EurAuPair

Welcome to Germany!!!

By Anja Neumeister and Romy Salomon, EurAupair, Germany

Hallo and Herzlich Willkommen (Welcome) to our small tour through our wonderful home country. We would like to introduce you to the German culture and tell you some interesting facts about the German character, which is, in our opinion, very unique. We are not going to tell you anything about geographical facts or the German history because there has been plenty of books written on these topics. What we want to present is “special insider information” which you won’t be able to find anywhere else but here!

There are many prejudices and stereotypes about Germans. We all agree that cultural exchange programs are one of the best ways to disprove all the clichés and they are a great opportunity to experience habits of other nations. We hope that this article will help to increase the mutual understanding between people.

When a foreigner thinks of a typical German, she is probably tempted to imagine a plump little guy in leather pants with a huge glass of beer in one hand and a greasy bratwurst in the other. Well, she might not be that wrong, except for the leather pants which are only worn in the southern part of Germany (mostly Bavaria). But yes, we Germans love beer and bratwurst with sauerkraut, and yes, we also love schnitzel. When talking about food, there is no way of not mentioning bread. Bread is a kind of holy food for us. We especially like to eat it with cold sliced meat or cheese on top. When you ask a German who has been living in another country for a longer period of time what s/he has missed the most, bread is one of the top answers. Did you know that there are about 200 different kinds of bread? We also have fabulous chocolate - maybe that’s the reason why we are not the skinniest people in Europe (at least that’s what the statistics claim)…

Because we live in a multicultural country with people from many different countries and backgrounds, Germans are very open-minded. We love to travel and can be found in every place on earth! We love to explore other countries and are eager to learn more about different cultures. That is one of the reasons why many German Au Pairs come to the USA every year – they all have a great desire to explore the American way of live! So, when Germans travel, they always take their camera with them so they can take hundreds of pictures and show them to their family and friends and tell them in the smallest detail what the differences are from Germany.

Almost every German has been to France or Italy or Spain. The island Mallorca in the Mediterranean Sea is especially known for having more Germans than Spanish! But that doesn’t mean that Germany isn’t pretty enough itself. The Germans love the Alps, the Baltic and the Northern Sea and there are a lot of people who like to spend their weekends at the beaches in the North of Germany or in the mountains in the South to relax from being organized and totally reliable all the time during the week.

Germans are very exact and want to plan things out in great detail. If you are in a hotel and there are towels on every deck-chair around the pool by 6 am…they most likely belong to some German who just wants to make sure that he will definitely have a deck-chair reserved when he is done with his breakfast! Speaking of time - this is very important to know as well: Germans are always on time! Always! Actually they are always five minutes too early and it is an absolute no-go to let somebody wait. When you are running for the bus or the tram, the driver will certainly look at you as if to give you hope and then just drive off, without you. This is not rude...no, they are just always on time, no matter what happens.

As you might imagine by now, Germans are well organized. We like things to be in good order. We like rules and regulations. We have more than 40,000 so called DIN Norms. These are prescribed standards how certain things have to be. You can find norms for everything, e.g. size of school bags or paper, first aid, fire extinguishers, measures, services, textiles, restaurants, etc. Okay, sometimes we might make things a bit complicated, but being accurate is not a bad attribute, is it?

People say Germans are very frank and direct. Sometimes, we might even seem to be rude or impolite, but our intention is simply to be as clear and as honest as possible. Let’s take, for example, that you want to surprise your German Au Pair with one of those wonderful, rich, sweet, pink sugar icing-covered birthday cakes which every American loves. What might your Au Pair say? Well, don’t be surprised if, being a good German, she says that she can’t eat it because she’ll most probably get sick! Germans say what they really think. They do not pretend. That does not mean we are ill-mannered; we were just taught to tell the truth and isn’t honesty the best policy?

Our environment is also very important to us. We like to spend time outside in the backyard or in the park and we love our beautiful countryside. We are scared of environmental pollution, ecological disasters and global warming and that is why we live very consciously. We do not take the car when we have to go shopping and the store is just around the corner and we do not have the lights on all day long. Just recently a popular TV station started a broadcast called “co2ntra” which is about saving energy and reducing the production of carbon dioxide. So, if your Au Pair establishes her own recycling system and separates garbage into white glass, green glass, brown glass, paper, biological waste, metallic garbage, plastic and leftovers, do not worry! She is fine! That is normal. We even take our garbage seriously! Refusing to separate garbage is kind of a deadly sin in Germany!

In general, we are a hard working nation. Everyone is busy nowadays, even if we do not have the best unemployment rate in Europe. We are diligent and dutiful and these are qualifications an Au Pair definitely needs to be a member of her Host Family. To be honest, we also get a lot of vacation – on average an employee gets 25 days off per year. This is much compared to other countries and we really appreciate it, but we also really need it, because of our favorite activity-traveling!

So ends our German cultural tour! We hope that after reading this short description of our people that you have already made plans to travel to our country! Or, if you are interested in learning more about Germany, its people and culture – why not host a EurAupair Au Pair from Germany this year?