Americans idolise Europe and wouldn’t stop bitching about how great it is here and how easy we have it. But then they’ll go ‘No kings!, no government ID!, no mass surveillance!, no face scanning and fingerprinting everyone without them committing a crime!..’, like, do you lot want Europe style ‘democracy’ or not?
I’m an American living in Germany, and I’ve got warring feelings about how a country should be. That’s pretty normal for immigrants (I also teach integration classes and this comes up a lot). I prefer some things from the USA, and some things from Germany. On the whole, I prefer Germany, and while I’m very grateful and glad to be able to live here, it’s not a completely frictionless cultural transition.
For example, I really like that unions and guilds are respected and protected here and I love that people care for the environment more here, but I also enjoy changing my own oil (I don’t dump or spill it outside, nor do I dispose of it inappropriately- to answer the first question Germans always have). These are in opposition to each other, because even if I’m meticulous, a general population isn’t, and if most people changed their own oil, there would certainly be more small scale contamination events, and it would likely have an impact on the mechanics industry. If I have to choose between the environment and unions or changing my own oil, I choose the former, 100%. But it’s always going to chafe a little to pay someone else >50€ for an oil change.
At first, I didn’t understand the relationship between the environment, unions, and oil changes, so I was exclusively annoyed by the restriction. Once I learned, it became a lot easier to deal with.
It’s not really sensible to get annoyed at someone for not understanding a culture they don’t know. Obviously, it can get annoying when people completely ignore cultural unwritten rules, but just understanding half of the problem is pretty common for humans in general when talking about other cultures.
You’re allowed, but you’ll probably get more hassle than it’s worth. Auto part stores don’t accept old oil, so you’d have to work something out with a mechanic. Your neighbors will be horrified, and depending on what type of place you live in, you might get some police who “casually” come by to make sure you’re being meticulous and have a plan for your oil.
I was hoping it didn’t come off like I was saying it was automatically illegal, it’s more just generally frowned upon. It might also be received differently from someone who seems like they really know what they’re doing: I’m a woman in my thirties, and while I grew up helping my dad do normal maintenance work on cars and can do all of the common maintenance tasks, I don’t fit the stereotype in Germany of someone who’s into cars.
Oh yeah, that’s fair then and totally me misunderstanding.
I don’t even have a car so the social ramifications of changing oil yourself are a little lost on me. All I know about car maintenance is what little I remember from driver’s ed - like how you’re not allowed to wash it outside of facilities with certain waste water filtering infrastructure and how to check your oil level.
Well there’s also the safety issue that the US actually does have, that a lot of people don’t perform basic maintenance on their vehicles and drive around in death traps, with bald tyres, rusted axles, and wheels that are the barely attached to the vehicle. It would be fine if they only killed themselves, but they often take a few other people along with them.
Well yeah, that’s a huge issue. What people outside of the US might not know is that it’s caused by people being unable to afford to maintain their vehicles and unable to afford living without a vehicle. People are trapped, and it puts them in the position of replacing their tires when they should or feeding their kids and trying to drive carefully enough to compensate for unsafe tires. On a population level, that obviously leads to less safe roads (as does the necessity of cars in the first place- a lot of people who aren’t great drivers would be able to choose not to drive, if they had alternatives).
Studded winter tires cost $135/piece for a twenty year old Camry at the cheapest auto parts place where I’m from, which is a little bit more expensive than in Germany (I’m very surprised, I figured Germany would be much more expensive), but owning a car in Germany is a luxury. In much of the US, people cannot reliably get to a suitable job without a car. I used to live in Connecticut, which is pretty densely populated compared to most of the country, and I had the options of retail work within walking distance (retail jobs tend not to hire or schedule employees for full time work, because then they’d have to offer benefits like access to discounted company rates for health insurance, but they generally require full availability, so it’s not easy to double up on part time jobs), or jobs in the area I did work at the time, which was 35 kilometers away and took more than two hours each way by bus.
In good weather, I would ride my bike, but only because my office had a gym with showers- otherwise I would not have been able to be presentable at work. I enjoyed doing it, but I also ended up cycling for about three hours a day, which is not sustainable for most people. Plus, I had to eat a full extra meal every day to maintain my weight after I started doing it.
I was actually even lucky compared to most people in the USA. I had a relatively short commute, a relatively good bus route (yes, really), and it was possible for me to ride a bicycle safely to work on roads with well marked, if unprotected, bike lanes. Many people have nothing available to them at all within walking distance and cannot afford to move to a more populated place.
That’s part of why I’m so grateful to be able to live in Germany- here it’s a lot more difficult to get to the point of isolation/poverty that’s relatively widespread in the USA. It’s not impossible and there are hungry people and people who fall through the cracks here, but almost half of Americans have less than $1k in savings, while needing to own a car. Of course vehicle maintenance falls to the wayside.
I think flock is a pretty egregious example though. The corrupt us police were using it for personal reasons most of which were nefarious.
I’m not sure if Americans can really articulate this because they’re kind of used to their police being the enemy, but I think the larger issue isn’t so much the cameras themselves, it’s mass surveillance by an organization that is barely one step above criminals.
