Post 3: Transportation in Germany

Something that I have found interesting in Germany is the way transportation is sued and viewed. Germany is unlike the United States in that there is a large infrastructure of public transportation, both in individual cities and between them. Germany is also unlike most European counties I have visited, in that there is a strong car culture.

As an exchange student I obviously do not have my own car, but many students I know from Germany have their own car, and families almost all seem to have cars. The biggest difference I have seen between American and German car culture is the types of cars people drive. Obviously there is a preference for German brands over the American and Japanese brands that are so common back in the United States, but also just the type of car. Pick up trucks are absent, as are the large SUVs that dominate the US roadways. Instead there are lots of smaller cars, low vans, and sedans.

The public transportation in Germany is worlds away from the transportation in the US. Trains, trams and buses connect everything you need together, making not have a car a non-issue. I am lucky because my semester ticket from Univeristät Bremen allows me to travel for free in Bremen and to nearby cities, but even if one does not have free transportation, it is very affordable to travel.

It is very interesting to see the difference between Germany and the US as far as transportation is concerned.

Post 2: Apartment Hunting in Germany

So when I arrived in Bremen my original planned living accommodations did not work out as planned, so I suddenly found myself in need of an apartment. I looked all over for different places to living in Bremen. I searched for flat-shares, individual flats, dormitories and student houses. I was lucky enough to be able to stay with a student from Bremen who had studied at Hobart during this time, so I wasn’t stuck at a hotel, but it was still stressful not knowing where I would be living for the next year. Although I wouldn’t want to do it again anytime soon, this experience provided me with a valuable, and unexpected, lesson on life in Germany. Seeing as I have never apartment hunted in the US, I can’t compare, but there are some things about the process in a German university town that I really found interesting.

            First off, there are an amazing variety of choices and option available, and there are not that many that are really what you need, so most of the work is sifting through the many pages of ads for places to live until you can get some places actually worth finding. I had always heard about “apartment hunting” and I had imagined the difficulty would be finding any apartment, but it is really more about finding the right one amongst all the others.

            Secondly what was, to me, very interesting was that if I were going to be sharing a flat with people they would interview me first. We would go out for coffee or hangout for a while after they showed me the apartment, just to get to know me. I found this surprising, but I suppose it makes sense. If you are going to live with someone you want to know who they are first. One thing I found out after the fact is that they often hold these interviews with multiple prospective tenants, so they can pick who they want.

            In the end I decided to stay in a studentenwohnheim right on the University grounds. Although the Uni doesn’t own it there are tons of students living here, and the close walk to class is great. That’s all for now!

Post 1, Groceries in Deutschland

So the main focus of this blog is going to be on comparing the similarities and differences between being a consumer in Germany and being a consumer in the USA. Hopefully I will be able to use this as a vehicle to examine what these comparisons reveal about German and America culture. Seeing as this is my first real entry, I think it would be good to start with the most obvious things that one would notice upon coming to Germany, specifically buying groceries.

The biggest difference I have encountered it the fact that on Sundays stores are not open. At all. The only place one can find stores open Sunday is at the local central station, and they aren’t exactly equipped for you to get all your shopping done. This has main times been an inconvenience, but it really isn’t an issue as long as you are aware of it. During my first month, when I was in Munich I would often forget to go shopping and end up having to go find a restaurant that was open for lunch or dinner on Sunday. Now that I have been here for over a month though, it has just become part of the weekly routine.

Another thing that I was completely unprepared for was the fact that there are no baggers, or (free) bags for that matter, at stores. Everyone brings their won bags to shop, and as the worker at the check out scans one’s items they are expected to bag them themselves. I like the idea of bringing your own bag, but the pace at which the items are scanned and you are expected to bag can be rather rapid, especially when you aren’t used to it. I am not sure whether the decision to not provide bags is an economic or ecological choice by the grocery stores in Germany, but either way I think it a great practice, one people in the US could really learn from.

The third, and last difference in Germany is the bottle returns. Most people in the USA are aware that they can return most bottles and cans for about 5 cents a bottle in most grocery stores, however not many people I know do it to any great extent. In Germany it is completely different. Every bottle or can you buy will come with an extra cost, then when you finish you can, and everyone does, return the bottles or cans back at the grocery store to a machine similar to the ones in the US, where you will then receive a ticket for the money. This is another great idea that I think stores and consumers in the US could learn from. The process both encourages recycling, and also make it a more individual process, meaning that a giant recycling truck is not required to stop at every house to pick up the glass, but can instead go to one location, decreasing the costs for everyone.

Germany so far has been a great time, in some ways it feels very similar to America, but in some ways completely different. That’s all for today, thanks for reading!

Intro

Hello all, and welcome to my new, and first, blog. Now that the summer is over, and I am leaving for Germany in about 2 hours, I figured it as time to make my study abroad blog.

For anyone who doesn't know, my stay in Germany will be mostly spent in the city of Bremen, but for the first leg (about a month) I will be in Munich taking part in a language program there. I will be studying in Germany for the next twelve months, and I will be trying to keep this blog as updated as possible. This blog will serve two purposes, firstly, I will be using this blog to catalogue my cultural experiences in Germany as a consumer as a part of my Blocker project for school, but hopefully the tales of my exploits that I post will also serve to keep family and friends up to date with how everything is going.

Seeing as this is just an introduction, and that I have to go put my bags in the car, I will leave it with that. Thanks for stopping by and checking this out!

-Travis Crocker