“Bad Habits” developed in Germany

As you live in Germany for some more time, gradually you kind of develop various “bad habits” which can never work in China. Anyway, I myself am very interested to have seen all these changes in my daily behaviour and seriously I may need some time to “change back” when next time I’m home again.

(1) Wipe your nose as loud as you want but hold down as you sneeze. In China we do exactly the contrary cause we think it very rude to wipe nose right in front of other people which sneezing is somehow not controllable and thus accepted. Say sorry for sneezing is never to be seen and saying “Gesundheit” to show care for the sneezing guy is considered as very strange.
(2) Riding a bike on the pedestrian way. In Germany there are not so many bicycle ways in their real sense and people just ride by to which people should be careful
(3) The number “1″ is added with a tick on the top and looks like a “7″ and the number “7″ with a line through the middle. It seems that both ways would be blamed if done in China.
(4) If traffic light turns green, just cross the street even without the need to lift the head cause drivers always make way to pedestrians. But in China this could be fatal.
(5) The habit of looking for bus or train schedules before going out.
(6) The ” table knocking” way to show admiration and praise at the end of a lecture or a conference.
(7) Being told that I speak too quiet at the dinner table. In China loudness at dinner shows you are enjoying the get-together or invitation very much.
(8) Putting the bag directly onto the ground anywhere you want, sometimes perhaps also the bread while having to make a short pause for something else.
(9) Gathering bottles to earn money.
(10) Always think about making appointments first even for informal or personal affairs.
(11) ……

Embarrassing Experiences in Germany

Every foreigner will have to confront all kinds of embarrassing situations while living in a country with totally different culture. I myself have suffered just much less from that as I can speak the language at least. So to my Chinese friends who don’t know one single German word at the very beginning (Normally they just start taking language lectures until their arrival here in Germany and some of them don’t speak English well enough neither), life could be really tough and funny as comedies. So here I’m going to share some of their interesting and embarrassing experiences which they ever told me and left me such a deep impression^_^
(1) As a girl friend of mine first came to Germany, she could not understand one single word out of language abilities. So no wonder that every time when she went shopping and paid the bill at the cash point, she could not figure out the money to pay as the cashier told her and didn’t know as well that in Germany we have electronic screen to show the customers the price. But she was afraid that other people in the queue laughed at her so she always hand over a large note for change and thus received lots of coins. One month later there’s a huge pile of coins at her place already.
(2) A Friend was once receiving guests at home and people smoked a lot and ran out of the cigarettes. So he described with hand movement to the little boy of his neighbour that he wanted two boxes of cigarettes from the automat . Ten minutes later, he got two condoms from the boy.
(3) A friend once shown me the kitchen paper (to dry hands and so on) to asked me: “why do the Germans need the toilet paper to be so huge?!”
(4) In China the bus driver will always give a stop at every station but here in Germany you need to press the button yourself. On the first day of one friend in Germany he cried out in a thundering way: “That’s my station, I want to get off please!”
(5) In the language lecture the professor always liked to ask what people did at the last weekend. Then there was one classmate shouting loudly: “Ich habe Liebe gemacht!” ( German for I’ve had sex!)