5 Random German Things America NEEDS! 🇩🇪

After moving to Germany and living in Germany, we learned how there are some things that go against the stereotype of Germany being a bureaucratic nightmare! In fact, life in Germany can actually be EASIER at times than life in the United States. 😊

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INSTAGRAM: @passport_two
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❤️Aubrey was a Speech-Language Pathologist and Donnie was a graphic designer, but we both had a dream to #travel the world and experience cultures. After three years of being married and dreaming about if something like this great adventure would be possible, we decided to quit the rat race and take on the world. We sold everything we had, quit our jobs, and took off! After 9 months of aimless and nonstop travel, we now get to fulfill our dreams of #LivingAbroad as #expats as we move to #Germany!

00:00 - Anfang
1:46 - Thing 1
5:47 - Thing 2
8:23 - Thing 3
12:05 - Thing 4
14:03 - Thing 5
18:40 - Bloopers

[Koxi]

I'm a 51y old Austrian. I have never seen a real check in my life

[micmupfel]

I am 30 years old and the only time I got a check in Germany was when I won a small amount of money in a contest. Even the young woman at the bank was surprised and had to ask her older colleagues for help.

[brom]

Mindblow for Americans: In Germany, you can give out your bank information like IBAN, Account holder name and institute name and nothing happens. When a company sends you a letter, they'll include those informations at the bottom.

[hartmutbohn]

I am 57 yo now. When I was 19 and moved out (1985?), I was issued my 1st (and only) checkbook. I used maybe three or four of them in the coming years, and never ordered any new checks. Even in the 1980s everything was done by bank transfer (Dauerauftrag, Einzugsermächtigung, Überweisung, ...).

[SirFreedom]

I'm working at a Tax office in Germany. In Regards to documents having to be sent by mail instead of digitally. This is being done because the government and other institutions can't guarantee that your information on these documents will be safe / visible to others who aren't supposed to see them.

[Niederrheiner]

German working at a bank here, and I personally used my last check about 25 years ago :-) In business, I saw the last one about 10 years ago. It is now actually not possible for private customers to deposit checks in their accounts any longer, and it is also impossible to receive check books. For companies, it is possible, but the fees are prohibitive, so nobody uses checks any more.
I always wondered why they are still so popular in the US.

[nriamond]

The most iimportant thing about the nutriscore: It only compares similar food items to each other. That way, you can see which of the frozen pizzas is the healthiest. It is NOT meant to compare frozen pizza with apples, though, it only shows _relative_ health information, not how healthy a product is in general. So there is a lot of potential for misunderstandings, even without companies trying to trick the system. I think that should be communicated much wider. (at first glance, it might not sound like a good idea to only compare similar things but then, if you rate products for "general" health, you can't see which frozen pizza is healthiest - and let's be honest, no one eats an apple instead of pizza anyway ...)
I've never heard any good arguments for the excluded tax for local businesses in the US (I understand it for only shops but then you can calculate the tax at the checkout). I mean, here in Europe, there are different prices in the different countries and it's not a problem. The American system is madness!
I'm turning 40 this year and have never used a check. I think I saw my grandma write one when I was a child in the early 90ies. Back then, it was already quite an old-fashioned form of payment.

Oh, and my word would be "bureaucratic", too! It's so complicated in English.

[halbeliebe]

I am 38, I filled out checks in my life - when I was an exchange student in South Dakota. I have never used them in Germany or seen them used or heard of them being used.

[florianlb]

Hey - I’m also from Rheinland-Pfalz. Nice to hear you like it here. Our state is often just marked as „boring“ 😄
I’m 31 and I have to confess that I’ve never seen a real check in my whole life 😅 And after asking my parents - they haven’t seen one neither.

[saintklaus]

The last time I wrote a check was in the mid-80s, and after that I only wrote traveler checks (in the USA, they were needed there).
Love and peace from Hannover, Germany.
Klaus

[BirteBohling]

Bank employee here: we don't even have the technical ability anymore to process cheques. That stuff was already outdated 20 years ago when I started working in finance. Now it's ancient. The US is 20-30 behind us with everything bank related, it's a pain dealing with their outdated system on an everyday basis at work.

