@Kelly: Exactly what I wanted to ask. What do you do in a small apartment in the US? You always have a hood installed above the oven and it makes the job?
honestly, i've never even thought about wanting to keep the food smell out so it's just never been a concern for me. food smells good!! and i've never cooked anything so strong smelling and in such a concentrated area that it somehow permeates the fabric of my furniture, etc.
Carola in Paris | Yes! I cook with a lot of garlic and onions etc., not a smell I want to sit in all day. Or when you cook cauliflower or when you’re deep frying fish. I especially don’t like cooking smells when I’m not eating.
Also, use bags made out of fabric...they take up less space because you can simply but them all in one bag. There are also special bags which can be put together to a very small size, so that you can easily carry them around in your handbag. Just in case you are somewhere and decide to make a spur of the minute purchase.
I think many people watching your videos are Germans, as am I. I think it is really interesting to experience our environment through the eyes of a foreigner/ someone who is used to something else. It highlights the cultural differences and you learn a lot about the customs and habits of other countries. Thank you, this was very interesting. :)
Yes, which makes some really weird viewing. When you cook fish, you don't want the whole house smelling like fried fish for days, hence the door in the kitchen. 2in1 machines are a space saving thing. I have one now for some years. Works great. Put the laundry in, set the timer in the morning, and when you come home, the washer and dryer just finished. (Better make sure you buy a safety tested appliance, or you risk a fire when you are not home)
Many issues which are "weird" for you are having to done to save energy ! Therefor we have doors in the kitchen and also in the living room. Every room should only have the temperature which it requires. We are much more concerned regarding saving energy. Same applies to windows. The construction is much elaborated into keeping the heat in or out.
Where as here in the US the only room on the 1st floor of my house that has a door is our bathroom. The living room, kitchen and dining room are all open to each other, with natural light flooding the area. 2nd floor each room has its own door and 3rd floor is again wide open. I have heating/cooling zones for each floor that are independent of each other. We place more value on being able to have an open, flowing floor plan that is easier to have many people over to entertain than keeping doors shut. That I have very mild winters where it is rarely below freezing makes heating a non-issue. Our very hot summers, on the other hand, put a premium on air movement and cooling.
@Ted Schoenling The trend is also in Germany since about 10 years to have more open plan. I actually plan myself to refurbish and modernize my house by connecting kitchen with living room, also to let the room look way bigger. The most modern homes have it. But for all other rooms I keep the doors, especially for noise reasons.
Here in Poland as well - as it costs less to put in fewer walls. People like the feeling of a bit more space. I think as more people have their own apartments (young couples) and aren't sharing mom and dad's. the need to separate all the sleeping areas off isn't quite as important as the couple has their own place - not just one room inside a larger house.
the reason whyt here is a kitchen door in germany has nothing to do with saving energy. the reason why there is a kitchen door is that many germans like sauerkraut and sauerkraut releases a very foul stench when cooked and you certainly don't want your living room smelling like that. and even germans who dislike sauerkraut, such as myself, may still use stuf like onions or garlic so i still apreciate a closable kitchen door. additionally there is also always the danger of you fucking up and burning your food, or it spoiling which can release even more disgusting odours.
Bathrooms should be vented shortly with the window fully opened, even in winter. SHORTLY. We call that "Stoßlüften", and it makes sure that you get the maximum moisture out while loosing minimum heat actually.
@@gustavgnoettgen In cold and wet weather the warm air in the bathroom is just catching more moisture from the cold air. The advice here ( netherlands) is to keep the bathroom door closed to avoid moisture in the house and the bathroomwindow closed also but to use the mechanic ventilation on high setting in the bathroom. Also drying the walls and floor after showering helps a lot.
Also, we keep our bags folded up and kept in one of the bags. Australia has had reusable bags for years now, though only lately has there been a big push to get rid of single-use plastic bags.
This place and the one I lived in during my teens both have laundries kind-of in the kitchen, but not quite. This house, the laundry is in what is basically a big cupboard - it has enough room for a washing machine and a sink, with a dryer bolted to the wall above the sink and a shelf above the washing machine bay that has the (small!) hot water tank (yes, it's easy to run cold in the shower) and a small amount of spare shelf space that can hold a few bottles and/or boxes (of washing detergent). The place I lived in my teens had a semi-separate room at the back of the kitchen - it had a wall and an open door frame between the kitchen and laundry. Other places I recall living in had totally separate laundries.
Open floor plans cost more regardless of climate. Air conditioning or heating a large, open space is expensive. Open plan is cheaper to build and gives an impression of a bigger home, but they'll cost forever. This is magnified in Australia by housing trends that use not only open plan but large glass areas too, because glass is cheaper than bricks. In summer, air conditioning is virtually mandatory, and electricity prices just keep going up.
In Germany this type of Bathroom is called "Tageslichtbad" (daylight bath). Most tennants will pay more for an appartment with a bathroom having a window. There are appartments or houses without a window in the bathroom, they must have a ventilation system to prevent mold. Forget about the 2-in-1 machines, they're crap. In most cases you can load 8kg of laundry to wash, but for drying it can only handle 6kg so you have to unload some parts. It's only a good thing if you don't have the space. The water heater: In the US this type of water heater is upcoming. But in most cases they use natural gas instead of electricity. Instantaneous water heater, sometimes called tankless water heater. They are more expensive, but they are more efficient and will last longer. The water heater tanks you're used to know are in the inside made of steel with a glass coating. They'll last ten years, then you must exchange them. Tankless water heaters are stainless steel inside, they'll last three or four times longer. The thing with the blanket: At one time I had only one blanket, but at night my girlfriend always had several layers of blanket wraped around her and I had nothing. That's the reason for two blankets, just to prevent "tug-of-war" during the night. If you would use much more electricity than they estimate they would raise the monthly bill. And if you use much less they would lower the monthly bill. It's not all about the number of rooms, there's also a thing called "Wohnfläche" (living area) in m². You'll find this mostly in houses. In this calculation is everything except corridors, staircases, basement, attic. If you have a miter sill the area below it will be rated less, depending on how high the pitched roof is there. If it's below 2m the area counts 50%, if it's less than 1m it's not getting into the calculation.
thank you for sharing all of this information :) i had heard about the calculations of space as you described...i think we have something similar to this in the US as well. I feel like i read before that if you can't stand up in a space, then its square footage is either greatly reduced in the count of square footage or that it doesn't count at all.
You forgot the heating. In Germany we use hot water radiators in most cases, with a thermostat for every single radiator. In the US you can find them sometimes too, sometimes an older steam radiator system but in most cases you'll find an HVAC (heating, ventilating and air conditioning) system which can heat during the winter AND cool during the summer. But this is depending on the state you're living in.
+holycrow! Yup. Currently have one without a window. Hate it. I leave the ventilation on very long after I've showered. The entire house is very moist, so if I don't I'll get mold everywhere. Thankfully we are in all likelyhood moving in a few years. :D
More doors means less energy for heating. In germany it is cooler than in the U.S. and energy is more expensive (cause a higher amount of it is from regenerative energies). So germans want to safe electrical energy for saving money.
and also doors can provide privacy. if you need to discuss something sensitive with your husband(i.e. that the chicken you're serving for lunch is actualy a rabbit) and don't want children to hear it. also it muffles the noizes from the kitchen(blender).
But the average annual temperature in the US is higher than in germany. Sure, there are states like Alaska, Idaho, Maine and Minnesota, but because of states like Alabama, California, Florida, Hawaii and Texas, the average is higher.
Yes, energy is more expensive caused by the regenerative energies. But the rest of the answer is bullshit. It's the common standart to have doors since hundrets of years. Most houses in Germany are older than 50 years, nobody thinks about energy saving at this time. the origin from that was the time without heater. The people often has only one fireplace in the kitchen, which is not enough for the hole house. With a door the people could seperatet the kitchen and chill in a warm room. In addition actuall the most houses are heated by oil or gas. Electric heating is very unusual here in germany.
About the low popularity of air conditioning, even in public buildings... It all comes down to energy costs and the fact that ACs use lots of energy. Energy costs are higher than in the US and there is also a higher awareness about how energy consuption takes its toll on the environment. Thats why our buildings are better insulated, why we have double/triple glazed windows, why we don't heat with electricity (unless there's really no other option). The same reasoning is behind why non-US cars have amazing gas mileage ;-)
The funny thing about living without A/C in Europe is that when I go back to the US I set the thermostat to 76F in summertime. I vaguely recall us keeping 72F year round when I was a kid. But when it hits 100F outside, I do miss A/C ... it is no fun closing the blinds, sitting very still, and breathing shallow breaths ;)
In the US it’s cheaper to run the AC than the heat. My home is all electric and the cost of heating the home in the winter is double or more than the cost to cool in the summer. We converted our attached one car garage to a room and installed a ductless heating unit which I really like even better than air ducts. Y home was built in 1963 and we actually have radiant heating in the ceilings with an individual control in each room. It’s really terrible and expensive to use. Heat rises so your face would be hot and your feet cold. Terrible and inefficient design.
Erick Palacios mostly natural gas or fuel oil. There are also things like district heating, where heat is generated centrally at a garbage incineration plant and then distributed to nearby districts via insulated pipes.
Electricity bill: The electricity company would have 12 times higher personnel costs if they would send out personnel to read out the electricity usage monthly. Therefore you were asked for an estimation of your annual usage of electricity on which your monthly advance payments are based on. After the first year your monthly payment will be adjusted based on your actual annual use. If it was lower than estimated it will be reduced; if it was higher it will be adjusted accordingly. I used to have a combined washer/dryer. It took ages to get the laundry dry and I really did not like the fact that a wash/dry circle almost took five hours. But my bathroom was that small that I could not put a seperate dryer. I therefore preferred to dry my laundry on a rack on the balcony and have only used the dryer on rainy or snowy winter days.
In US, many meters now transmit the meter reading to the central office so they never actually send someone out to read the meter. Many companies still give option to have a monthly usage bill or an average bill based on history so that you aren't surprised by a huge bill in the middle of summer or winter.
thanks for sharing about the washer/dryer combo! i kind of assumed it would take forever and a day to get laundry done but wanted to see what people who own them actually think. as for the electricity bills...we have automatic meter readings so this idea of sending someone from house to house and apartment to apartment to read electric meters is completely foreign to me. you can read more about our AMRs here if you want since i didn't talk about it at all - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_meter_reading
@ Kelly - new German houses are also equipped with smart meters nowadays; old houses and apartments still have the manual meters which are located centrally in the cellar for all residents of the apartment. My heating system has been changed to smart meters two years ago. No longer need to take half a day off to let the heating provider into my appartment to read out the annual usage.
@ Kelly - I love to see how foreigners are seeing my country; I also love to get informed about their culture and pecularities. Your vlog has arisen another question to me. In Germany most kitchens have a special three-phase electric power appliance which enables to connect electric stoves with 380-400 volts. The regular voltage is 230-240 volts. How does this work in the U.S. with 110 volts?
While "furnished" is a plus for an American apartment, which makes it more expensive, most Germans would see a furnished apartment as a minus, because they want to express themselves by the style of their interior. It is really bad to live in furniture (including kitchen) that represents the style of the person who lived there before. If an apartment is furnished, you have to spend money to get rid of the furniture.
i mean...it's only the kitchen and light fixtures...so for me, if i look at an apartment and don't like the kitchen, then i won't get the apartment. you can find fully furnished apartments in the US of course, i saw some in Germany as well, but they're the rarity. Usually it's unfurnished and we don't consider the kitchen to be "furniture" if that makes sense
see, and i would look at it as "the landlord needs to update/renovate this kitchen"...which then makes me start to wonder if maybe we are just less picky about our kitchens? i feel like i'm pretty picky but not to the point where i would rather deal with moving my own kitchen place to place. but perhaps this is just me because of how frequently i've moved.
In the US I also notice that there are residential areas where all single houses look more or less the same. That looks quite creepy from a German point of view. Sometimes there are hundreds of more or less identical homes, especially in some cities who used to grow very fast in the past - like Phoenix, Arizona. In Germany even "Reihenhäuser" (are they called "row houses" in the US) often look quite different. Even the roof tiles are often quite different, as people try there best to have a very individual home. Another thing: Even if people buy a new kitchen for their apartment, it may not always be custom fit. That strongly depends on the budget. Most young people would order kitchen at IKEA :-)
And I would never get an appartment without kitchen, so that's a very good reason for the landlord to offer a kitchen :) When I'm looking at the current flat offers at immowelt or immobilienscout24 in my city or Berlin, more than half of it have a kitchen, so maybe it's getting more common for German landlords to include kitchens nowadays.
