Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CULTURE

The things about the US that left a German exchange student feeling confused

Max Bringmann, a student who did an exchange year in the US, found the people of Kentucky to be extremely warm hearted. Nonetheless there were some things about his stateside experience which he didn't enjoy.

Published: 10 August 2016 12:50 CEST
Updated: 4 July 2017 17:43 CEST
The things about the US that left a German exchange student feeling confused
Photo: DPA

I spent ten months in the US Bible Belt state of Kentucky when I was 17, studying at an All-American high school and living with American host parents – as well as a Slovakian host brother and five worryingly obese cats. 

It was an incredible experience, including everything from a typical Kentucky horse race to planning how I would ask out a girl for Senior Prom (I ended up writing a cheesy poem).

But a few things really drove me crazy about America and Americans. When I returned to Germany at the end of the year, I noticed that other exchange students would fret about similar things. 

Hitler jokes

When I told my English teacher on the first day of school that I was German, his joking response was: “Ms. Hill in the adjacent room is a Jew, maybe you should go talk to her.”

I was left speechless. Where I'm from, we still find it hard to talk about Germany's Nazi past – let alone make crude jokes about it.

But the Kentucky youth had a field day with the history of my country. People routinely raised their arms to a Hitler-salute as I was walking down the hallway – something which could be considered a criminal offence back home.

Whenever I’d get into debates with my friends, they would eventually shoot me down, saying ”Well, at least we didn’t exterminate all the Jews.”

American patriotism

Flags of the U.S.A on cars in Detroit, Michigan. Photo: DPA

I always got a queasy feeling when my American friends fervently sang along to The Star-Spangled Banner at football games – I'm embarrassed enough when Germans wave the national flag during the World Cup season.

But not only that: the patriotism was often coupled with an ignorance about anything beyond the US borders.

This global blind spot mostly showed in history class. One time, while discussing the Second World War, a girl in one of the back rows raised her hand and asked: “So is Europe a place in Germany?”

Food frenzy

Nothing could have prepared me for the horror of a year without German baking.

I was used to crunchy-crusted, whole wheat German bread, so American white bread always left a gaping hole in my stomach. Desperate to fill the void, I developed a dangerous dependence on Reese's and chocolate-covered potato chips. 

Within six months I put on an extra 10kgs (20 pounds). Luckily, I had picked up on the trend of buying extra-large T-shirts form Wallmart to cover up my growing pouch. 

Where’s the public transport?!

The art of hitch-hiking; Photo: picture-alliance/DPA

Making Europeans go without public transport is a bit like chopping off their legs.

The only bus I ever took in the US was the school bus from Monday through Friday (which apparently wasn’t built for students over a height of 1.80m).

Supposedly, there were two public transport buses that ran through the town of Frankfort every two hours, but my host parents said they were only used by people who didn’t have jobs. To this day, I have my doubts as to whether they actually existed.

Since my Slovakian host brother and I weren’t allowed to drive, we were usually stranded at my host parents' house.

Driven to desperation, my host brother once went for a two-kilometre-hike along the highway to get himself a Big Mac menu from the nearest McDonald’s. 

Over-protective parents

My real parents' style of parenting had always been somewhat laissez-faire. At the age of 16, I was allowed to go clubbing until the early hours of the morning.

But not so in the US. My host parents were quick to ground me and would forbid everything that would cause them too much trouble. My host brother and I had to ask for permission every time we wanted to go out and were only allowed to meet someone they had approved of.

Needless to say, drinking alcohol and smoking weren’t permitted either.

To my 17-year-old self, staying with them was the closest I could get to prison without actually committing a crime. 

Parties, drinking, and grinding

I also realized that not every country’s laws allow people to drink from the age of 16. As a result, many of my American friends simply drank alcohol in secret. And when they did, they hit the bottle like there was no tomorrow.

At parties, I would casually have a beer, while the people around me knocked back shots and cocktails. Within 20 minutes they were tripping and falling all over the place.

But “grinding” threw me off even more. Grinding is a dance style where girls rub their backsides on boys’ bodies while the boys just stand there trying to look cool. It's basically sex on the dance floor with your clothes on. 

Jealous lovers

My ex-girlfriend from Kentucky was a sweet girl, but we had a few intercultural misunderstandings.

During the months that we were doing long-distance, I once went to a concert in Berlin with one of my best female friends. When my girlfriend found out, all hell broke loose.

We ended up in an intense Skype-fight and it took lots of apologizing and “never again's” to pick up the pieces.

But I was lucky. I had friends in Kentucky who ended relationships because their partners had “liked” the wrong person's picture on Facebook.

On a positive note…

Overall though, I had a great time in the US and, against all odds, Kentucky is a good place to live. 

Unlike German Gymansien, American high schools have a vast range of clubs and associations, so I finally had the opportunity to figure out what I liked doing.

In ten months I had become part of the tennis team, the drama club, the marching band, the drumline, the academic team, the Beta club (another academic institution), and the writing club. 

Most of all though, my stateside experience broke down one of the most stubborn stereotypes Germans hold about the people there: that Americans are superficial.

During my time in Kentucky, I got to know some of the most warm-hearted people I've ever met, and I made friends in no time. Almost everyone was exceptionally hospitable and caring and always up for a chat. If there's one thing I miss about the US, it's the people. 

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

DISCOVER GERMANY

Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

With thousands of years of history in Germany to explore, you’re never going to run out of museums to scratch the itch to learn about and fully experience the world of the past.

