1) You measure everything: You weigh your pasta before putting it in the saucepan, and then you time it whilst it’s cooking. Germans measure EVERYTHING and pasta is no exception. “My American boyfriend was horrified when he saw me meticulously weighing out the dry pasta before adding it to the saucepan,” says Kate, a Brit who’s lived in Germany for seven years. “He wanted me to put the whole lot in.”
2) You think it’s acceptable to eat a doner kebab before 3am: Doner kebab shops are everywhere in Germany. Back home you wouldn’t even entertain the thought unless it was 3am and you’d spent a heavy night on the beer. Here it is acceptable at any time of the day.
3) You wait for the green man: Like all law-abiding Germans, you stand at the pedestrian crossing for the light to change to green. It is actually illegal to cross on a red light and a heinous crime if a child is standing next to you. Take an erroneous step onto the street and you will be berated by a furious parent.
4) You take your German home: When visiting home your conversation is peppered with “danke”, “doch”, “ach so” and “genau” and you don’t even notice you’re doing it. These words are essential to any German conversation and have become ingrained in your daily speak.
5) Normal beers don’t cut it anymore: Drinkers in Germany are spoilt in terms of quality and quantity of beer and this rubs off on you. You become a beer snob and don’t like the mainstream lagers offered on tap back home. You hunt out the craft ales instead.
6) Squares not rooms: When people ask how big your flat is, you tell them the exact size in square metres and wonder why they look confused. Germans don’t measure the size of their apartments by the number of bedrooms, they like to know the precise measurements of their homes.
7) You acquire a taste for remoulade: Bakeries put remoulade - similar to tartar sauce - on rolls (and everything else) in place of margarine. “I thought it was disgusting at first”, says Sophie from London, “but then I got a real taste for it and started adding it to my own sandwiches at home.”
8) Bottles = charity: You see leaving your empty glass bottle on the street as an act of kindness. “When I have finished drinking my beer, I always leave the empty glass bottle next to a bin. Some poor guy will pick it up and return it to the shop and get nine cents for it. It’s an act of charity”, one reader told The Local.
9) Your pronunciation goes awry: You start pronouncing “Wikipedia” as “Vikipedia” and you think “infos” sounds perfectly normal.
10) You always carry a cloth bag: Germans don’t like to be wasteful and requesting a plastic carrier bag at the checkout could cost you up to 25 cents. Hence carrying a cloth bag everywhere makes sense.
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