[Edda-Online]

Since you have mentioned „the house of madness“ and Asterix and Obelix: you might have fun with the song „einen Antrag auf Erteilung…“ by Rheinhard May.

Obesity: I have heard products e.g. toast in the US contain much more hidden sugar than in Europe (where it is bad enough). Europeans obviously consume a lot of products with hidden sugar (because they sell ), I assume Americans do even some more. Correct me if I am wrong, but from what I’ve heard cooking with fresh ingredients is more ingrained in European culture than in American.

[benjaminjakob]

My parents used to pay with cheques when I was I child (in the 70s und 80s). They were called „Euro-cheques“ long before the Euro but to signify that they could be used throughout Europe during vacation to get foreign currency from a local bank or of course in the home country for shopping. I remember the maximum amount was 400DM (Deutsche Mark) for which the cheque was guaranteed for and accepted. Sometimes in these times payments of companies to customers were made by sending a cheque by (snail)mail which could be credited to your bank account or redeemed in cash.

[derradfahrer]

Thing 5 (I know going into details like this would be out of scope for this video, bit still...) : Even private insurance in Germany work a bit different then in the US. Practically you can visit any doctor, the amount they charge and the procedures they offer is still based on the catalog used by the statutory insurances (Leistungskatalog). From there the only thing you have to watch out for is the price factor, like 1.7x, 2.3x, 3.5x. Your private insurance often only covers up to a certain factor. The doctor will then send the bill directly (or through an third party company like "PVS" - acts like a collections agency) to you. You then pay the doctor and send the bill to your insurance.
Often you also have a clause with your insurance where you get money back, if you don't submit any bills. This is like a deductible. You pay your bills through out the year, collect the statements, and then add them up in the following year and decide if you want to submit them to your insurance or get your no-claims bonus (Beitragsrückerstattung).
For some private insurances and/or if you have planned large operations can also get a costs projection and submit it as a sort of prior authorization to your insurance to assure there is not issue and have the reimbursement within days - even before the due day of the bill.

[kilsestoffel]

I filled exact one cheque: my first self bought furniture when I moved out 30 years ago.

[Zeppelinschaffner]

The only cheques I ever saw are the big novelty ones on TV

[piekay]

20 year old German here: I‘ve never seen a check in my life

[gerdaschulze]

Ages ago, between 1965-1968, I lived in San Francisco and worked for a wholesale company selling jewelry and silverware. Every 2 weeks my boss sent me (20 years old German immigrant) with a bunch of cheques to the company's bank in the financial district in Montgomery St. There I waited for about 5 min., received all the cash for our employees and walked back to our office (about 20 min). Then our boss would count the individual amounts for each person and hand it over.

[Shdjddjdjfjfn]

As a twenty-year-old German, I have never seen the check in person

[dedeegal]

Ich war kürzlich (zum zweiten mal in meinem bisher 57 Jahre andauernden Leben) im Krankenhaus.
Sonntag 17:00 Uhr: Notaufnahme.
Montag 11:00 Uhr: ASB-Transport in ein anderes, nahe gelegenes, Krankenhaus.
Dann .... sechs Tage im Krankenhaus (drei Mahlzeiten pro Tag ... plus Drogen, plus Infusionen, plus eine Ultraschall-Untersuchung, plus Hautarzt).
Nächster Montag 16:00 Uhr: Entlassung.
Hausarzt um 16:30: Krankschreibung bis nächsten Sonntag und mehr Drogen.
Dann ... Rechung vom Krankenhaus in der Post: 90€.
Hmmm ... es waren keine echten neun Tage ... aber neun angefangene Tage ... drauf geschissen. Ich habe die 90€ gerne überwiesen.
Auch wenn das Essen "geschmackloser Fraß" war ... zuhause hätte ich mehr Geld "gekostet" ... abgesehen davon, haben die mich wieder gesund gemacht.
Es ist sooo schön, ein Deutscher zu sein ... bzw. in Deutschland krankenversichert zu sein ... oder auch "in Deutschland zu leben". 🙂