I remember when I went to Canada, people were quite confused, that I would close doors behind me. In Germany there is a saying "were you born in a tent?". That refers to people not closing doors and is often said to kids to teach them. For Germans it is quite common to actually close doors, for multiple reasons. 1. to keep the heat inside That comes from the times we still used ovens and could only heat up one or two rooms. Many German grandparents still do that kind of thing to not use the heating system, but the oven and therefore only heat up one or two rooms. 2. to actually have some time alone Germans really love alone time and we don't see it as offending to just close the doors if you want to study, or actually just take some time for yourself. People in Canada were quite offended with this at first, because they thought we wouldn't like to be around them. 3. to show that we don't want to be bothered Especially in a professional work environment, a closed door tells you to knock before coming in or the person doesn't want to be bothered at all 4. to keep the smell out That's for the kitchens because many Germans just don't really like their living room to smell like food So yeah, Germans like doors a lot :D but open floor plans are getting to Germany and many new apartments already have at least an open kitchen.
Ju, we have nearly the same saying here in the US. We say, "Were you born in a barn?" We don't close doors as much as Germans do, but when someone is coming in from the cold and they leave the door standing open this is said. We try to conserve heat because the utility costs are so high. I guess yours are higher, but ours are high for us.
I did not know there was a similar saying in the UK. Nice to know, thank you both :) Yes here it is also because of the utility costs. But well, Germans love their doors closed.
This entire concept of moving with your kitchen is extremely bizarre and makes absolutely no sense to me. The rest is mostly similar to Sweden, haha. It's funny how some things you take for granted can be a huge culture shock to others. Like the way front doors often lead into the living room in the US, I think that's so weird especially considering a lot of houses have carpeted floors and many people wear shoes inside.
I was about to say the same about front doors, why would you walk with dirty shoes into your or a friend's living room? for me, it sounds both rude and maybe a little gross.
There are apartments which include a kitchen in Germany, but mostly the kitchen furniture just suck. It's enough if you're a student or something who doesn't cook that much anyways, but in general Germans enjoy high quality kitchens so they move with it. Also, if an apartment includes furniture, the landlord can demand a higher rent. So it's cheaper to bring a kitchen with you for a long term.
I just find it so weird, it must be so much work having to rip your kitchen out and re-installing it, or buying a new kitchen if your old one doesn't work when you move into a new place. Here, if people don't like the kitchen in the place they're moving into, they simply put up with it or renovate it. Or move into a different place. I live in a student apartment so I can't really do anything about my kitchen, but it serves my needs so I don't mind. If I were to move into a different apartment and had to bring my current kitchen with me I would be so frustrated, haha.
Well, I guess it's something people are used to here. I'm a student, too, and wouldn't be satisfied with the included kitchen in a German student apartment though :D I think Germans are just very picky about their kitchens. Renovating a kitchen is not that easy as you can see in the video, it has to fit to the room size. In this case, generic Germans who appreciate high quality. In many households, the kitchen is more important than the living room. And if you earn a middle class wage, people usally invest in their kitchen. Like, I don't know anyone from the middle class who hasn't got a sick stove. I never saw such nice kitchens in an apartment where a kitchen is included. Plus as I said, a landlord can demand any rent for an apartment which is furnitured, so it is excluded from the laws for the rent regulation. For a long term, it's just nicer to have a nice kitchen and to pay less rent.
lol i'm just so forgetful...or i buy more than i expected or i stop by the store on my way home from somewhere and hadn't planned to....i just need to keep like a small fabric bag in my purse i think
Kelly, you’re in Mainz, right? They should have the reusable bags which can be folded into a mini bag and kept in your purse in their little ‘containers’. Actually, I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t have them all over Germany but if not, just go to a Drogerie in Frankfurt/Main, I’m sure they still sell them for, like, a Euro and a half or so.
Kelly does her thing but it is not hard to have one of those material bag in your bag or car... I do so, and have no problem with plastic bag that is not good for environment
This is what keeps happening to me. I usually have no way of carrying a huge bag all day at work, but then I need one directly after work, but before I go home. So I end up buying more of the damn things.
I do it all the time when I travel to Germany. Actually have a smaller Edeka bag and a bigger Rewe bag and fold them up and put in my baggage on every trip. Have taken them in Edeka, Rewe, Lidl, and Netto. Even into a grocery store in Austria, and a Tesco in London. No one gave it a second glance.
Doors for the seperate rooms: it's an energy saving thing. You can adjust the temperature in the different rooms - e.g. cooler in the bedroom when you sleep (I sleep with the window open even in winter), warmer in the living room. With open plan you will have a mean average temperature in the whole house, which costs more energy as you will be heating places unnecessarily. Same goes for the light windows above the doors. If you didnt have them, you would need some form of artificial light in the hallway which uses electricity.
ohhhhh!!!! oh wow. i can't believe i didn't really put this together especially when i always tell people that i love these individual room heaters for that exact reason. thank you for explaining that to me though it was probably painfully obvious to you haha
however this not the only reason. It's also because that you can choose which room will be used for which purpose. Because some people want to have their home office, or just want to have a bigger bed room. And it's also about being more private in some way. We often use living rooms also for people who want to stay for a night, that they can sleep there
I was so confused when I went to the USA for the first time. It took me about 20 minutes to figure out how to to switch the bedside lamp off. It’s kinda funny how different those things are!
I also experienced outlets that would turn on and off with the light switch at the door. It took me a while to figure out why my bedside lamp wouldn't turn on or my phone wasn't charging
The missing kitchen has to do with german tenant protection law. If the landlord owns the kitchen, he has to take care of it. If the renter calls he has to fix every dripping water faucet. Since this is way to expensive the are no kitchens owned by landlords.
It also would work viceversa I believe. If the kitchen is broken, the landlord has to fix it, since it's part of he service. If you brake it, you're obliged to repair it, since it isn't yours. That's just an inconvenience in the landlord-renter relationship (at least in my country it works like this).
This makes sense. Even though, the similar law applies in Finland and nobody moves with their own kitchen. Your fridge breaks, you call the landlord, they are responsible for replacing it. The pipes breaks, you call the administrator of the building, they send the repair man to fix it. But people move here more than in Germany, the basic rental agreement is for a year, not 5 or 7. And you don't have to paint your walls white when you move out. Although, I think this is actually a good thing to do.
The thing with kitchens is too, that some landlords in germany prohibit you to sell your build in kitchen to the next person. So you have to move it out.
By law a landlord can ask for up to 3 monthly rents as a deposit. The reason for this large deposit has to do with german tenant protection laws- even if a tenant fails to pay rent eviction is a long& bureaucratic process during which the tenant stays in the rented apartment /house .....and there are tenants who will destroy/loot the property during this time ( so-called "Mietnomaden") Also, most contracts state that tenants need to repaint/renovate the apartment when moving out.
drunk4rd. Deposit up to 3 monthly rents. No additional tax since it is neither a sale nor a service provided - just a deposit. Umsatz oder Mehrwertsteuerpflichtig ist eine Kaution nicht da es sich weder um eine Kauf /Verkauf noch um eine Dienstleistung handelt- es ist nur ein Pfand der hinterlegt wird ( max. 3fache der Kalt- oder wenn per Mietvertrag vereinbart Pauschalmiete) deutschesmietrecht.de/kaution/66-mietkaution-drei-kaltmieten.html
There is not VAT / MwSt. in a safety deposit (Mietkaution). I guess you confused that with the fee for the real estate broker. That used to be 2 monthly rents + 19% VAT.
tip for the bags: fold them once and put them in one of the bags (so you have one bag with all the others in it. Then put this bag in a niche like the one you have because your kitchen doesn't fit correctly. Due to the fact, that the bags are flexible, they can be squeezed in pretty much any place and if they are inside eachother, they do not fly around like yours :). I myself have some handmade bags made of two layers of thick cotton, which is perfect to keep cold stuff cold and is good for protecting fragile stuff at least a little bit. I have 4 of those but I always need to keep track of them, otherwise I don't have them, when I need them XD.
Your German hotwater heater is a "Durchlaufheizer" a "flow-through-heater", and actually requires much more wattage than a boiler to heat the water. You are correct that for your usage it is probably more efficient. For a larger family, a hot water tank actually makes more sense. Some places in Germany use a heating concept called "Fernwärme", in which your heating and hot water is piped in directly from a nearby power plant, where the warmth produced in the power generation, instead of getting blown off into the atmosphere, is used to heat water for heating purposes in many homes in the region. This greatly increases the energy efficiency of the power plant, and is a very comfortable way of receiving your heating and hot water needs as a consumer.
In the winter you can see under which streets there are pipes for Fernwärme because that's where the snow melts very quickly. There are many concepts for heating and hot water in Germany. There is Fernwärme from power plants, boilers and Durchlauferhitzer running on electricity like you have, Gas-Etagen-Heizung which is a kind of Durchlauferhitzer and heating combo running on gas but only for one apartment and last but not least you have central heating and hot water running on oil for the whole apartment building.
@Eric: Hot water doesn't need heating...it's already hot! Whether they are tank or tankless (on-demand) units, they all are just "water heaters." ;-) -- BR
A 'flow through heater' needs a 3 phase connection (like the kitchen stove) because it needs a lot of energy to heat the water instantly. It's still more energy efficent than a boiler. Because there are no losses storing hot water and the water might be heater by a blank wire running through the water. A boiler is better if you only have one phase (like most houses in the united states). Still, using electrical energy for this is a terrible waste unless it's like solar/wind energy. There are natural gas variants, i remember the pilot flame happily burning visibly in the bathroom, but yeah, natural gas can lead to problems like your house exploding and sutff. (The house your apartement is in either had this or coal ovens before it got remodelled). So centrally delivered gas is kinda getting less used nowadays, oil/natural gas tanks are a thing with normal houses, though.
The point I made is that for a larger family, where much more hot water gets used throughout the day, a boiler can be more efficient, because in fact most of the water actually gets used without having to be kept warm and reheated needlessly, and clearly, it ought to be a gas or solar powered unit, and not electricity from the grid. For a one or two person household, the flow-through device is certainly more efficient.
I'd put all your shopping bags into one of the big shopping bags and keep them in that empty space where the kitchen didn't quite fit. That's how we do it in the Balkans :)
Hot water heaters: The german system with the continuous-flow heaters normally doesn't work in US houses because you need very much electrical power instantly which the 110 volt electrical systems in the US can not provide.
I am not an electrical engineer, but that does not sound right. If that were the case, then you would also not have electrical ovens in the US, because they need a lot of power too. As far as I know, a continuous flow heater usually has a separate line with a powerful fuse in Germany, and I see no reason they could not provide that in the US as well. They just have to use thicker cables, because the current would be a little more than double of what it is in Germany to transmit the same power. But of course, that applies to all electric appliances.
I feel like the only people who watch these kinds of videos are germans, does anyone else even actually care? And why am I, a german, watching videos about germany? Don’t I already know everything? What is this
hahahaha i was also very surprised how many Germans like to watch these types of videos. my first "germany vs america" type video was my first apartment tour video (i published it in march i think) and it went through the roof in views, mostly all of germans. i had made the video thinking only americans would watch it haha i guess it's really interesting to see what a non-German thinks of Germany :)
John Smith well, we take them back to the car the next day when we head to work. Most of the grocery we (Me&my wife) do after work, when we’re on the way home.
I use reusable bags not to avoid the 5 cents a bag charge we have in Canada , but because the bag handles do not break or the bottom falls out like plastic bags.
