People say that reverse culture shock (the cultural differences you experience when you return to your home culture) is often worse than your initial culture shock. Travelers come home expecting everything to be comfortable and natural, just the way they remember it. Instead, they find that they notice things they never noticed before.
Here are a few of the things about life in the USA that I notice with annoyance or appreciate more than I did before:
- Free water at restaurants
- Free public toilets
- Spicy food, especially Mexican
- Louder restaurants
- The ability to be loud in public without feeling weird
- Wearing athletic clothing and PJs while doing anything other than working out (like grocery shopping) is considered normal
- Cashiers actually bag your groceries for you… in plastic grocery bags! (unless you go to Aldi and shop German-style)
- Thrift stores have really cheap clothes and lots of fun junk (German resale shops are more expensive)
- Garage sales (I think I did see a yard sale once in Kandern, but maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me. The closest thing would normally be the flea markets)
- Quarters, nickels, dimes, pennies…. but no $1 or $2 coins (Silver dollars do exist, but I almost never see them)
- Wide open blue skies (Flat Illinois vs. cloudy Kandern tucked away in the foothills of the Alps)
- Wider roads
- Slower speed limits
- Bad traffic (why haven’t we figured out how to use roundabouts yet?)
- Bad drivers (ok, so there are some scary drivers in Germany too, but they all paid 2000 Euros to get training for their licenses, so I trust them a little more even when they zoom past me on a country road)
- No castles or 20-minute excursions to another country
- I can understand (almost) everything I hear and read, including snippets of Spanish
- It’s ok to walk on people’s grass and climb trees in the park
- There are fewer beautiful gardens but more expansive lawns
- Less complicated garbage/recycling system (I had a piece of plastic food packaging and I automatically started looking for a Gelber Sack
- US Letter size paper looks short and fat compared to A4 paper
- Handshakes occur less frequently here – primarily when you’re meeting someone for the first time
Hey Jill,
I had many of the same observations that you did. I still want a Gelbe sack and its been a month, but it is getting easier to accept throwing things in the trash now. Love your tree comment. The sky in Texas is HUGE. I love the big, blue sky and the sunsets!! There were no sunsets in Marzell. Okay I could comment more, but I think I second just about all of your observations…though I don’t ever find myself wanting to climb a tree :o)