Americans idolise Europe and wouldn’t stop bitching about how great it is here and how easy we have it. But then they’ll go ‘No kings!, no government ID!, no mass surveillance!, no face scanning and fingerprinting everyone without them committing a crime!..’, like, do you lot want Europe style ‘democracy’ or not?
I’m an American living in Germany, and I’ve got warring feelings about how a country should be. That’s pretty normal for immigrants (I also teach integration classes and this comes up a lot). I prefer some things from the USA, and some things from Germany. On the whole, I prefer Germany, and while I’m very grateful and glad to be able to live here, it’s not a completely frictionless cultural transition.
For example, I really like that unions and guilds are respected and protected here and I love that people care for the environment more here, but I also enjoy changing my own oil (I don’t dump or spill it outside, nor do I dispose of it inappropriately- to answer the first question Germans always have). These are in opposition to each other, because even if I’m meticulous, a general population isn’t, and if most people changed their own oil, there would certainly be more small scale contamination events, and it would likely have an impact on the mechanics industry. If I have to choose between the environment and unions or changing my own oil, I choose the former, 100%. But it’s always going to chafe a little to pay someone else >50€ for an oil change.
At first, I didn’t understand the relationship between the environment, unions, and oil changes, so I was exclusively annoyed by the restriction. Once I learned, it became a lot easier to deal with.
It’s not really sensible to get annoyed at someone for not understanding a culture they don’t know. Obviously, it can get annoying when people completely ignore cultural unwritten rules, but just understanding half of the problem is pretty common for humans in general when talking about other cultures.
I’m 99% sure you’re allowed to change your oil at home, even in Germany.
There are restrictions about washing your car though.
You’re allowed, but you’ll probably get more hassle than it’s worth. Auto part stores don’t accept old oil, so you’d have to work something out with a mechanic. Your neighbors will be horrified, and depending on what type of place you live in, you might get some police who “casually” come by to make sure you’re being meticulous and have a plan for your oil.
I was hoping it didn’t come off like I was saying it was automatically illegal, it’s more just generally frowned upon. It might also be received differently from someone who seems like they really know what they’re doing: I’m a woman in my thirties, and while I grew up helping my dad do normal maintenance work on cars and can do all of the common maintenance tasks, I don’t fit the stereotype in Germany of someone who’s into cars.
Oh yeah, that’s fair then and totally me misunderstanding.
I don’t even have a car so the social ramifications of changing oil yourself are a little lost on me. All I know about car maintenance is what little I remember from driver’s ed - like how you’re not allowed to wash it outside of facilities with certain waste water filtering infrastructure and how to check your oil level.
Well said. I like your example, too.
Well there’s also the safety issue that the US actually does have, that a lot of people don’t perform basic maintenance on their vehicles and drive around in death traps, with bald tyres, rusted axles, and wheels that are the barely attached to the vehicle. It would be fine if they only killed themselves, but they often take a few other people along with them.
Well yeah, that’s a huge issue. What people outside of the US might not know is that it’s caused by people being unable to afford to maintain their vehicles and unable to afford living without a vehicle. People are trapped, and it puts them in the position of replacing their tires when they should or feeding their kids and trying to drive carefully enough to compensate for unsafe tires. On a population level, that obviously leads to less safe roads (as does the necessity of cars in the first place- a lot of people who aren’t great drivers would be able to choose not to drive, if they had alternatives).
Studded winter tires cost $135/piece for a twenty year old Camry at the cheapest auto parts place where I’m from, which is a little bit more expensive than in Germany (I’m very surprised, I figured Germany would be much more expensive), but owning a car in Germany is a luxury. In much of the US, people cannot reliably get to a suitable job without a car. I used to live in Connecticut, which is pretty densely populated compared to most of the country, and I had the options of retail work within walking distance (retail jobs tend not to hire or schedule employees for full time work, because then they’d have to offer benefits like access to discounted company rates for health insurance, but they generally require full availability, so it’s not easy to double up on part time jobs), or jobs in the area I did work at the time, which was 35 kilometers away and took more than two hours each way by bus.
In good weather, I would ride my bike, but only because my office had a gym with showers- otherwise I would not have been able to be presentable at work. I enjoyed doing it, but I also ended up cycling for about three hours a day, which is not sustainable for most people. Plus, I had to eat a full extra meal every day to maintain my weight after I started doing it.
I was actually even lucky compared to most people in the USA. I had a relatively short commute, a relatively good bus route (yes, really), and it was possible for me to ride a bicycle safely to work on roads with well marked, if unprotected, bike lanes. Many people have nothing available to them at all within walking distance and cannot afford to move to a more populated place.
That’s part of why I’m so grateful to be able to live in Germany- here it’s a lot more difficult to get to the point of isolation/poverty that’s relatively widespread in the USA. It’s not impossible and there are hungry people and people who fall through the cracks here, but almost half of Americans have less than $1k in savings, while needing to own a car. Of course vehicle maintenance falls to the wayside.
I think flock is a pretty egregious example though. The corrupt us police were using it for personal reasons most of which were nefarious.
I’m not sure if Americans can really articulate this because they’re kind of used to their police being the enemy, but I think the larger issue isn’t so much the cameras themselves, it’s mass surveillance by an organization that is barely one step above criminals.
Law enforcement in the US extensively use the private sector to bypass the courts and get around having to get a warrant.
Different people can have different opinions in America I think