We have the same thing with electricity bills here in Poland. It's because the electricity meters are installed in our houses/apartment buildings, and the electricity company needs to send an employee to read what the meter says. It's easier for them to do it once a year rather than once a month ;)
The kitchen doors are often also to get no food/ cooking smell all over the flat, most german foodsmells you can smell after a long while also in the room! So if you keep the door closed you can be for sure to just have the smells in the kitchen, most german people also open the kitchenwindows when they cook, because then the smell will go outside and not everywhere inside of your home, furniture, pillows, clothes. especially if you life in a small flat (maybe just one room) or in a flat with roommates (1 kitchen, maybe 2 rooms, each person have it‘s own room with everything inside - bed, table, closet ect), and in the area from flatdoor to kitchen (flur), all germans have their jackets and shoes and the people don‘t want the foodsmell on their jackets. Also it‘s for safety if maybe your flat burns, you can rescue yourself if closing the door in the room where you are. That can save your life. If you just have one big room with kitchen and everything inside and all will be full of smoke it will be much harder to save yourself. Sorry for any grammar mistakes, i‘m german and almost everything i know of english language i teached myself (learned from movies, audiobooks etc) lg
i guess i just never thought that much about food smells. maybe the food i cook doesn't have as strong of odors? your english is fine and it's very impressive that you taught yourself!
@kelly you‘re american or? My lovely friend from indiana always says the same ;) i think american people are so kind with people from other countrys (english people are not) so thank you so much. By the way, i think you make very funny and interesting videos i like to learn things ;)
The washer/dryer combos take up less space, but cost more than separate machines. The combos run twice as long, so they break down more quickly, and when they break they cost a lot more to fix. We had a combo, and it was ok until it broke, then it was impossible to get it repaired, so we ended up buying separate machines.
Jim Fortune they don't run twice as long. If you wash for two hours and dry four two hours it's 4 hours. When you use a Combo ist washes and dry for 4 hours, same time. Also the price depends on the quality of the combo and the individual machines. You can buy a combo for 500€ and you can buy individual machines for 1000€ each.
I've never had an apartment here (in Germany) where my washer and/or dryer could fit in... so they are located in a room in the basement story, the "Waschkeller". This goes for every tenant in this house. Maybe because the kitchens are so small, mine is hardly the size of yours. Same for my bathroom, there is absolutely no space for a washer. Regarding the weird moving with kitchens - I am from the north of Germany, close to Hamburg. 'up there' it's usual that the apartments also come with a kitchen in it. When I moved to Düsseldorf, I was surprised as you when I searched for an aparment and none of it came with a kitchen. I always wonder what people do with their kitchens, because - like in your case - the kitchen doesn't always fit into the new 'kitchen-room' in the new apartment. Well, you just have some space left, but in many other cases the new room is too small for the kitchen people already own...
the kitchen thing is absolutely fascinating to me so i'm happy to see that i'm not the only one so confused/curious about it. i must've asked my boyfriend 100 questions about it. especially because he isn't a 'handy man' like...the idea of him installing a kitchen by himself is mind blowing to me. and especially when he started to tell me that he had to hand saw his counter top in half so that he could essentially split the kitchen into two parts to put on either side of his kitchen as shown versus how it was in his last apartment as one long kitchen agains the same wall.
I am from Hamburg, and my apartment did not come with a kitchen. Out of my friends, 2 moved into an apartment that included a kitchen, another one had to buy one like I did. So from my experience it's 50-50.
Victorian kitchens in Chicago up to the 1970's only had a sink. Tenents supplied their own stove, frig and a food cabinet. Sometimes there might be a small pantry. Rooms were much smaller than those of today.
Don't forget: But when you've only used400 Euro Worth of Electricity you also get your money back and the monthly rate will be reduced( the same way the monthly rate would be get higher if you would use more of course). I think it is probably a way to motivate people to safe energy because the day of the electricity bill can be a party or a nightmare.
This system of paying for electricity (and gas for heating and cooking too btw.) is older than the idea to motivate people to safe energy. I think it's because the energy providers don't want to send out employees to check the meter every month, but rather just once a year.
so we have automatic meter readings...this idea of sending someone to read the meter is completely alien to me. i wish i would've thought to add that...like i said, i could talk about the differences in utilities for forever haha like it is absolutely mind-blowing to me that there will be a day every couple months that a German has to go home to be available to let a guy into his/her apartment in order to read the heater meters. you can read more about our AMRs here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_meter_reading
Austria here, not Germany, but it seems the systems are quite similar. Kelly, do you have your meter IN your apartment? Usually they are somewhere in the common area of the building or somewhere in front of the building in a little extra housing in the case of single-family houses.
Google tells me we do since a few years, so I learned something today. Haven't seen any so far in real life though. But then, that's not actually my first concern when I enter a house or flat - lol. I guess all the new buildings will get them and the traditional ones in houses older than a couple of years will be exchanged over time. Btw. I also would prefer to pay on a monthly basis, just like my phone bill.
Yes, we have an entire storage area for the shopping bags and the "Pfandbag", too :D I think they are also quite handy, for a lot of things other than shopping. Kind of like the bags from Ikea! And yes, you are right about the deposit money, it's the landlords savety money. You usually get it back, plus the interest (Zinsen), when you move out and didn't do any harm to the landlords property, such as floors, walls, etc. But when the landlord has to repair things you left, he can charge that from the deposit money. It doesn't save the landlord from "Mietnomaden" (rental nomads) though, because they usually do way more damage plus months of unpaid rent, till the landlord is able to kick them out. Beeing a landlord may be a bigger risk in Germany than the US, because of certain laws.
the ikea bags are awesome!! the backpack style ones especially. i'm not exaggerating my excitement haha they were truly a lifesaver for me while living specifically at my last apartment. i lived on the 5th floor and grocery shopping was always so miserable for me to have to carry everything up in hand bags. That backpack style back was so much easier! thanks for sharing about the security deposit :) i am a homeowner in the US and rent out my place to tenants and don't have too many concerns about it (though i've heard the occasional nightmare story) but it seems to be very much the opposite here. i've heard many, many stories about bad tenants and how the laws are more toward protecting tenants than landlords, etc.
Kelly does her thing Yep...we live on the top floor, so we have all our bags for Glasmüll, Plastikmüll, and the "Pfandflaschtasch" ( :D) etc. in the staircase next to our apartment door.
I slept in a bed like that when I was at University in Germany and it IS uncomfortable. German beds are horrific. My apartment did, sort of, have a bathroom. . .a toilet in the kitchen. I remodeled so 5hat the toilet and shower were in the same room. Now, when people tell me how organized and efficient German are, I laugh in their face.
The reason for an annual electricity bill is most likely that it would be very annoying if a stranger has to enter your home every month to read the electric meter. Most likely that's the reason why electric meters in the U.S. are often installed outside the house. Reading the electric meter every month also occasion additional costs. On average Germans don't move that often as U.S. Americans, so there is less of a need to read the electric meter that often. Paying an identical amount every month makes it also easier to plan your monthly budget.
thanks for sharing :) yeah in the US, we usually don't even have anyone come read our meters at all. everywhere i've lived, it's been done digitally so the idea of having someone physically go house to house, apartment to apartment to read meters is completely foreign to me. you can read more about our auto meter reading here if you want since i didn't really take the extra time to explain it in the video en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_meter_reading
What stranger? I fill out a form the utility company gives me and pay according to that. There is some kind of law about smart meters needing to be installed in every new home, but I live in an old home that doesn't have those privacy-wreckers (no, seriously, you wake up at 2am and turn on the lights, and your utility company knows about that. Pretty horrible)
The UK is slowly moving over to smart meters but I still have the old style and can submit my meter readings via app/online account. (In the last 5 years I think my meter has been read by an actual human person about 4 times). Also in the UK you can pay 3 different ways. 1) Quarterly bill for actual use. 2) A pre-pay meter where you have a electronic meter that you buy credit for before you use it. (People who are in large amount of arrears with an energy company or considered a bad credit risk can be forced to use this type of meter. Ironically it is the most expensive way to buy your energy) 3) Monthly direct debit which your expected annual bill divided by 12. You have an equal payment made each month (similar to the German system) Part of the appeal of method #3 is that can stop winter 'bill shock'. So when you have you're heating is on during the winter you still pay in those months the same as you pay in the summers months. Its allows your energy bills to be predictable as part of your outgoings for that month.
Another reason for annual instead of monthly is transfer costs: every time you transfer money from one bank account to another you pay a fee (maybe not in all banks though). The fee is usually fixed, meaning it doesn't matter wether you transfer 10€ or 100€ it's always gonna be (let's say) 20 cents. With a monthly payment you end up paying 2,40€ fees per year. With an annual payment the fee will only be 20 cents. Now for you as a private person the difference between 20 cents/y and 2,40€/y probably doesn't matter but your electricity provider has thousands and thousands of customers. To them it makes a difference of thousands of euros. And since Germany is a highly burocratic country there's also a chance that this plays a role too. Let's say, the provider can choose wether they want to fill in 12 forms per household or 1. @Raymond the annual pay I know from Germany is that you pay the whole sum in one go one year in advance. Not monthly. So I paid my electricity bill for 2018 in November/December 2017.
Your bed is a futon bed, so it is low on purpose. You can get a taller one. Also you might mention the fixed and glued in carpets in the states. Only bureau buildings have that here. Wouldn't want live with a pre owned carpet. Yuck. The yearly bill thing.. the guy/girl reading the meters came/comes once per year to read them. Like.. ever since electricity became a thing. Same with heating bill. They read it once per year, then calculate your bill once per year. they let you pay in 12 installments because they need your advance money and for you not to have such a high bill suddenly.
So far the best US vs European flat comparison video on youtube. Please keep up doing videos like this, as a European it is really interesting to watch and compare. The electricity up front payments are weird though, probably it is just a German thing as I don't think it is common in other parts of Europe.
@PatagonianFoodbat Thanks!! that really means a lot to me :) and i hope to keep up videos like this as i find them probably as interesting to make as you find them to watch. thanks for watching!
In Belgium we also pay upfront like in Germany (or the Netherlands) We also send the meter numbers to the electric company ourselves. Maybe once every 5 years or so, someone from the company will check to see the numbers themselves. (if you cheat, there are large fines)
In the uk you can choose to pay up front or as you use it I pay up front as I use lots during the winter but not so much in the summer (no heating or air con) I have a washer dryer combo that I love The newest ones are great, but if you have lots of people using it then it would not be so good as it takes longer than two separate machines
We did pay up front in Sweden. But the companies was slow to change the amount that it cost. For example you move to a new house and the old family used 20.000kw and you onley use 15.000kw. It could take a while (several calls and years )change to the amount you use. So the goverment steped in and said that they cant take up front payments becouse they never is 100% correct.
It is strange for me to hear that someone is so seriously surprised of europien appartments and its details. It is the most normal appartment, nothing weird in it. First of all Americans have or can have relatively chip wooden houses with big spaces. To have a house in Germany (EU) means you have to be really rich, because those are build by red rocks and will stay for 300 years.
She means "cheap" and she is right! Why the hell they still maje thier houses out of cardboard and cheap Wood with the problems they have for more than a 100 years...is the proof in it's self or not? If Germany or any Europien Country suffered so many Tornados - They would of changed thier buildings long, long ago!
U.S is slowly starting to ban plastic bags. I already have a surplus of reusable bags. They live inside one bag on a hook outside of my “pantry” (hall closet I converted because I don’t have a pantry)
Carlyn Prato Agreed, I live next to two cities that have banned plastic bags, so I have a bag in my car trunk that holds my reusable bags and a shelf in my hall closet for other bags. I use the bags a lot for Costco runs too, since they don't have bags there.
Moving your kitchen isn't just a German thing. Most unfurnished European apartments don't include a kitchen so you have to buy your own. I've experienced this in Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Serbia and Germany. In fact almost all the things you've noticed apply to apartments in other European countries! :)
Any German home I was in had the large water heater in the basement. There kitchens can be small but there is usually a large walk in larder/cupboard. German recycling is very strict, which I think is amazing. France and some other European countries are way ahead of the major countries in the world on recycling also. The light switches at the door of bedrooms also has a night light. The water in any toilet, shower room or bathroom can have the water switched off at the source of any leaks instead of having the water switched off completely leaving you without water at all throughout the house until the repair can be done. German supermarkets do expect you to bring your own bag or boxes when shopping. No plastic bags to ruin the planet. I adored Germany and the people and would love to go back, as would my son who was 11 on his first visit. They also have a Junken Day periodically throughout the year. Any items you need to dispose of are placed at the end of your garden or drive. People are free to take these unwanted items. The next day people come to take any wood, metal or other recyclables, the third day a lorry comes round to take what's left, which, believe me is very very little. Such a great concept so there is no fly tipping. Also, the streets are spotless. No litter allowed. They have to be commended.
streets are spotless it depends on the city...in my area sadly littering is a "fun" activity.... all streets are full of trash...the city has community clean days, many puplic trash cans but the people are dumb and ignorant butts and litter like hell...it makes me very sad... i started to pick up trash and dump it away...some people looking at me i am crazy but glady some are starting also to pick up but it is still not enough =(
Still the water is heated as and when it is tapped. Doing this electrically in the US faces the issue of 110V power supplies. It would take thick wires.
