The German Ways.........

1)      Dogs are super well trained, and most don’t even have a lease on and they walk behind their owners down the street, or set out front of the market without being tied up. And most stores you can take your dog into on a lease, which is totally weird! including Restaurants, shops and everything! 

2)      All cars are hatch backs, very few are actual cars or small SUV’s. and there are NO vans or trucks

3)      There is Graffiti EVERYWHERE! Some is cool yet some is nothing but words. But it is on everything, walls sidewalks, bridges, train cars…..

4)      At a stop light the cars all take their turns going then they all stop and all the 4 sides of the pedestrian crosses turn green. So we all go at the same time.

5)      For condiments, there hardly is any! At the pastry shop there was a little carton that you could pour cream into your coffee and a ticktack size container that had sugar tablets. like little pills of sugar that you put in your coffee! Then in other places you have to buy ketchup and stuff. But very few places even put salt and pepper on the table either! 

6)      Speed limits = Germans do not believe in them! Anywhere you go they speed and we have yet to see a police car or man anywhere! We say a police patrol boat on the train ride here that’s it!

7)      All the music here is American, and it’s all in English!

8)      Abends Bit, Morgens fitz = “Evening Bit, Morning Fit” = the saying they have for the Bit Burger beer. Because it is made from pure water that has not seen the sunlight before it does not cause headaches in the morning. So the slogan means drink a bit beer at night and your morning will be great.

9)      Most towns in Germany do not have north/south, or east/west roads like back home. The roads follow the river. So here it is easy to get lost and confused when you think the main road is going strait north like a normal road in America, whereas really it is going northeast.

10)   Phones are called Handys J it makes me laugh!

11)   Germans are lazy, they do not get up early in the morning and they do stay out quite late. But the first day we were here we were up and walking around at 10:30 and nothing was open till 11 or noon. And the town was a ghost town. But about 3 in the afternoon it is packed. And everyone eats at 8 pm or later and stays out till midnight then party people stay out till 4 or 6 am.

12)   Germans Smoke a LOT, and almost everyone does. So going into restaurants or bars you come home smelling like smoke because they can smoke it side at quite a few places, which sucks because we don’t have many cloths and won’t be doing laundry but every 2 weeks or so.

13)   At grocery stores you have to take all your fresh food like vegetable and fruit and go to a machine to weigh them and print out a sticker to stick on them before you even go to the check out. We found this out the hard way when the checkout lady got really really mad at us for not doing it.

14)   Also they do NOT give out plastic or paper bags at the grocery stores; you much bring your own.

15)   Germans are HUGE on recycling and being ecofriendly. From their cars to the bottles and what you recycle. For stuff in your home there are different colored trash containers outside, yellow for plastic and metal, black for pure trash, blue for paper, brown for cardboard and then the glass has its own container where you split the glass up by color of the glass. They also have separate places you put light bulbs, batteries and all kinds of things. Not only do thay have trash containers set by your living but they have kiosks type things scattered all over the city for you to put things in.  Then most of the bottles, glass or plastic, can be taken into any grocery store and put in a machine which will give you money back. The large bottles we get water in are .25 cent euros each and small glass bottles are .05 cent euros each.