You Don’t Know What You’ve Missed Until You Have It Again

I lived in Germany for about a year. I greatly enjoyed my time there. All I truly missed in the States were my friends and family. A while ago I wrote about the things I would miss about Germany. Now after moving back to the US and having more than a year to reflect on the differences, I feel like sharing some of my new impressions of life in the States. Things that have caught me off guard, things I like, things I don’t like and hope to see us change.

Do You Ever Feel…

A minor but major thing is plastic bags when shopping. Save Whole Foods or the German ones like Aldi and Trader Joe’s, nearly every store one patronizes packs everything into single use plastic bags. Clothes, groceries, home improvement supplies- everything goes into a plastic bag as a rule. You have to request to not have items bagged. This is a complete 180 from Germany. You are expected to have your own bags or buy paper ones at the counter, as single use plastic bags have been banned. This was mildly inconvenient if one happened to make an unexpected stop; however, the vast majority of the time it made no difference. Plastic bags at stores are almost entirely superfluous. Bringing your own bags requires minimal foresight. You’re always driving to your destination in the States anyway (something I’ve discussed before here); just have a couple in the trunk.

It seems insignificant, but the thought of how much plastic waste has piled up on my account due to something so easily avoidable feels gross. I am by no means perfect. Since moving back there have been plenty of occasions where a bag was forgotten or I didn’t speak up in time to the cashier. But now carrying just a handful of items from a store in a plastic bag feels wrong. I don’t intend this to sound high and mighty, or that I am some environmental hero because I use a cloth bag to get my milk and eggs. I am merely commenting on something that was totally normalized to me my whole life, when it really isn’t normal at all. Something I never thought twice about before now carries some guilt. Millions of people around the world create much less waste at almost no cost or inconvenience. I don’t see why we cannot do the same.

One For The Road

Driving everywhere sucks. I won’t spend much time discussing that here, as I’ve already gone into depth on the topic. Driving in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, but having no other viable option is awful. In Germany almost none of my coworkers my age had a vehicle. Many were students, so they didn’t have the financial ability to purchase a car, but they also didn’t need one. Public transport in the city was reliable and frequent. I had unlimited rides on trams, busses, subways, and regional intercity trains with a Deutschlandticket, which per month cost about as much as a single tank of gas in the US.

I now live in a college town with a major D1 university. Other transportation options are available, but they are sorely lacking in comparison. Public transport consists exclusively of busses, with the routes tailored to students, as they make up the majority of the ridership. Some lines don’t even run on weekends, as no classes means nobody going to campus. Excluding a couple weekends with a rental, my first month and a half back in the US was car free. It was a slog to get around. Going to campus? Fine-ish. Going anywhere else? Dreadful. A 15 minute car ride can take 45 minutes or more by bus, with rides only coming once every hour for some routes. Bike lanes exist here too, but are barely more than an afterthought in most places. The only demarcation is usually a single strip of paint about a yard from the curb, on roads with near highway speeds permitted. Unsurprisingly, most people who bike or ride e-scooters use the sidewalks, even though many of them are not wide enough for two-way wheeled traffic.

I won’t turn this into a diatribe about the drawbacks of car based infrastructure. I will save that for another day. But going from vehicle lite to vehicle dependent has not been an overly joyful experience, financially or mentally.

This Program Is Brought To You By…

To say that marketing in the US is different than in Germany would be an understatement. In both volume and style, the advertising upon returning to America has stood out. I don’t watch any live TV save for sports, and it is jarring just how many commercials one is subjected to when watching a football game. The first remark from almost every non-American I spoke to about football was how laden with commercials the game is and how little action happens. Seemingly every other play is abutted by a commercial break, half of which are for injury law firms, sports betting, or pharmaceuticals. The other half are loud, bright, or overly dramatic spots for fast food, beer, snack foods, or insurance. Broadcasters now split screen ads in between plays instead of showing highlights or replays.

There are some legal reasons for the differences in American and German advertising. Lawyers have to remain strictly objective in any advertising (including prohibition from using provocative images next to the name of their firm). Prescription drugs get zero air time by law. But it runs deeper than legality. I do not recall ever once discussing an ad with someone for being noteworthy in any way while living in Germany. People simply do not give it much attention.

Commercials are things people talk about in the States, with story lines almost as in depth as the shows they interrupt. People admit to watching the Super Bowl just for the commercials. Ad campaigns in America are almost as iconic as the brands themselves. The controversial “Yo quiero Taco Bell” ads started in the year I was born, but I still heard about it as a kid. Characters from ads are minor celebrities. Flo from Progressive, Mayhem from All-State, even the Cavemen from Geico got green lit for a predictably doomed TV pilot.

Smoke ’em If You Got ’em

While the media landscape has been obnoxious, it has been quite literally a breath of fresh air coming back to the States. As much as Germany has done to disincentivize smoking via taxes, grotesque labels, and advertising restrictions, it is far more prevalent there. Personally I think German cigarettes smell better, but they are still indisputably bad for one’s health. Nevertheless smoking has much less of a stigma. Plenty of bars still have smoking rooms, some establishments even allowing it throughout the venue. Where I lived also happened to have one the highest smoking rates in the country, with up to 30+% of people partaking. Overall nicotine use might be similar between the States and Germany, as vapes have become much more popular in the US, but cigarettes are undoubtedly far less common here.

In the US we tend to associate Europeans in general with better health. They have lower rates of obesity and many European nations have longer overall life expectancy than the USA, which is why this was one circle I could not square while living there. My lived experience and the data show much greater tobacco consumption. Drinking ages across the continent are also lower (16 for beer and wine, 18 for the rest in Germany specifically) than in the US (21), even though the deleterious effects of alcohol on developing brains is irrefutable. We have even raised the minimum age for purchasing tobacco products to 21 in the States within my lifetime. Maybe it is born of a Puritan streak more prevalent in American politics, but we do seem to have the edge when it comes to age-gating the legal consumption of intoxicating substances.

Repatriation

I see life through a different lens now. Germany was very different but at the same time felt very familiar. I wrote before about feeling more connection to people in my day to day life there, which is certainly something I still miss in the US. Certain systemic things I liked there cannot be recreated here, like the options for recycling or how much better & cheaper German beer is, but there are some things I have brought with me and will have for the rest of my life. Some are small behaviors: I drink sparkling water, I take reusable bags when shopping, and I air out my apartment even in the winter (it’s called Lüften, not house burping like a recent TikTok trend tried to claim). Others are reflective of a generally changed outlook on life: less consumption, more emphasis on enjoying time off, working harder when I’m on the clock. A lot of things in my life are up in the air, but one thing I’ll never rule out is moving back to live there long term.

Oh and driving in Germany. I miss that a lot compared to driving in the US. People there are much much better drivers and drive nicer cars. It’s very expensive to get a license and they enforce traffic violations more strictly with steep penalties, so people actually use turn signals and don’t speed and respect pedestrians more.