We have similar days here in Canada where we can put unwanted items at the end of the drive and others are free to take them. We call them exchange days, and exactly the same the next day anyone who does large recycling will pick up any wood/metal and after that the rest is picked up by the garbage. Again very little is left at that point. I live in a small town area and if you don't want to wait for that particular day people will put things out with a FREE sign on it usually on the weekend (Saturday) as people have yard sales then as well and someone usually will pick it up!! Much better than throwing it away. We also have a lot of charities such as the Salvation Army that will take usable furniture and other items and have pick up available.
I live in Hungary but as far as I know these things are similar there as well: 1. Beds: - Usually the older style beds are higher, but I don't know the reason why our current beds are lower. - If you have separate mattresses you still can buy a dedicated cover to connect them and do something about the gap between. Many hotels have that if they don't have a double mattress. - The wooden frame below the mattress is common, but you can by a mattress what has springs in it. - If you go back to the US once, please create a video about beds. For example I really want to see how those "top sheet" things work. 2. Water heater: - We have those big water tanks, we call them "bojler". They are quite common in older homes. I hate them, because the usual setup is this (above your head): www.kollar.at/fotogalerien/referenzen_bad_sanierung004/images/Kollar_Referenzen_Badsanierung04_02.jpg - In other places the (gas) heating system producing the (on demand) warm water as well. 3. Built in storage: - Regular homes sometimes has this small room (usually it opens from the kitchen) what we call "speiz". It comes from the german "speisekammer", so probably they have those too. - What we don't have is a closet. Especially those walk in types. Unfortunately, because I like those...
thank you for taking the time to share all of this information! i can completely understand why you do not like the bojler set up. it looks awfully inconvenient. i haven't seen a speisekammer yet but maybe my friends just haven't pointed it out to me haha and as for the "top sheet" thing...do you mean like the flat sheet that is placed on top of the fitted sheet? or do you mean like a mattress cover? i should be able to cover this in a future vid so i want to make sure i know what you're referring to :) thanks for watching!
I want to see the whole bedding "system" :D What I see now: - EU: We have a sheet below and we have duvet (sometimes feather filled) with a duvet cover. Usually we have one medium sized pillow . Or sometimes a big and a small pillow as a pair. - US: If I know right you don't have duvet cover but you have a second sheet above you and below the duvet/comforter. But it is so strange to imagine. I want to see it "in action" :P Btw the comforter is just another word for duvet?
@ordo my great grandma had the same setup for the water heater here in germany. First it was fired with coal later it was changed to an electric one. Also I have a 'Speisekammer' which opens from the kitchen and houses our freezer. So our fridge is bigger than most. @Kelly I like your Videos because you have a natural style which I like. Also the doors to the living room and kitchen is part traditional, at the beginning of the 20th century it was common to open the living room only for big celebrations like christmas and birthdays because there was the expensive china and furniture. The beds are so low because at the end of the 90s something called a futon took over the market, for older people there are higher beds because with higher beds it is easier to stand up from. Viele Grüße Oliver
@Ordo ok! I will work on this. We have Duvet covers too but I will say they are quite a bit newer here and a lot of people still use comforters. on my bed, I had a Duvet cover but i'm laughing at myself because i would still use a top sheet because that's what i'm used to having from growing up (with comforters)...but it makes no sense to have that haha
@Oliver Thank you! :) and thanks for sharing. i didn't know about this custom. some people in the US have "formal" living rooms which are used only for special occasions as well but this is always just so confusing to me because it's yet another room to furnish and clean versus (because it's in addition to the regular living room). and thanks for explaining why the beds are so low :) i hadn't been able to figure it out!
Thank you so much for showing how a German bed works. I've wanted to do something similar for a while, and your video finally gave me the information to make it happen! The one thing I still have to figure out is where to get mattresses without a hard edge... are they memory foam or some other material? Thanks again!
In the UK we often have fire doors for the kitchen, which are heavier and more robustly made than the other doors, this is to allow the occupiers more time to exit the building should a fire start in the kitchen.
I always slept in the Besucherritze between my grandparents when I was a kid - and one time I got lost in it! My parents were looking for me but I was sleeping like a baby rolled together totally into a tiny lil human ball.
Hallo Kelly, tolles Video wie immer, weiter so.👍 Kleiner Tipp zu den vielen Einkaufstüten: Wenn man die eigenen Tüten vergessen hat keine neue kaufen, sondern auf die Warenkartons im Supermarkt zurückgreifen. Die sind kostenlos und Zuhause kann man sie zum Lagern weiterverwenden oder in die blaue Tonne hauen. Vor allem die aus der Früchteabteilung sind groß, gut stapelbar und sehr stabil. Hi Kelly nice video as always, keep going. Just a little tip for your grocery bags: If you forgot to BYO, just make use of the markets cardboard boxes, the groceries are stored in. They are for free. At home they can be useful for storing or you just put them in the blue bin. Especially those from the fruits section are big, stackable and very durable.
75peda Toll und wie trage ich die Früchtekartons nach Hause (wenn kein Auto) oder vom Auto in die Wohnung (wenn kein Parkplatz vor der Haustür)? Hier spricht wahrscheinlich ein autofahrender Garagenbesitzer.😂
SSdC(tm) guter Einwurf aber Tüten muss man dann genauso weit schleppen😉. Es ging mir nur drum eine Notlösung anzubieten, wenn man mal keine Tüte/Rucksack o.ä. dabei hat. Bspw. die kleinen/mittleren Kartons für so Sachen wie Äpfel, Pfirsiche passen quer, wie dafür gemacht, zwischen Gepäckträger und Sattelstange vom Fahrrad. Den Großeinkauf im Bananenkarton bekommt man auf der Stange zwischen Lenker und Sattel wegbalanciert. Es ist nicht optimal aber ein machbarer Plan B gegenüber dem Horten von Plastiktüten.
75peda, thanks so much for putting the translation of your comment. I was reading as best I could in German, which I studied a couple years in junior high. When I scrolled down, I saw your translation so I could check myself. Very nice of you! ;-)
Pfand bottles: There are two sorts of pfand bottles. Einweg and Mehrweg. You only described the Einweg pfand bottles. Mehrweg pfand bottles don't have these stickers but you also get money back. They get shiped back to the bottler and refilled. The Einweg pfand bottles get destroyed.
Quote : "are the Mehrweg ones the glass bottles? that get reused after washing?" Perhaps, although i believe beer is always bottled in new bottles. The beauty of the pfand-system is that when you are lazy/drunk and throw away your bottle in nature or in the park, there will always be children or homeless people that can use the 'pfand' to have some extra money. The benefit is of course that we have less pollution in the parks and in nature. Same goes for the 1 euro coin you need to release your shopping cart. When you are to lazy to bring it back, some children will gladly do it to earn the coin.
Since it's Germany it's much more complicated. There are Mehrweg glass bottles and Mehrweg plastic bottles (which both get reused) but only Einweg plastic bottles. You can feel the difference between Mehrweg plastic and Einweg plastic in the thickness of the plastic. Mehrweg plastic bottles are way harder to scrunch when empty than Einweg plastic bottles.
Really high "american style" beds are called Senioren betten in Germany; literally, beds for old people. Also, I must point out that I detest German pillows... it doesn't matter how many times you fold it, it will always go flat like a pancake. Thankfully now you can find 80x40cm pillows in foam instead of the traditional down.
haha i really like the German pillows...but it did take me awhile to get used to it. i was always trying to ball it up as much as possible for stiffer support
I have the problem, that I can´t use normal non-flat pillows, like in hotels or otherr countries. I just cannot sleep, my neck and back hurts whem i am not laying flat... In some cases I had to sleep without a pillow, because they were only these fluffy and big things.
yep, almost every german has a bag full of bags. I made my own bagdispenser. fold the bags to small squares secure with rubber band and stack them in a Box. cut an opening on the bottom. sometimes you see tea bag dispenser working the same way. the window is an 'oberlicht' so the hallway is never pitch dark.
We do that in the UK and then I forget to take one when I go shopping only to feel the guilt of paying the the 5p bag charge. It is not the cost it is the shame of not received re using the old bag.
Hey, Kelly! I live in Romania, Bucharest and from all the things you have mentioned some things here are similar to the US. I must first mention that I live in an an apartment that has been renovated and a few things have changed. Not in particular order, but here they are: 1. High beds with high mattresses - nowadays people prefer to buy these stiff tall mattresses for better back support. And they also have those thick seams too. 2. We pay the electric bill every month for the exact amount we used. 3. Apartments come with their own kitchen, and you cannot modify it much. 4. Most apartments have an entry hallway - it's probably an Europe thing. 5. There is in most cases a door to the kitchen (which is very practical to keep smells away from other rooms), except for one bedroom apartments that are one big open space. 6. People have a long tradition of collecting bags, don't know why. 7. Not so much for collecting empty bottles, recycle machines are a relatively new thing here. 8. Some bathrooms have a window, others have a fan (depending on the construction) 9. The windows above the doors .... I hate them! We used to have them, but during renovation, the builder said he hated those too and just replaced them with plasterboard. Now we have normal doors! 10. Yes, every apartment announcement that says "2 rooms" means a living room and a bedroom, which took me a long while to understand too. But that is the way it is. I love the fact that you are very analytical, yet you do not complain about stuff being different. Your attitude is very healthy!
thank you! i'm glad you liked my video :) while i'm sure i can always find something to complain about (lol) i think i've really embraced the differences i've encountered here in Germany. i think that's what travel is all about, after all! :) thank you for sharing all of this information. i had some friends that lived in bucharest almost 2 years ago and i was lucky enough to be able to visit them in their apartment. i didn't pay too much attention to the details, though, so i'm glad you've shared your experience with me!
Here in Poland, they often use the living room as a bedroom - or at least they certainly did when we first came in 1994. Thus doors on the living room - were very practical. They often called it their parent's room as the bed was a pull out couch - which had to be made up every day, of course.
that small window above the door - we call that in the states a "transom" small window used to bring natural light to common inner space, use to be more common in older commercial loft or apartments wall water heater - in the states we call that an on-demand or tankless water heater, it too has its disadvantages, like unit costs and its installation is much higher compare to more conventional tank unit, in some cases retrofit can be very expensive depending on the existing layout of the space
Ever wondered, why your bathroom has that two small parallel windowstrings? The left windows used to belong to the Speisekammer, which used to be the missed pantry. So, when your landlord renovated your appartment, he restructered the rooms in order to get a larger bathroom.
The doors in a kitchen is to block out any smells from cooking and is this same with the living room to block out as much noise and smell incase you have someone sleeping in the bedroom and you are having a louder company
The washing machine/dryer combo is a nightmare! Literally the worst machines ever. 1. they take FOREVER to run. 2. the dryer function is effectively a super powered dehumidifier, so it takes 8 billion years to dry something. And 3. I am not convinced they do a good job of actually cleaning (because all the lint etc. seems to stick inside the machine because there is no filtering of it like a dryer would do). I HATE THEM!
same problem here in my apartment: too many grocery bags and too many bottles. I had a combination washer/dryer for lack of space but I do not recommend it: 1. one washing and drying cycle last eternally 2. the drums in combo-machine are of the size of washing machines... for drying efficiently, you need bigger drums
You have a beautiful apartment. It's huge compared to the apartments I was in when I lived in Berlin. Your video brought back a lot of memories of things I also found strange at the time.