Published: 5 April 2024 10:46 CEST
Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

Here are eight of our favourite museums across Germany’s 16 states for you to discover for yourself. 

Arche Nebra

Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt

One day, around 1600 BCE, local Bronze Age peoples buried one of their most precious objects – the Nebra Sky Disk, a copper, gold, and bronze disk that acted as a calendar to help them plant crops. This was a matter of life and death at the time. 

Over three thousand years later, in 1999, it was uncovered by black market treasure hunters, becoming Germany’s most significant archaeological find. 

While the Sky Disk itself is kept in the (really very good)  State Museum of Pre- and Early History in nearby Halle, the site of the discovery is marked by the Arche Nebra, a museum explaining prehistoric astronomy and the cultural practices of the people who made it. 

Kids will love the planetarium, explaining how the disk was used. 

Atomkeller Museum

Halgerloch, Baden-Württemberg

From the distant to the very recent past – in this case, the Nazi atomic weapons programme. Even as defeat loomed, Nazi scientists such as Werner Heisenberg were trying to develop a nuclear bomb. 

While this mainly took place in Berlin, an old beer cellar under the town of Halgerloch, south of Stuttgart, was commandeered as the site of a prototype fission reactor. 

A squad of American soldiers captured and dismantled the reactor as the war ended. Still, the site was later turned into a museum documenting German efforts to create a working reactor – one that they could use to develop a bomb.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be a physicist to understand what they were trying to do here, as the explanatory materials describe the scientist’s efforts in a manner that is easy to understand. 

German National Museum

Nuremberg, Bavaria

Remember that scene at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, where an unnamed government official wheels the Ark of the Covenant into an anonymous government warehouse? This could possibly be the German equivalent – albeit far better presented. 

The German National Museum was created in 1852 as a repository for the cultural history of the German nation – even before the country’s founding. In the intervening 170 years, it’s grown to swallow an entire city block of Nuremberg, covering 60,000 years of history and hundreds of thousands of objects. 

If it relates to the history of Germany since prehistoric times, you’re likely to find it here.

Highlights include several original paintings and etchings by Albrecht Dürer, the mysterious Bronze Age ‘Gold Hats’, one of Europe’s most significant collections of costuming and musical instruments, and a vast display of weapons, armour and firearms. 

European Hansemuseum

Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein

In the late Middle Ages, the political and economic centre of the world was focused on the North Sea and the Baltic German coasts. 

This was the domain of the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful trading alliances in human history. Centuries before the Dutch and British East India Companies, they made in-roads to far-flung corners.

The European Hansemuseum in the former Hanseatic city of Lübeck tells the story of the league’s rise and eventual fall, its day-to-day operations, and its enduring legacy.

This museum is fascinating for adults and kids. It uses original artefacts and high-tech interactive elements to tell tales of maritime adventure. Younger visitors will also be enchanted by the museum’s augmented reality phone app that asks them to help solve mysteries. 

Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum

Augsburg, Germany

The Hanseatic League was not the only economic power in the late Middle Ages. The Fugger and Welser families of Augsburg may have been the richest in the world until the 20th century.

From humble beginnings, both families grew to become incredibly powerful moneylenders, funding many of the wars of the 16th century and the conquest of the New World.

The Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum not only explains the rise of both patrician families but also the practices that led to their inconceivable wealth—including, sadly, the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. 

The museum also documents the short-lived Welser colony in Venezuela, which, if it had survived, could have resulted in a very different world history.

This museum has many high tech displays, making it a very exciting experience for moguls of any age.

Teutoburg Forest Museum

Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

Every German child learns this story at some point: One day at the end of summer 9 AD, three legions of the Roman army marched into the Teutoburg forest… and never came out. 

Soldiers sent after the vanished legions discovered that they had been slaughtered to a man.

Arminius, a German who had been raised as a Roman commander, had betrayed the three legions to local Germanic tribes, who ambushed them while marching through the forest. 

Today, the probable site of the battle – we can’t entirely be sure – is marked by a museum called the Varusschlacht Museum (Literally ‘Varus Battle Museum’, named after the loyal Roman commander). 

The highlights here are the finds – made all the more eerie by the knowledge that they were looted and discarded from the legionaries in the hours following the ambush. 

German Romanticism Museum

Frankfurt, Hesse

The Romantic era of art, music and literature is one of Germany’s greatest cultural gifts to the world, encompassing the work of poets such as Goethe and Schiller, composers like Beethoven and artists in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich.

Established in 2021 next to the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, the German Romanticism Museum is the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Romantic movement. 

In addition to artefacts from some of the greatest names in German romanticism, in 2024, you’ll find a major exhibition exploring Goethe’s controversial 1774 novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, and another on the forest as depicted as dark and dramatic in the art of the period. 

Gutenberg Castle

Haßmersheim, Baden-Württemberg

Sometimes being a smaller castle is a good thing. The relatively small size and location of Guttenburg Castle, above the River Neckar near Heilbronn, protected it from war and damage over eight hundred years – it’s now the best preserved Staufer-era castle in the country.

While the castle is still occupied by the Barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the castle now also contains a museum, that uses the remarkably well-preserved castle interiors to explore centuries of its history – and the individuals that passed through it.

After you’ve explored the museum—and the current exhibition that uses Lego to document life in the Middle Ages —it’s also possible to eat at the castle’s tavern and stay overnight!

SHOW COMMENTS