This is one of those lists: you "live in Germany when ..."
- you can leave restaurant to go smoke outside or go to ATM and people wouldn't chase you down the street thinking you left without paying
- no ice in your drinks
- if you want flat (still) water, you have to specifically ask for it and you will pay for it (no free tap water). If you just ask for water at the restaurant you will get fizzy stuff that my husband has learned to love but the rest of us not so much
- you can go 90 mph on the autobahn and it will still free like you are the slowest car on the road. In fact, it's really easy to get to fairly high speeds without realizing it
- when you go to the grocery store you need to bring a coin and depending on the store it could either be 50 cents or 1 euro to get the cart. You also have to bring your bags because otherwise you will have to pay 10 cents per plastic bag or just stuff everything in your trunk
- expensive restaurant and stores do not always accept credit cards, carrying cash is important
- Sunday is truly a day to spend with your family because absolutely everything is closed
- you get used to going shopping twice a week because the refrigerator and the freezer cannot hold enough food to last your through one week. Also because most of the fruits and vegetables go bad after 3-4 days
- Andrei's (2nd grade) school today was done at 11:20AM - nope, it's not a holiday or anything. It's pretty normal to be done with school around 12 o'clock (at least in elementary school)
- Many public restroom have a fee
- Chris had harder time with this one - the roads are not south or north, they are marked with the names of the cities along the road. For example, we don't have 66E or 66W - it's 66 towards Wiesbaden or 66 towards Hanau. Of course one you pass those cities, it changes to something else further down the road.
- getting speeding tickets in the mail is a bit infuriating! You never see police and moreover, they would never pull you over for speeding but there are cameras in the spots where you least expect them
- German homes do not have closets, we had to buy many Ikea wardrobes in place of a close
- for very brief period we debated importing our car from America to Germany and I am very happy we did not because it would simply never fit into any parking spots and even some streets would be a bit narrow
- going to a local inside pool you might run into some naked people and not always when you either want to or expect it
-German homes have shades on the windows and those things should be exported to America's tornado alley - the shades are on the outside of the window seem to be impenetrable. There are two systems to pull them down - seemingly they are wired into the house and you just a press, or you can simply pull a rope pulley and they will lower themselves. The shades are completely black out as well.
-you have to pay for condiments, sometimes even at nicer restaurants and absolutely at places like McDonald's - the little ketchup pack will cost you 30 cents so make sure you want it
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