Today in class we learned about prepositions and more about food and drink. We had a food and drink quiz that turned into a competition. There were four teams and we would get points if we answered a question correctly. Well, our team got no points and the others had 3, 3, and 4 points each. Everyone was laughing because we couldn’t for the life of us answer a question right. So we sang a German song in front of the class and got 5 points for it, so we ended up winning! Haha it was very funny. One thing that I found very interesting was this chart:
Average amount per year a German drinks | |
160 Liter | Coffee |
131 Liter | Beer |
101 Liter | Water |
92 Liter | Erfrischungsgetraenke |
78 Liter | Milk |
41 Liter | Juice |
25 Liter | Tea |
18 Liter | Wine |
Then we listened to Bridget Gibson (Civil Eng., Deutsche Bahn, Karlsruhe) and Claire Koenig present in German about basketball, the origins and the evolution of the sport to today. After that we had a lunch break where I stayed in the CDC to use the internet and eat the orange that I bought at Aldi.
After lunch, we had a guest speaker from Factory International Training and GIZ, who is a native German from Koeln, come in to teach us about German culture, how it’s different from American culture, how Germans became how they are, how Germans view Americans, how to open up and build relationships with Germans, and what to do and say in various situations we will encounter in the workplace.
Some differences we as a class have seen from Cologne and Cincinnati so far:
1. Nothing is free – bathrooms, grocery bags, wifi, water all come with a price
2. No queuing – if you’re not paying attention, people will cut in front of you in line. You have to be facing forward and directly behind the person in front of you.
3. Rare credit card acceptance – most of the time shops will not accept credit cards, and if they do, it usually has to be an EC card, which is the European form of a debit card from your bank. This has been very frustrating because we have to make frequent stops at ATM’s and we get charged for it every time. The good thing is, carrying around tons of money on you isn’t so bad as Cincinnati because…….
4. It’s safer – there are no “bad parts” in Cologne. There are lower income areas in other cities in Germany that are probably not ideal to walk through at night, but even then, you are much much safer than in Clifton. The only thing to watch out for is pickpocketers. It’s not quite as bad in Germany as it is in Italy, Spain, and England, but it could happen if you’re not careful. The key is to keep your wallet in your front pocket and in crowds, make sure you swing your backpack to your front side so that nobody reaches in it. Especially if you are going to fall asleep on a train, you need to make sure you’re holding onto it. If you’re really worried about it, you can also get a second wallet and put a few euros in it and keep that one in your pocket and then sling your first wallet under your shirt around your torso with the rest of your money in it. This way, if you get mugged, you can give them the wallet that has a few euros in it and you will hopefully get away with your real wallet. This would be really useful in Clifton actually.
5. Better waste management – loads of recycling containers around the city. You get reimbursed for bottles at the hostel. Pretty much every room has automatic lights that turn off when it senses no movement. A lot of the electricity in the city is run by solar panels.
6. Better public transportation – very efficient, very timely, plenty of stops to get you within a short walk anywhere you want to go in the city. Many more people bike here and there are bike lanes between the sidewalk and the street. I almost got hit several times before I figured that out haha. The infrastructure here in general is much more efficient and ecofriendly.
7. Cleaner – it is much cleaner here than any city I’ve been to in the United States. And apparently Cologne is dirty compared to most of the other big cities in Germany.
8. Politeness – Germans are surprisingly polite and helpful, contrary to the stereotype. If you ask for help, they will get excited and go the extra mile to help you. But…….
9. Service is terrible – German waiters and waitresses are not there to sweet talk you. They will often be rude to customers. There’s a common saying that Germany is a “service desert”.
10. Pornography is everywhere – in every shop that sells magazines, there is a dirty section that doesn’t hide anything with stickers or packaging. Same with at Saturn, which is the German version of Best Buy. I was walking around in the movie section and then on the wall from a distance I saw a huge pornography section. In the U.S. nudity is taboo, but here in Germany, it is in plain sight for kids to see.
After the guest speaker, five of us walked to Neumarkt to go to Fassbender’s Bakery again, but they were closing so we decided to go to Lidl, pronounced “LEETEL”, which is a large grocery store competitor to Aldi. There we bought bread, which you can put into a machine that will cut it for you in slices thick as you choose, and meat and cheese for sandwiches. Some people also bought bottles of wine for between 0.99 euro – 2 euro, but I was completely out of cash. Alcohol is extremely cheap at the grocery stores here. We took our groceries back and made sandwiches with apples for dinner, which was a great idea since it split up to about 2 euros per person. After that, we did our homework together and then finished off the night playing Egyptian Rat Screws. It was a fun end to the night.
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