I’m 64 years old, and many of the things you have identified as “unique” to Germany, and different from the US style of living, I have seen for a number of years in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are more energy conscious here, and there is also an IKEA store here which has similar styles of furniture and lamps that you showed as German. Also, apartment deposits can be higher here, as there are rent control laws. There is no one that brings their own kitchen cabinets to an apartment, although many people will do a kitchen remodel as their first project after buying a home. Also, no doors between the main living rooms, although on older homes ( built before 1940) there are often doors to close off rooms. Hope you are enjoying Germany! It’s a great country to visit.
I’ve heard so many great things about San Francisco and hope to visit one day! It’s on my list :) thanks for sharing...I hear rent is insaaaanely expensive there. Thanks for watching!
I have a question about American houses: why do you have formal living rooms? I've visited the States several times and I've seen many houses that had a second living room that was only used for special occasions and usually also had nicer furniture in it. I did a student exchange to the US and my host family only used this room at Christmas. Weird..... Also, what is the purpose of that drawer underneath American ovens? I don't think moving a kitchen is all that difficult (I've helped a lot of my friends move). The cabinets are usually designed to come apart into several smaller modules. The only thing you often need to buy new is the countertop, if the new kitchen set-up is different from the old one.
i also wonder why people have formal living rooms hahah i tried to explain it to my boyfriend once and i really couldn't even find the right way to justify it...but maybe that's because i've never had one and didn't grow up with one. as for the drawer...i've always kept my pans there, but i think i've seen an oven or two where the drawer is sort of like a roasting area.
nessagirl1911 well if you check before 1950’s in America we didn’t have things like build in closets you had a bunch of empty rooms and they didn’t have anything built in your clothes closet was a big wardrobe cabinet many were from Germany. Around 1920’s they started making wood & gas stoves and putting them into the houses they did have some cabinet some with water tank that you could fill in the kitchen around 1950’s they started building in kitchen cabinets in the 1960’s things started booming and people wanted more room and bigger houses a lot of people still had there living room for guests only so a lot of people wanted a place to play games in and watch tv 📺 in and not have to clean up for company so they left there front room and sealed in there garage or just made another big room for this the one my brothers mother in law had was probably 150 feet by 25 feet and it connected to the front room. Another thing that we changed was the entry hall some places In colder climates keep a small one but when I was studying architecture they said around 1960’s people were getting scared of long empty hallways so they tried to get rid of them whenever possible that why when you go into a newer house or apartment made in the last 40 years it will be open into the front room and the kitchen the only doors 🚪 go to the bathrooms, bedrooms, closets and leaving the living area. If your interested there are some really interesting videos on kitchen furniture and how it has changed from 1900 to present day on RUclips
I think the idea of the rarely used "formal" living room is left over from the Victorian Era, when larger houses and the middle class emulating wealthy British or European manners and gender divisions. After dinner, women retired to the "front parlor" (the formal living room today) for tea, men went to the billiard room or smoking lounge for cocktails (today's family room where the TV is and kids play with their toys). Average Houses in North America in the last 50 years have done away with the formal living room in favor of larger all purpose entertainment living rooms or "great" rooms that combine the kitchen/eating/living/entertainment rooms.
I have a washer/dryer combo by LG, it is the best thing ever. Just put the laundry inside, choose a program and it is ready to take out a few hours later. Plus doesn’t take up too much space. Highly recommend.
On the electric thing chances are your meter is inside the apartment ( usually in a closet near the door ) so it would be a pain for everyone to arrange for a monthly meter reading. With the yearly system you set it up so someone is home or there for them to come in to your flat once a year rather than every month. In the states we generally have meter rooms or banks of meters outside the building so they can do the monthly reading thing but then you kinda have to worry that someone can tamper with your meter and it happens a lot more than you might think. The doors on every room help in the event of a fire and also again with the utilities readings some people choose to arrange for a neighbor or building attendant to let them in.So the doors allow the rest of the rooms to be closed off and even locked to allow them in to the closet where the meter is without your whole flat being open. They also help to insulate sounds so if someone is in the living room watching TV someone else can study or sleep in another room without so much of the living room noise.
yeah i've never lived somewhere in the US where a person had to physically come to my apartment or house to check my electric meters so this concept is incredibly foreign to me
When I first moved to the Netherlands I was beyond freaked out about the meter in my flat thing but then a friends ex messed with the meter to her apartment and I changed my mind. Now I wish I could put the meter in my house because who knows if one of the rotten kids out here might figure out how to mess with it if I piss em off or just for giggles.
I think most of my friends had it like that but mine was in a closet outside the WC by the entry door. I think that may be because we were buying and not renting the unit. I forgot the name for that in Nederlands but here we call apartments you buy condominiums. Perhaps that's why it was there?
That's only the case with the old meters. A lot of homes here in the Netherlands (and I also think in Germany) have the new smart meters which can be read out externally. I think it's convenient to pay an exact amount for electricity each month, so you know exactly what your monthly fixed costs are. Most of the of the time this is structured in a way that you pay a little bit more than you actually use, so you always get money back at the end of the the year. Also the the open floor plan you mention is more of a thing in newer homes. I think most European homes build in this century have a L-shaped living room with an open kitchen. I thinks the over-all differences are becoming smaller. Boxspring beds are becoming more populair these days and I'm aso starting to see heating systems with air vents becoming a thing in newly built houses. But of course there will always be small differences like for example doorhandles and power outlets. Oh and here in the Netherlands almost everyone has a cabinet or a drawer (or something) with a lot of grocery bags stuffed into it, just like you have. I think that's not weird at all..
Is that so? Do you think there are actual differences between Dutch and German apartments? I just thought some things she mentioned are because she lives in an older apartment, built in the 80's or 90's or maybe even older..
I have a question to all of you: Do you have a high-voltage power line at your house? I live in Germany and our house has one, mainly for powering heavy machinery like Log splitters, circular saws or grinders, but I think that's still not too common, because when there was a festival in my village, they set up a power line from the festival to our house and bought the high-voltage power they needed from us, although it is further away then other houses. So I want to know if other Germans have this and if this is also a thing in the US.
For the scenario you laid out in US cities they made municipal power sources they tap into for lighting on holidays or festivals and the pet company charges the city directly
If you pay the energy beforehand, there is only an advantage for the company (directly). They can work with the money earlier. But this becomes an advantage for the consumer, cause it helps to keep the prices low (for german standards. Compared to the U.S. it's quite expensive)
Bad point. You are giving an interest free loan to the utilities. You lose the opportunity to do with your money what you want.. unless, of course, you can choose to not pre-pay the bill and pay it all at once at the end of the year.
I have never come across a company (we have several) that wil alow you to pay for the whole year at once. They are afraid you can't pay the full amount at the end of the year or when you move out a different energie use will mess it up. They get all iffy if they have to pay YOU back at the end of the year and want to lower your advance anyway.
This obviously isn't always the case but a lot of buildings in Germany were either built or rebuilt after the war and had to initially accommodate more people because of those who had been made homeless. Sometimes the doors were installed because they were used as bedrooms. Modern apartments have them because Germans have a greater need for privacy (which is also why you won't see a lot of streets on Google Street View.) My German great-grandfather built his home in 1905. At first the ground floor was the village post office, the second floor was living space and the top was attic. After WW2 the ground floor became an apartment for a displaced family and eventually for my great aunt Eva who lived there until she passed about 20 years ago. The two top floors became my Oma and Opa's house with my mom, aunt and uncle when they were kids living in the top floor which was converted into bedrooms.
The thing that is interesting is that older apartments in most east coast cities that would have a lot of European influence are built just like this - front doors opening into hallways not into rooms, and doors on all rooms off the hallways and very few rooms connected through rooms. This is very common in EU and UK, although the UK is slowly drifting away from it a bit. The idea of open rooms into other open rooms in more of a US and perhaps Asian style than it is European, and while it may seem strange to an American, it is more common then the floor plans we have in the US so in many ways its the US that is odd, at least in more modern apartment buildings. Its also not odd in that a kitchen moves like you would most other rooms, you move your kitchen furnishing like you do any room. The US does this oddly, unlike most countries, probably cause of the idea of 'built in ' cabinets and such, but some places still expect you to move with appliances like stove and refrigerators while others provide it. I do find it amusing when people from the US do move to Europe and expect dwellings not be like they were in the US like the US sets the expectations for the world in how a dwelling should be set up and furnished. Most of what you see as odd is common place in the EU/UK and totally accepted. The US does it differently but that does not mean either is wrong. I expect the reason you splash guards are out of sync with the kitchen is they were put in by the last occupants to fit tehir kitchen and the building owner choose not to remove them or could not remove them without damage and extra expense and just assumed you would either make do with them or remove them your self and fix the walls the way you wished. We loved in 5 different apartments where we had to redo the back splash to fit with our kitchen furniture and it was expected that if we wanted it different than we found it we would make the adaption. If you lived in many places in the Stats, like where I live, plastic bags are outlawed, grocery stores and other stores cannot even offer them - you either pay 5 cents for a paper bag or bring your own reusable shopping bag. This is becoming more and more common world wide to get rid of the problem of plastic bags. I have a whole section of my front closet that holds re-usable bags. More and more in the US too we are paying "deposits" on plastic bottles, the problem in the US is that we don't get the deposits back as they have not set up a way to return deposits yet. 2-in 1 washer/dryers have been around for years - my parents had one when I was little and we were living in Ohio. Its just that they don't perform as well as two separate appliances and take a great deal longer to run a load. They are also a nuisance when they break down. My mother was very glad to get rid of hers and go back to separate appliances. The window over your front door, and in your bathroom are seen in older architecture of building that incorporate a main hallway down the center in apartments and office buildings. Often called 'transom' windows I have even seen them over doors to kitchens, living rooms and bedrooms to allow light into the hallway. Transom windows also often open so that you can get ventilation through the rooms and into and through the hallway, especially in hot weather.
Hi Kelly, we are in Barcelona, Spain: 1. electricity/gas/water: we pay every three months. The utility company puts a notice on our building front door and we have to write down our meter readings. 2. shopping bags: If you didn't think about it - you can wash them in the washing machine. Turn them inside out and wash/hang over bathtub to finish drying. 3. washing machine combos: We have one but never use the dryer. The machines in the US are vented, where most over here are with a condenser and take forever to dry. Electricity is expensive here and the weather is mild year round so we hang clothes outside to dry. Love hearing about your experiences as we never know where we will be moving in 2.5 years. We filmed an episode of House Hunters International if you want to see what the homes look like in Barcelona: ruclips.net/video/mMrEoy7DtV8/видео.html. behind the scenes filming: howellomaha.wordpress.com/2017/04/12/we-are-filming-house-hunters-international/
oh wow, yeah...we should probably wash ours haha. thanks for sharing :) and this video...you said you filmed it?? or this is you in it? thanks for linking me to it!
Sorry... I wasn't clear: that is us (the couple) in the video. I don't know if you ever watched the show before. There is some 'acting' in it: we filmed each scene 3-5 times (for different camera angles), filmed it out of order, walked around with different changes of clothes to give the illusion of 'just arrived, house shopping, making a decision, and the reveal'. We were living in our apartment for 6 months by the time they came to film (they hired movers to clear all of our personal stuff out) and the two other apartments were not even really for rent. But who says tv is 'real' anyway. They never told us what to say so we pulled our real prior apartment hunting experiences into it when we were 'apartment hunting' for the show. The show filmed over 30 hours for our 18 minute episode. People have no idea how much time and energy YOU put into YOUR German life videos to make them... I appreciate all your hard work. They are a lot of fun to watch...and so informative.
Wow, Honey Garrett! I love that show. Thanks so much for linking to it. I can't wait to watch it. I haven't had cable for about five years. I just stream. Househunters International is one of the very, very shows I miss seeing.
I used to live in Germany. We simply folded all the bags up and placed them inside ONE bag. Then kept it in it's own spot. (For instance, that empty space you showed us in your kitchen). The door in the kitchen is to keep the heat and cooking smells in the kitchen. Also , crack the bathroom window open while you take your shower. It takes the moisture out faster. The window above your door going outside used to be very common. It's called a transom. It's for providing light. Sometimes, they used to be able to be opened to help with air flow. Door in the living room is for privacy (someone sleeping over) and to keep noise down from the rest of place. Enjoy Germany. I miss being there. It's a wonderful country. Very beautiful.
