Warum lernt man Deutsch? (Why Learn German?)
Tourism
Ways Germans Recognize American Tourists
You will be labeled as an American, if you:
- ask for a glass of water in a German restaurant.
- ask for a check after completing a meal and look for a cash register near the door to pay your bill.
- display the American style of cutting your food with a knife and fork and change the fork back into your right hand to eat your food.
- ask for ice for your soft drink or your mixed alcoholic drink at a bar or restaurant.
- hold your beer mug or your wine glass by the stem in any restaurant, beer hall, or wine establishment.
- ask for a cold bottle of beer or a cold bottle of wine.
- order a beer and don't specify what type, such as draft beer (Bier vom Faß) or a mug (Maß or Krug). You will receive a bottle (Flasche) of beer, which is more expensive.
- ask people you meet: “Can you speak English with me?”
- try and make a sandwich at a Bavarian sausage stand with your two sausages, roll, and mustard, instead of dipping the sausage in the mustard, taking a bite of the sausage, and taking a bite of the roll.
- always ask for ketchup in a German restaurant and put it on all types of typical German food.
- would rather go shopping than to visit an 800 year-old church.
- wear Bermuda shorts in Germany.
- leave a tip on the table of any German eating-establishment.
- take more pictures with people than pictures with historical and architectural buildings, churches, castles, or monuments.
