In the US, rentals, both apartments and rental homes, come standard with a "furnished" kitchen. At a minimum renters expect a kitchen to come equipped with counters, cabinets, a sink, an oven and a stove top. Whether or not a fridge is standard varies by region, but it quite often is. Many include a dishwasher as well.
Here in Germany the majority of landlords expect you to bring, or buy, your own kitchen. The kitchen of your newly rented unit will look something like this when you are handed the keys:
That's right, the kitchen is simply a big, empty room with hook-ups for a sink, and extra electrical for stoves, ovens, etc. There might be tile or other "backsplash" material at the right height along the walls. This is a really alien and confusing concept to us Americans (apparently also to the Brits) but totally the norm among Germans.
Likewise, in the US we expect to find light fixtures installed and ready and waiting when we move in. Not so in Germany where we found mostly bare wires hanging from the ceiling six years ago.
But the funniest thing to us, the most oddball, whose bizarre-ness was only heightened by the lack of a kitchen or lights, was that when we unlocked the doors and walked in, lined up neatly on the bottom step, were three brand new toilet brushes, sitting in their little holders and wrapped in cellophane. One for each toilet in the house.
Similarly, our friend who just moved here has an apartment with no kitchen (the previous tenants kindly offered to leave their light fixtures as they want different ones in the new place, so he is lucky there). He collected the keys on a Sunday and the poor landlord was falling all over himself apologizing that he had forgotten to buy the new toilet brush (stores are closed on Sundays, as you might recall) and promising to bring one buy first thing Monday morning.
Yes, it would seem that Germans place great stock in the value of a clean toilet bowl.
--Hadley
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