A Different Culture

I never thought I would be able to say that I visited Germany; I’ve been here for four entire days and it still seems surreal. Although, it seems surreal, it is now obviously apparent that I am in an entirely new country, with an entirely different culture. The first sign of this was when we first stepped into the airport. We were travelling in a group of almost 30 African-American students and we stood out like a sore thumb. By all the staring we were receiving I could tell that the majority of the people in the airport have never seen so many young black people collected in one place. I tried to ignore the glares and comments, but it was so obvious that we were being looked at that it made it difficult not to stare back. After awhile of standing in the middle of the airport, a man approached a small group of us and asked us why we were all there. Now, at first the question could have came off as extremely rude, but he asked his questions in such a polite way it was hard to think bad of the man. He prefaced his questions with the fact that he had never seen such a large group of people like us before, and then he proceeded to ask why we were in Berlin and what we planned to accomplish during our time here. We collectively answered his questions and he appeared to be grateful for the positive attitudes and our willingness to answer his inquiries. After this interaction, I assumed we were to experience many more questions such as the ones the man asked, but it has not happened again.

Since I have been here, the second occurance of me realizing I was in an entirely different culture was simply while walking the block around the CIEE building a few times. The first thing I noticed was the noise level and how there virtually was no noise at all. When people spoke, they spoke quietly, and this was something I was definitely not used to. I had no idea how loud we were until we were put into a situation where it was not socially acceptable to be loud. It was hard at first, but we are now fully adjusted to the noise level of Germany. Another thing we noticed, besides the staring, was how persistent drivers are. In the United States, most people jaywalk if there are no cars in either direction, but in Germany I find it unsafe - and wrong- to jaywalk just in case a car comes speeding past. Also, if one is in the middle of the street when the light changes, drivers seem to start driving regardless of pedestrians.

All in all, my first four days proved to me how different Germany is from the United States, and I cannot wait to continue to explore such a intriguing culture.