You might have lived in Germany a while if . . .

Everyone else has a list like this, don't they?  We're almost 7 years into living in Germany, and having just gotten back from a week in the states, I found myself noticing enough things to post a list of my own:

1. You find a German keyboard much more comfortable to type on than its American counterpart.

Standard keyboards in both countries are similar enough to lull you into typing without paying attention, but different enough to result in a mess when you do.  The letters Z and Y are swapped, and quite a few punctuation marks are in totally different areas as well:

US Layout

German Layout

2. You can't get through a day, no matter WHAT the temperature, without opening the windows wide for at least a half hour to let in fresh air.  When we first moved to Germany, in the midst of a very cold winter, I was baffled by the German obsession with throwing the windows wide open in below freezing temperatures.  

A year or two later we had picked up the habit. Homes are much more air tight here than the wood framed structures in the US and if you fail to open those windows regularly, mold and other damage can ensue.  And, once you get used to opening windows daily, you start to  really notice when it is not happening.  So many buildings in the US feel stuffy to me these days..closed all summer as air conditioning runs and all winter to keep the heat in.  Worst are the hotels (found in many places, but I have not run across them in Germany yet) with fixed windows which can only be opened the tiniest crack.  The German in me screams in frustration at not being able to open it wide and flood the room with fresh air.

3. You go grocery shopping every day or two.  In the US, I made a weekly trip to the grocery store, filling a large cart with a variety of things in the hopes of not needing to run back by mid week for a forgotten item.  This was common among most families I knew.

Here in Germany I couldn't fit a week's worth of groceries in our tiny fridge and produce seems to spoil much faster (but it also seems to taste much better).  For the first year or two that we lived here I struggled with these issues.  I eventually fell into the habit that many of my neighbors (though certainly not all) have:  I shop almost daily, buying just what I need for that day.  Meals are planned by what produce is fresh at the market on Wednesday, or looks best at the store on Friday.  Bread is nearly always purchased same day from any of a half dozen bakeries located within a 5 minute walk.  It does take time shopping this way--but I love the excuse to get out and walk or bike to the store for daily exercise and dinner tastes better with the freshest ingredients.

4. December is all about spending weekends and evenings outside in the cold, wandering among stalls of various wares and sipping mulled wine.  Ok, maybe not every German loves Weihnachtsmarkts as much as I do, but most American ex pats here seem to like them almost as much (and plenty of actual Germans meet up with friends for a snack and drink and some shopping on many an Advent's eve as well).  I truly plan my Advent weekends around visiting various markets, and make sure I manage to get to some of the most local ones on weekdays as well.  These are the highlight of my year.

5. You think nothing of day trips to France or Belgium and find it quick and easy to drive to a fairly big array of international countries for vacation.  My sister in law and her family will be driving longer to spend Christmas with her family in the states (and not going all that far by US standards) than we do to get to Copenhagen, Barcelona, London, Paris, Prague, Zagreb, Rome, Budapest ...  It is wonderful how different cultures and food can be between various areas that are so close together--and they are amazingly easy to get to.  Heck, we even enjoy going grocery shopping across the border in France--the options are so different than our own and only an hour and a half away.  

6 You regularly make your way to the British store for brown sugar, the health food store for molasses, the Asian store for cilantro, etc  So many things we Americans use as staples in a variety of foods are not on a typical German grocery shelf--so you end up at specialty shops buying those items with no intention if using them in the type of cuisine the store is centered around.  

7. You regularly check to be sure you train trip or flight will not be interrupted by a strike.  OK, this probably applies to living almost anywhere in Europe.  Bonus points if someone in your household has been disrupted by a travel related strike at least 4 times in the past 12 months.  

8. When your child, who has spent more of his life in Germany than the US, always packs his house shoes and a towel when travelling.  Bonus points if that towel packer has not even read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy--he is just used to needing to pack a towel.  

9. Driving at US highway speeds feels very, very slow.  And you keep forgetting you can make a right on red while in the states---only doing so when someone behind you honks.  And you can't shake the habit of slowing down to a crawl at every intersection to look for vehicles coming from the right and  yielding to them if they are (this is the norm in Germany----once you get used to it, it is hard not to).  AND when you turn on the car radio on a visit "home" all of the songs sound off because they have been edited, something German radio generally doesn't bother with.  And, finally, when you dig for coins at all rest stops and are tickled when you recall you do not have to pay for the toilet (but unless you have just driven into ultra clean Switzerland, probably also dismayed  when you recall, at the same time, that you will not be using a sparkling clean Sani Fair toilet--if this ad, which really shows a typical roadside toilet here in Germany, minus the crowds, does not make you giggle, I'm not sure what will!).

10.  You know all the lyrics to Sweet Home Alabama because for reasons which no one has been able to explain to me, it is played at virtually every German fest.  Germans seem to love few things more than belting out Sweet Home Alabama in large groups while drinking out of doors.

Yep, it's Sweet Home Germany for me now!

--Hadley