At 2:20: "I am also just cooking for my boyfriend and I". This is something I have found to be increasingly common for Americans to say. Would you also say "I am also just cooking for I"? So how come that suddenly the "me" turns into an "I" when the boyfriend becomes part of the sentence? About the shopping bags: You are supposed to use the ones you already have again and again. We have a total of three. When one breaks (which will be the case aftar about five or eight years maybe), you buy another one.
The electric bill thing (gas also) we do here in the States as well. It's called being on a budget. The benefit is having an exact bill amount you can budget for every month over the year,and yes,there is a make-up month where either you pay to catch up the difference or they pay you. It's nice,especially if you own a home instead of living in an apartment. Weather changes don't affect apartments as drastically as a stand-alone house because you're partially insulated by the apartments around you. If you own a home though,spring and fall months your electric or gas bill can be fairly low due to moderate temps,whereas in summer and winter your bills can get extremely high due to severe heat or cold. So,instead of having a couple of months where you pay say $50 for electric but in dead cold or 100 deg heat your bill goes to $400, you may pay $150-200 per month every month. This makes it much easier to budget for. Hope this helps!
I guess in Germany, they’ve changed it in the past ten or 15 years since I’ve never experienced it there either-except for appliances, which we always bought ourselves. But then, I had to buy my own appliances here in the US too when I moved into my rental 12 years ago...
hi yes. i lived in the uk with a washer/dryer machine. i would run the washer if i were doing tshirts and underwear, but otherwise, i would hang my clothes on my heaters. most combo machines are terrible for sweaters and jeans. also, the doors on the kitchen and living room are fire doors. [yes, fire doors, even if they're made of wood.] having the door there starves the fire of oxygen long enough for you to get out. now i live in south africa, and sooooo much is american-style. you can get european style, but then it will be assumed that you're european and have the money to pay much, much more. [ugh.]
thank you for sharing :) and that's really interesting about south africa. i've never been and would love to go. so they assume europeans are richer than americans?
Washer In Canada work on a normal 12ov plugin in , the Dryers need a separate 240V special plug in like a electric kitchen stove. What do these washer Dryer all in ones run on? 120V would take forever to dry clothes.
John Smith in North America, the only 120 volt electric dryers are compact models, and do take longer to dry clothes. Otherwise, they operate on a 2 phase 240 volt dedicated circuit. Otherwise, clothes dryers on 120 volt circuits use natural gas or propane to heat the dryer. As for combo units, the reason there aren't many models, is because in the past, what few models that were available, required even more repairs than separate units. I had a family member who had one of those combo units, and if say a part on the dryer side broke down, it disabled the washer too. Also, the older models were mostly vented models, and the dryer portion either had a heating element, or a gas burner heating the drum. I can answer the part on what her washers and dryers (also washer/dryer combos) all operate on a 1 phase 240 volt service. Unlike North American washers, their washers have the ability to heat their own water, since European homes use only tankless water heaters. With tankless water heaters not being able to keep up with certain demand, that is why their washers and dishwashers have heating elements in them. It doesn't cost them that much more to operate them that way. It would if we did that in North America, because then, the washer and dishwasher would need their own dedicated 2 phase 240 volt circuits (2 phase meaning that it has 2 120 volt hot wires, and depending on the wiring, a ground, or neutral and ground, or 3 or 4 wires).
When they do get the bugs out of the combos , I would give it a try. Imagine dirty clothes go in and ready do fold come out. Its man feature seem to be space saving though so home owner may be slow to try it.
Having doors on all your rooms has multiple purposes I think. 1, keeping heat in or out of specific rooms saving energy costs. 2, if you are unfortunate to have a fire we are taught to close the door and not open without doing the ‘back of the hand ‘ test for heat. Keeping the doors closed slows the spread of fires. 3, reduces noise from each area of the house. There may be more reasons but those are the ones that came to mind instantly.
In Finland we also have many of these things, like the "pantti" bottles (as they are called here) - which, btw, make a great chore for kids, since they literally have to do the chore to get the money from doing it. When I was a child, that was one of my chores. We also loaded and unloaded the dishwasher (me and my two brothers) and cleaned our own rooms. We also have front doors opening to hallways and don't have big water heaters, don't have pantries, our washers and dryers are in the bathroom if we don't have separate laundry rooms (if we do, they're next to the bathroom) etc. We also have sauna in every apartment or at least in the apartment building. If a house does not have a sauna, it's remarkably cheaper because sauna is considered a necessity. Sauna has two major pieces of "furniture" - kiuas (an electric device that turns water into steam, basically) and lauteet (build-in benches, sort of) and those are like the "furniture" in kitchens and bathrooms - it stays in the house/apartment when you move, you don't take it with you. We don't take our kitchens with us, unless it's a rental that didn't have a dishwasher when you moved in (had a slot for it but not the machine in the slot), then you either take it with you or sell it to the landlord. Old Finnish houses/apartments have kitchen/dining rooms separate from the living room, but an open concept has been the standard for decades. We don't have dining rooms. We just have space for a table and few chairs in the kitchen. A family home has space for a bigger table and more chairs, generally 6-8 chairs or long benches on both sides of the table. If you get an apartment that's open concept, generally the kitchen/dining/living room is just called "a room", and sometimes, so are the bedrooms. Especially if the floor plan is suitable for the "living room" area been used as another bedroom, so the apartment can be shared with roommates that don't need a separate living room (usually this happens if two strangers move in together to save up in living expenses).
I just go outside with a bag, if i do have to much i give some to homeless people - they really can use them, because of the don‘t have bags etc. Very often to put their stuff into. So mostly they are thankful for that. I know this because of i spend some free time to help them!
Kitchen: In Finland, we have dish drying cabinets... I fold all of my grocery bags. We do not, however move kitchens. Bathroom: I use a 2 in 1 machine bothin the US and in Finland. Smaller loads help, but because the dryer uses steam (convection) to dry, it takes longer and you need to take out the clothes IMMEDIATELY or they get wet again. I prefer hanging outside or using a drying cabinet for heavier items like towels and jeans. FYI it is a water heater.... hot water does not need to be heated. Bedroom: Finland also uses 2 mattresses/2 blankets, but they do sell "Yankee" style beds lol. Living room: We take our lamps with us, and also list the house by rooms. 3h, k + s is 3 rooms (could be 2 bedrooms and living room or could be bedroom, living room, and dining room etc), kitchen and sauna lol. Electricity: we have to pay 2 electric bills here, one to the producer and one to the company who "moves" it from the producer to us. Water bills are paid on row houses, semi-detached and detached homes like your electricity is paid there. Hope this gives some perspective.
I think a washer/dryer combo is good. You can turn on the washing machine, go shopping, in the city to the movies whatever and when you come back your laundry is washed and dry. You can fold it and put it away :D
I think it’s neat, but the repair geek in me freaks out about heavy heating elements in an environment that also get’s wet, and similar concerns about airflow during the drying cycle somewhere you want things water-tight… But if we can keep the ISS flying, these things can be overcome.
The Walrus we also didn't use the dryer for every laundry. Most of our stuff we dry on the drying rack. We only use the dryer part for bedsheets and towels. Bedsheets because they are so big and towels because my boyfriend likes how soft they are after this :D So it is one to two loads in a month of drying in the machine.
tjb62 A Nylon bag is actually also a plastic bag. Just more sturdy and nearly forever reusable. Nylon is a brand name from the DuPont company. It is Polyhexamethylenadipinsäureamid (German, the English is probably quite similar).
Normally you know how much energy you are going to need. For one person you say you need about 50€ a month but if you know you have an old oven or washing machine which are causing much higher costs you better go with 60€ a month. For every more person in your household, you would expect 30€ more. So three people living in a household would be around approximately 110€ a month, I already counted a cost buffer in. Another thing is when you know you spend much time at home you probably want to pay a bit more than if you are out of the house most of the time. You probably also want to pay a bit more each month in advance to not have a negative surprise at the end of the year. In fact, there are some companies like "Yellow Strom" which are offering a machine to count your energy for your basement which you can supervise via smartphone. So you always have the control over your costs and you can detect energy consuming devices very fast. But those machines cost you like 20€ a month on top of your bill.
Every country has it's good, well-thought out things, and every country has it's own ridiculousnesses. The German concept of 'moving a kitchen' is absolutely ridiculous and idiotic. The sink and cabinetry ought to be fixed. It would make sense that you move your own appliances: ~stove ~fridge ~dishwasher ~etc. The idea of an instant-on water heater is of course intelligent, ditto with the 'natural lighting' windows (not an original German idea BTW). Many countries take this a step further making the windows openable (for air circulation). Remember that Germans are mechanical; it's the French, Italians, Spanish ~etc that have style; Germans have no real concept of style, their style is frankly very STERILE and COLD (BORING).
The point is nearly everyone payed for his kitchen a lot of money and you never would make a such a gift to the next people. We can´t go out of this system ;) We are GEIZIG- stingy. And it´s maybe a hygiene thing that we Germans a bit different.
These Outlets are called "Putzsteckdosen" or translated "Cleaning Outlets" used for vacuum cleaners or similar. For more questions on german electrical installation please write me a personal message, because this is heavely regulated
I live in Finland, and a lot of these are weird to me also (like moving the kitchen). We used to have the same system with electricity bills, but in the last 10 years or so it has changed, because the electric companies now have meters that they can read remotely, and now you get billed for only the amount you use. The weird thing is that you might have to pay two different electric companies. One that actually generates the electricity that you use, and your local company for transfer. You can also just use your local company but often it is cheaper to buy the electricity from another company. And the transfer bill is always bigger than the actual electricity bill. Another weird thing we have is water billing. It has also changed in the last 10 years, the system used to be that your whole apartment building calculated an estimate for the water used by the whole building, divided it by how many people lived in the building, and you paid that estimate directly to your apartment building. Now, because lot of the older buildings (built in the 1960s) have had big renovations with pipes and stuff, every apartment has an individual water meter. You still pay an estimate for each person, and at the end of the year you get a bill or a refund. This system is way more fair because you used to have to pay for your neighbor's water if they used a lot and you used a little.
I bought a washer/dryer machine 1,5 months ago: if you have limited space it's better than nothing, but it might take a few initial failed attempts before you get dry clothes. It isn't efficient enough at washing and drying quickly to be useful for a large family (dailywash is 1hr 15-30m, drying is 2hrs-ish maybe more) It works but I would be lying if I said it work just as well as seperate washer dryer solutions. The washing function is just like any other machine, the dryer can get a bit tricky: at first I didn't think it was working because the clothes were still damp after a full drycycle - turns out you got take it out of the machine, leave it in the basket for the water to evaporate fully. Also you can't dry as big a load as you can wash - our's will wash 8 kg and dry 6 kg, which means even if you just wash 6 kg, because it is wet, and therefore heavier, it won't dry properly.
Usually in my area, a normal apartment has a cellar and with that a washing room, where all the apartments have their washing machines. Usually, that "washing machine in the kitchen or bathroom" thing isnt something, that people would normally do...especially outside of big cities. That is a big city thing. A lot of floorplans in the city were made back in the day and they tended to bunker down every room. Probably in the big city, it is an opportunity to have an apartment fitting different demands. People can choose how outfit the rooms....that comes at the cost of being more open. I would say, that real houses built by people for themselves are nowadays more open and less of a maze. Sometimes, when there is a lot of smaller rooms, it really is something uncomfortable even for germans. Best way in big cities to escape your nasty home is go out and fill the day with activity. Back at my parents in the countryside outside of cologne, I like relaxing in the garden or even in the house, but in those apartments I fell the need to get out and escape my living space for as long as possible. :)
really? huh...yeah i guess i looked at apartments mainly in the cities of Mainz and Wiesbaden and the surrounding areas, and they all had "in house" washer/dryers.
only 38 % of all Germans live in individual houses. The rest lives in apartments which are in buildings with more than one apartment. 45 % of all Germans live in apartment buildings with more than 3 apartments. I have always lived in city apartments and I have always had my washer in the kitchen or bathroom. I feel very cosy in my Berlin apartment and I do not feel the need to "escape"
You can check your electric meter by yourself and calculate how much you have used. I know people who have an Excel sheet for that. Every month they check the meter for electricity, water and gas and calculate how much they have used. So they don't have a surprise at the end of the year.
