specifically for the concept of eating something extremely delicious even when you’re not hungry. In English we just call it “eating”, plain and simple, which speaks to the mentality surrounding food.

My first trip to Germany in 2004 was the first time I became aware that you could grow up and not be fat. Before that, I'd just assumed that people always gained weight as they grew older – it was the natural way of things, and nearly every adult I’d ever met in my childhood followed this pattern. An unavoidable fate. Now I know that’s not the case, as there are lots of older people walking around Berlin in the same shape they were in when they were 20, if not better. (Wrinkles, however, ARE unavoidable, no matter which side of the pond you're on.)

"Getting fatter" is synonymous with "getting older"... right?

Gun control. Crime levels in Europe are much lower than in the US, at least here in Germany. I’ve felt much safer in Berlin than I ever have in Seattle, even in high security places like the UW campus or wealthy neighborhoods like Queen Anne. Keep in mind, too, that Berlin has a pretty bad reputation among the Germans for being fairly dangerous. I’ve lived in both the Kreuzberg and Neukölln neighborhoods, and my band's studio is in Wedding – the three most dangerous areas of Berlin, if you believe the rumors – and have never had a problem. Yet any time I go to other parts of Germany and talk to other (usually older) Germans about Berlin, they ask me how I can possibly feel safe living in a neighborhood riddled with drug use, heavily-armed gangs, and foreigners.

Wrong Foreigner.

Does it simply come down to the cultural divide? That people here are more at ease around other members of the public? Does the socialist system force people to give themselves more pause, to look around themselves and realize that the others are humans just like them, with similar wishes, thoughts, and desires? Or is it because of gun control?
It’s hard to say. But we do know that public shootings are much less common in countries with strict gun control laws. At any rate, I never have a good answer  as to why us Americans hold on so fiercely to the 2nd Amendment. And I sure as heck don't have a good explanation for this guy (especially starting at 1:50):


Debt. Leave it to German practicality to determine that if you don’t have money, you shouldn’t be spending money. Does that plan sound like it will stimulate our economy? NO!! …except that it totally works. It’s like the US economy put itself on a crash diet called “BAM: Lose Sixty Pounds in Ten Weeks. Like every fad diet, it provides quick results, but they don’t stick. The weight comes right back on once the diet is over because the weight loss isn’t healthy. The Germans, meanwhile, are more practical and have made their diet their lifestyle. Whole grains, veggies, and fruit every day, accompanied by lean meat once in a while. They don’t need to lose weight because they never gained it in the first place. (Not to say this is actually the German diet. I still haven’t figured out why everyone here is so skinny, except to say that they grow up simply eating fewer calories per day than Americans, even though meat and potatoes are the basis of almost every midday meal, and every vegetable dish involves some sort of cream sauce. Am I still talking about the economy here?)

I think I forgot what I was talking about.

Right, so the US figured out a few decades ago how to get quick results. Easy. Spend money you don’t have. That only works for a while, until someone is stuck with a bill they can’t pay (read: trillions of dollars in national debt). Not that German businesses don’t use loans, or isn’t in debt to foreign countries. But personal debt is simply not as common here. People tend to pay upfront in full when they buy a car. Go to dinner with friends, and everyone pays their portion in cash - none of this "can you please split the bill 6 ways on 6 different cards?" business. This way, you have a better understanding of what is actually affordable. It's not embarrassing here, either, to live within your means or to speak bluntly about your financial situation, or simply say, "I can't go to that event, because I don't have the money." Again, German practicality wins out.

Healthcare, vacation, and parental leave. My company has headquarters in both the US and Berlin. The US co-workers are always astounded to find out that someone on maternal leave is actually coming back to work someday, because that person has usually been away for about an entire year (under German law, mothers can take up to 14 months of paid maternal leave). Similarly, if you call out sick on a Monday, your co-workers will assume that you will be out for the rest of the week, because you will have been to the doctor, and the doctor will most likely tell you to stay home for a while and write you a sick leave note that will be valid until EOB Friday. In fact, your coworkers expect you to stay home if you are sick, and not come back until you're completely better. They don't want you to infect them and their families by proxy. There is no limit on sick days one can take in a year - you take as many as your doctor thinks you need. In the US, if you stayed home for an entire week, most of your sick days would be used up, and in the worst cases you wouldn't even get paid. And that doctor's visit? Completely covered under your health insurance, every last red cent. No co-pay, either - the most out-of-pocket you ever have to pay is the quarterly fee of 10 euros (which, as with complaints regarding tuition fees, I have heard many a German whine about, which makes me want to grab them by the shoulders and look them square in the eye as I shout, "You. Have. No. Idea.")
Need I say more?


Vacation is also something of which Americans get far too little. If you work in Germany, you get at least 24 vacation days per year; some companies even offer up to 30. Germans have two things to say about this issue: Das sind aber wenig, seid ihr bescheuert? ("Jeez, that's not very much, are you guys crazy?") when referring to our system, and soviel Urlaub muss sein (“everyone  needs at least that much vacation”) when referring to their own. I don't know anyone who would say Americans work too little. All I know is that when I first got to Germany, I felt like I was in vacation heaven. I could take 3 weeks off from work and not have to quit my job, and get paid for it. Now, 18 months later, it feels more like some sort of God-given right, and I have absolutely no clue how I will re-adjust when I'm back stateside.

What? You mean I don't get to stay here for a month??!?

Dating. Germans don’t have this institution of going on dates. I mean, people go on dates here, but they had to import all the English words for it. Wir sind beide single, kommst du mit mir auf ein Date?



"It's not vat it looks like. Zis iz not a date."

Because of this, I can only assume that not only the words but also the institution came from Anglo-Saxon culture. Being a single person in a foreign culture leads to all sorts of silly situations, based not only on the fact that cultural missteps are rampant, but that romance/attraction/sex is involved, and that is bound to lead to hilarity even without the added complication of cultural barriers. I could go on, but I think I'd rather dedicate a whole post to this topic, because this kind of high-caliber comedy gold cannot go un-mined.

2 Comments:

At 10:48, Blogger Unknown said...

Let me just say before I even read your awesome post - that eagle/flag/motorcycle pic is amazing and I want it tattooed on my body.

 
At 03:03, Anonymous a berlin girl said...

I love your writing! Though, I d say german eating culture wasn t really there some years ago compared to french and italian eating culture - we borrowed it from them :-)

 

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