And you can usually adjust how much you pay per month very easily, so I always try to pay 5€ more than the estimated amount and have a guaranteed payback. I like that system, it makes it easy to plan your monthly budget and you don't have to worry, if you used more in one month, maybe because of visitors or anything, it evens out til the end of the year.
Another advantage to the German bed is when one sleeper tosses and turns, it doesn't interrupt the sound sleeper. The separate blankets prevent people from sleepstealing, leaving the sound sleeper freezing. This is a sound-sleeper friendly bed.
It is not weird at all. Some people like modern kitchens other people love old fashioned ones...better to bring your own kitchen. ;) I do not want to have a kitchen other people have used before, it´s kind of disgusting.
Welcome to IKEA!! Flash heaters like she is showing were in use when I was stationed in Germany both in the 60's and 70's. We had flash heaters at every location that had water coming in. Many of the clothes washers heated their own water with an internal flash heater. Combo washer/dryers were small and did take an inordinate amount of time to wash and dry. The wall plug seen next to her arm by the door is for 220/240 volt wiring. If you were/are using any American devices that require electricity to operate, they either have to have an internal transformer built in, or you need a transformer box to plug your items into or you WILL FRY them instantly. Her apartment looks very much like the two different ones I and my family lived in, except ours were larger in size. I do find her very informative as to the differences between the US and Germany. Simply put, they have some items we do not have that would work well here, and the US has items that would work well in Germany that they would wonder about.
Classic American. You talk like in "the States... We have this, we don't have this...", VT, CA, MA, etc. uses the same system for plastic and glass bottles. Same for washer/drier machines, actually it saves space and they are in the bath. Light-Windows are common to allow natural light.... Fold the recycling bags... All that we use bags are foldable... Your apartment is huge!!! (For Germany), make it nicer no ugly. Put order.
David Squires lived in 12 states in US any hood is good enough to keep the fire alarm off while cooking steak, simple fish or so... From Vermont down to Florida. I wish I had a door like in other countries and window. I do limit my cooking while in the States.... Meat? Oh, yes that's right north americans use grills!!! (Out of the house).
In the US, a bedroom is defined by as having a window, a closet and ventalation. However, it depends on the state in which you live. Codes are set by the state .
You can close the kitchen door and keep the smell out
@Kelly: Exactly what I wanted to ask. What do you do in a small apartment in the US? You always have a hood installed above the oven and it makes the job?
honestly, i've never even thought about wanting to keep the food smell out so it's just never been a concern for me. food smells good!! and i've never cooked anything so strong smelling and in such a concentrated area that it somehow permeates the fabric of my furniture, etc.
Try to cook Sauerkraut for 1 hour and you would like to close the door ;-)... another reason: I don't like to hear the dishwasher when I watch tv...
Carola in Paris | Yes! I cook with a lot of garlic and onions etc., not a smell I want to sit in all day. Or when you cook cauliflower or when you’re deep frying fish. I especially don’t like cooking smells when I’m not eating.
haha i guess i really just don't cook anything that i'm not cool with smelling for the next hour or two
You need a „Tüten-Tüte“ xD .... just use one bag and put all other bags inside. The one bag is the „Tüten-Tüte“ :)
good idea!
Hexalo25 That’s exactly what we have also with the same term. 😂
Also, use bags made out of fabric...they take up less space because you can simply but them all in one bag. There are also special bags which can be put together to a very small size, so that you can easily carry them around in your handbag. Just in case you are somewhere and decide to make a spur of the minute purchase.
swanpride The main point is reuse, reuse, reuse. See also www.nabu.de/umwelt-und-ressourcen/oekologisch-leben/alltagsprodukte/19463.html (German)
Same here, every house I've been in has a "bags bag", nobody likes paying for bags when you've already got a bag full of bags haha
I think many people watching your videos are Germans, as am I. I think it is really interesting to experience our environment through the eyes of a foreigner/ someone who is used to something else. It highlights the cultural differences and you learn a lot about the customs and habits of other countries. Thank you, this was very interesting. :)
I’m happy you find my videos interesting! :) I enjoy having the opportunity to share my perspective with y’all and hope to keep doing it!
Yes, which makes some really weird viewing. When you cook fish, you don't want the whole house smelling like fried fish for days, hence the door in the kitchen. 2in1 machines are a space saving thing. I have one now for some years. Works great. Put the laundry in, set the timer in the morning, and when you come home, the washer and dryer just finished. (Better make sure you buy a safety tested appliance, or you risk a fire when you are not home)
Many issues which are "weird" for you are having to done to save energy ! Therefor we have doors in the kitchen and also in the living room. Every room should only have the temperature which it requires. We are much more concerned regarding saving energy. Same applies to windows. The construction is much elaborated into keeping the heat in or out.
Where as here in the US the only room on the 1st floor of my house that has a door is our bathroom. The living room, kitchen and dining room are all open to each other, with natural light flooding the area. 2nd floor each room has its own door and 3rd floor is again wide open. I have heating/cooling zones for each floor that are independent of each other. We place more value on being able to have an open, flowing floor plan that is easier to have many people over to entertain than keeping doors shut.
That I have very mild winters where it is rarely below freezing makes heating a non-issue. Our very hot summers, on the other hand, put a premium on air movement and cooling.
the reason for the door between the living room and the kitchen is to keep the "smell' out or so the next dish can be a bit of suprise.
@Ted Schoenling The trend is also in Germany since about 10 years to have more open plan. I actually plan myself to refurbish and modernize my house by connecting kitchen with living room, also to let the room look way bigger. The most modern homes have it. But for all other rooms I keep the doors, especially for noise reasons.
Here in Poland as well - as it costs less to put in fewer walls. People like the feeling of a bit more space. I think as more people have their own apartments (young couples) and aren't sharing mom and dad's. the need to separate all the sleeping areas off isn't quite as important as the couple has their own place - not just one room inside a larger house.
the reason whyt here is a kitchen door in germany has nothing to do with saving energy.
the reason why there is a kitchen door is that many germans like sauerkraut and sauerkraut releases a very foul stench when cooked and you certainly don't want your living room smelling like that.
and even germans who dislike sauerkraut, such as myself, may still use stuf like onions or garlic so i still apreciate a closable kitchen door.
additionally there is also always the danger of you fucking up and burning your food, or it spoiling which can release even more disgusting odours.
Open your windows complete after showering. Tilted windows won't get the moisture out of a Bathroom.
Window gekippt after showering does work for us.
Bathrooms should be vented shortly with the window fully opened, even in winter. SHORTLY. We call that "Stoßlüften", and it makes sure that you get the maximum moisture out while loosing minimum heat actually.
Why not cold showers? It‘s healthier and there is no Dampf in the Badezimmer.
@@gustavgnoettgen In cold and wet weather the warm air in the bathroom is just catching more moisture from the cold air. The advice here ( netherlands) is to keep the bathroom door closed to avoid moisture in the house and the bathroomwindow closed also but to use the mechanic ventilation on high setting in the bathroom. Also drying the walls and floor after showering helps a lot.
I think open floorplans are more suited to warm climates while closed floorplans (rooms with doors) are better for colder climates.
Also, we keep our bags folded up and kept in one of the bags. Australia has had reusable bags for years now, though only lately has there been a big push to get rid of single-use plastic bags.
This place and the one I lived in during my teens both have laundries kind-of in the kitchen, but not quite. This house, the laundry is in what is basically a big cupboard - it has enough room for a washing machine and a sink, with a dryer bolted to the wall above the sink and a shelf above the washing machine bay that has the (small!) hot water tank (yes, it's easy to run cold in the shower) and a small amount of spare shelf space that can hold a few bottles and/or boxes (of washing detergent). The place I lived in my teens had a semi-separate room at the back of the kitchen - it had a wall and an open door frame between the kitchen and laundry.
Other places I recall living in had totally separate laundries.
I feel most times I see videos comparing Germany and America, Australia leans more towards the American method over-all.
Open floor plans cost more regardless of climate. Air conditioning or heating a large, open space is expensive. Open plan is cheaper to build and gives an impression of a bigger home, but they'll cost forever. This is magnified in Australia by housing trends that use not only open plan but large glass areas too, because glass is cheaper than bricks. In summer, air conditioning is virtually mandatory, and electricity prices just keep going up.
they have open floor plans in germany as well
In Germany this type of Bathroom is called "Tageslichtbad" (daylight bath). Most tennants will pay more for an appartment with a bathroom having a window. There are appartments or houses without a window in the bathroom, they must have a ventilation system to prevent mold.
Forget about the 2-in-1 machines, they're crap. In most cases you can load 8kg of laundry to wash, but for drying it can only handle 6kg so you have to unload some parts. It's only a good thing if you don't have the space.
The water heater: In the US this type of water heater is upcoming. But in most cases they use natural gas instead of electricity. Instantaneous water heater, sometimes called tankless water heater. They are more expensive, but they are more efficient and will last longer. The water heater tanks you're used to know are in the inside made of steel with a glass coating. They'll last ten years, then you must exchange them. Tankless water heaters are stainless steel inside, they'll last three or four times longer.
The thing with the blanket: At one time I had only one blanket, but at night my girlfriend always had several layers of blanket wraped around her and I had nothing. That's the reason for two blankets, just to prevent "tug-of-war" during the night.
If you would use much more electricity than they estimate they would raise the monthly bill. And if you use much less they would lower the monthly bill.
It's not all about the number of rooms, there's also a thing called "Wohnfläche" (living area) in m². You'll find this mostly in houses. In this calculation is everything except corridors, staircases, basement, attic. If you have a miter sill the area below it will be rated less, depending on how high the pitched roof is there. If it's below 2m the area counts 50%, if it's less than 1m it's not getting into the calculation.
thank you for sharing all of this information :) i had heard about the calculations of space as you described...i think we have something similar to this in the US as well. I feel like i read before that if you can't stand up in a space, then its square footage is either greatly reduced in the count of square footage or that it doesn't count at all.
You forgot the heating. In Germany we use hot water radiators in most cases, with a thermostat for every single radiator. In the US you can find them sometimes too, sometimes an older steam radiator system but in most cases you'll find an HVAC (heating, ventilating and air conditioning) system which can heat during the winter AND cool during the summer. But this is depending on the state you're living in.
Yes.A bathroom without a window is a nono. I lived in one and never again.
+holycrow! Yup. Currently have one without a window. Hate it. I leave the ventilation on very long after I've showered. The entire house is very moist, so if I don't I'll get mold everywhere. Thankfully we are in all likelyhood moving in a few years. :D
Thanks Marcel - this is the most useful and comprehensive feedback
I have seen for the video. Especially calculation of the apartment area.
More doors means less energy for heating. In germany it is cooler than in the U.S. and energy is more expensive (cause a higher amount of it is from regenerative energies). So germans want to safe electrical energy for saving money.
and also doors can provide privacy. if you need to discuss something sensitive with your husband(i.e. that the chicken you're serving for lunch is actualy a rabbit) and don't want children to hear it. also it muffles the noizes from the kitchen(blender).
Germany it is cooler than the U.S. that is funny . It depends on were you live in the U.S. . A large part of the U.S. is much colder than Germany .
But the average annual temperature in the US is higher than in germany. Sure, there are states like Alaska, Idaho, Maine and Minnesota, but because of states like Alabama, California, Florida, Hawaii and Texas, the average is higher.
List of countries by average yearly temperature U.S. 8.55 Germany 8.50
Yes, energy is more expensive caused by the regenerative energies. But the rest of the answer is bullshit. It's the common standart to have doors since hundrets of years. Most houses in Germany are older than 50 years, nobody thinks about energy saving at this time.
the origin from that was the time without heater. The people often has only one fireplace in the kitchen, which is not enough for the hole house. With a door the people could seperatet the kitchen and chill in a warm room.
In addition actuall the most houses are heated by oil or gas. Electric heating is very unusual here in germany.
About the low popularity of air conditioning, even in public buildings... It all comes down to energy costs and the fact that ACs use lots of energy. Energy costs are higher than in the US and there is also a higher awareness about how energy consuption takes its toll on the environment. Thats why our buildings are better insulated, why we have double/triple glazed windows, why we don't heat with electricity (unless there's really no other option). The same reasoning is behind why non-US cars have amazing gas mileage ;-)
The funny thing about living without A/C in Europe is that when I go back to the US I set the thermostat to 76F in summertime. I vaguely recall us keeping 72F year round when I was a kid. But when it hits 100F outside, I do miss A/C ... it is no fun closing the blinds, sitting very still, and breathing shallow breaths ;)
In the US it’s cheaper to run the AC than the heat. My home is all electric and the cost of heating the home in the winter is double or more than the cost to cool in the summer. We converted our attached one car garage to a room and installed a ductless heating unit which I really like even better than air ducts. Y home was built in 1963 and we actually have radiant heating in the ceilings with an individual control in each room. It’s really terrible and expensive to use. Heat rises so your face would be hot and your feet cold. Terrible and inefficient design.
You don't heat with electricity? Then what do you heat with? Here in BC, over 90% of our heat is derived from the burning of natural gas. 😊
Erick Palacios mostly natural gas or fuel oil. There are also things like district heating, where heat is generated centrally at a garbage incineration plant and then distributed to nearby districts via insulated pipes.
InLoveWithFlight bullshit
Electricity bill: The electricity company would have 12 times higher personnel costs if they would send out personnel to read out the electricity usage monthly. Therefore you were asked for an estimation of your annual usage of electricity on which your monthly advance payments are based on. After the first year your monthly payment will be adjusted based on your actual annual use. If it was lower than estimated it will be reduced; if it was higher it will be adjusted accordingly.
I used to have a combined washer/dryer. It took ages to get the laundry dry and I really did not like the fact that a wash/dry circle almost took five hours. But my bathroom was that small that I could not put a seperate dryer. I therefore preferred to dry my laundry on a rack on the balcony and have only used the dryer on rainy or snowy winter days.
In US, many meters now transmit the meter reading to the central office so they never actually send someone out to read the meter. Many companies still give option to have a monthly usage bill or an average bill based on history so that you aren't surprised by a huge bill in the middle of summer or winter.
thanks for sharing about the washer/dryer combo! i kind of assumed it would take forever and a day to get laundry done but wanted to see what people who own them actually think. as for the electricity bills...we have automatic meter readings so this idea of sending someone from house to house and apartment to apartment to read electric meters is completely foreign to me. you can read more about our AMRs here if you want since i didn't talk about it at all - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_meter_reading
@ Kelly - new German houses are also equipped with smart meters nowadays; old houses and apartments still have the manual meters which are located centrally in the cellar for all residents of the apartment. My heating system has been changed to smart meters two years ago. No longer need to take half a day off to let the heating provider into my appartment to read out the annual usage.
@YTViever - We Germans call cellar (Keller) what you call basement (Untergeschoß) ;-)
@ Kelly - I love to see how foreigners are seeing my country; I also love to get informed about their culture and pecularities. Your vlog has arisen another question to me. In Germany most kitchens have a special three-phase electric power appliance which enables to connect electric stoves with 380-400 volts. The regular voltage is 230-240 volts. How does this work in the U.S. with 110 volts?
While "furnished" is a plus for an American apartment, which makes it more expensive, most Germans would see a furnished apartment as a minus, because they want to express themselves by the style of their interior. It is really bad to live in furniture (including kitchen) that represents the style of the person who lived there before. If an apartment is furnished, you have to spend money to get rid of the furniture.
i mean...it's only the kitchen and light fixtures...so for me, if i look at an apartment and don't like the kitchen, then i won't get the apartment. you can find fully furnished apartments in the US of course, i saw some in Germany as well, but they're the rarity. Usually it's unfurnished and we don't consider the kitchen to be "furniture" if that makes sense
If people won't get the apartment, because they do not like the kitchen, that is a very good reason for the landlord not to offer a kitchen at all.
see, and i would look at it as "the landlord needs to update/renovate this kitchen"...which then makes me start to wonder if maybe we are just less picky about our kitchens? i feel like i'm pretty picky but not to the point where i would rather deal with moving my own kitchen place to place. but perhaps this is just me because of how frequently i've moved.
In the US I also notice that there are residential areas where all single houses look more or less the same. That looks quite creepy from a German point of view. Sometimes there are hundreds of more or less identical homes, especially in some cities who used to grow very fast in the past - like Phoenix, Arizona. In Germany even "Reihenhäuser" (are they called "row houses" in the US) often look quite different. Even the roof tiles are often quite different, as people try there best to have a very individual home.
Another thing: Even if people buy a new kitchen for their apartment, it may not always be custom fit. That strongly depends on the budget. Most young people would order kitchen at IKEA :-)
And I would never get an appartment without kitchen, so that's a very good reason for the landlord to offer a kitchen :) When I'm looking at the current flat offers at immowelt or immobilienscout24 in my city or Berlin, more than half of it have a kitchen, so maybe it's getting more common for German landlords to include kitchens nowadays.
I am german and i could build an entiere tent-village out of that bags.
GenericJohnDoe Thank you! I was like, she only has 5 bags and thinks that is a lot? OK wow. Haha 😂
Me too... 😂
GenericJohnDoe 😂😂😂
GenericJohnDoe ja moin was geht ab wenn du deutsch bist schreib zurück alder
I remember when I went to Canada, people were quite confused, that I would close doors behind me. In Germany there is a saying "were you born in a tent?". That refers to people not closing doors and is often said to kids to teach them. For Germans it is quite common to actually close doors, for multiple reasons.
1. to keep the heat inside
That comes from the times we still used ovens and could only heat up one or two rooms. Many German grandparents still do that kind of thing to not use the heating system, but the oven and therefore only heat up one or two rooms.
2. to actually have some time alone
Germans really love alone time and we don't see it as offending to just close the doors if you want to study, or actually just take some time for yourself. People in Canada were quite offended with this at first, because they thought we wouldn't like to be around them.
3. to show that we don't want to be bothered
Especially in a professional work environment, a closed door tells you to knock before coming in or the person doesn't want to be bothered at all
4. to keep the smell out
That's for the kitchens because many Germans just don't really like their living room to smell like food
So yeah, Germans like doors a lot :D but open floor plans are getting to Germany and many new apartments already have at least an open kitchen.
Ju we in the UK use the phrase "Were you born in a barn?
Ju, we have nearly the same saying here in the US. We say, "Were you born in a barn?" We don't close doors as much as Germans do, but when someone is coming in from the cold and they leave the door standing open this is said. We try to conserve heat because the utility costs are so high. I guess yours are higher, but ours are high for us.
Terry, sorry, I didn't see your comment until after I posted mine.
I did not know there was a similar saying in the UK. Nice to know, thank you both :)
Yes here it is also because of the utility costs. But well, Germans love their doors closed.
in Poland we say "Do you have a tail?" if you don't close the door XD
This entire concept of moving with your kitchen is extremely bizarre and makes absolutely no sense to me. The rest is mostly similar to Sweden, haha. It's funny how some things you take for granted can be a huge culture shock to others. Like the way front doors often lead into the living room in the US, I think that's so weird especially considering a lot of houses have carpeted floors and many people wear shoes inside.
I was about to say the same about front doors, why would you walk with dirty shoes into your or a friend's living room? for me, it sounds both rude and maybe a little gross.
There are apartments which include a kitchen in Germany, but mostly the kitchen furniture just suck. It's enough if you're a student or something who doesn't cook that much anyways, but in general Germans enjoy high quality kitchens so they move with it. Also, if an apartment includes furniture, the landlord can demand a higher rent. So it's cheaper to bring a kitchen with you for a long term.
I just find it so weird, it must be so much work having to rip your kitchen out and re-installing it, or buying a new kitchen if your old one doesn't work when you move into a new place. Here, if people don't like the kitchen in the place they're moving into, they simply put up with it or renovate it. Or move into a different place. I live in a student apartment so I can't really do anything about my kitchen, but it serves my needs so I don't mind. If I were to move into a different apartment and had to bring my current kitchen with me I would be so frustrated, haha.
Well, I guess it's something people are used to here. I'm a student, too, and wouldn't be satisfied with the included kitchen in a German student apartment though :D I think Germans are just very picky about their kitchens. Renovating a kitchen is not that easy as you can see in the video, it has to fit to the room size. In this case, generic Germans who appreciate high quality. In many households, the kitchen is more important than the living room. And if you earn a middle class wage, people usally invest in their kitchen. Like, I don't know anyone from the middle class who hasn't got a sick stove. I never saw such nice kitchens in an apartment where a kitchen is included.
Plus as I said, a landlord can demand any rent for an apartment which is furnitured, so it is excluded from the laws for the rent regulation. For a long term, it's just nicer to have a nice kitchen and to pay less rent.
Aoife Insane Not everywhere in Northern Germany
4:59 yes you are nuts, we only have 2 of those large shopping bags ;-) no one will rip your head off if you walk into Edeka withe a Rewe bag :p
lol i'm just so forgetful...or i buy more than i expected or i stop by the store on my way home from somewhere and hadn't planned to....i just need to keep like a small fabric bag in my purse i think
Kelly, you’re in Mainz, right? They should have the reusable bags which can be folded into a mini bag and kept in your purse in their little ‘containers’. Actually, I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t have them all over Germany but if not, just go to a Drogerie in Frankfurt/Main, I’m sure they still sell them for, like, a Euro and a half or so.
Kelly does her thing but it is not hard to have one of those material bag in your bag or car... I do so, and have no problem with plastic bag that is not good for environment
This is what keeps happening to me. I usually have no way of carrying a huge bag all day at work, but then I need one directly after work, but before I go home. So I end up buying more of the damn things.
I do it all the time when I travel to Germany. Actually have a smaller Edeka bag and a bigger Rewe bag and fold them up and put in my baggage on every trip. Have taken them in Edeka, Rewe, Lidl, and Netto. Even into a grocery store in Austria, and a Tesco in London. No one gave it a second glance.
Doors for the seperate rooms: it's an energy saving thing. You can adjust the temperature in the different rooms - e.g. cooler in the bedroom when you sleep (I sleep with the window open even in winter), warmer in the living room. With open plan you will have a mean average temperature in the whole house, which costs more energy as you will be heating places unnecessarily. Same goes for the light windows above the doors. If you didnt have them, you would need some form of artificial light in the hallway which uses electricity.
ohhhhh!!!! oh wow. i can't believe i didn't really put this together especially when i always tell people that i love these individual room heaters for that exact reason. thank you for explaining that to me though it was probably painfully obvious to you haha
however this not the only reason. It's also because that you can choose which room will be used for which purpose. Because some people want to have their home office, or just want to have a bigger bed room.
And it's also about being more private in some way. We often use living rooms also for people who want to stay for a night, that they can sleep there
except for the kitchen situation, I believe that the apartment is European style for apartments.
Yeah the kitchen is just weird. Seems like a big unessecary hassle to move something that will basically be the same anyway.
It's exactly the same here in Spain too. I tought it was normal until I saw this video... is it weird to have doors? energy eficiency!
I was so confused when I went to the USA for the first time. It took me about 20 minutes to figure out how to to switch the bedside lamp off. It’s kinda funny how different those things are!
Lol! Exactly! :) It took me forever to figure out how to use my manual rolladen blinds in my first german apartment 😂
I would've taken me about 20 seconds... the plug.
I also experienced outlets that would turn on and off with the light switch at the door. It took me a while to figure out why my bedside lamp wouldn't turn on or my phone wasn't charging
The missing kitchen has to do with german tenant protection law. If the landlord owns the kitchen, he has to take care of it. If the renter calls he has to fix every dripping water faucet. Since this is way to expensive the are no kitchens owned by landlords.
i never even would've considered this. thanks for sharing!
to be honest i do my own repairs to my "einbaukuche" then the i never have the owner come which I think he likes.
It also would work viceversa I believe. If the kitchen is broken, the landlord has to fix it, since it's part of he service. If you brake it, you're obliged to repair it, since it isn't yours. That's just an inconvenience in the landlord-renter relationship (at least in my country it works like this).
This makes sense. Even though, the similar law applies in Finland and nobody moves with their own kitchen. Your fridge breaks, you call the landlord, they are responsible for replacing it. The pipes breaks, you call the administrator of the building, they send the repair man to fix it. But people move here more than in Germany, the basic rental agreement is for a year, not 5 or 7. And you don't have to paint your walls white when you move out. Although, I think this is actually a good thing to do.
The thing with kitchens is too, that some landlords in germany prohibit you to sell your build in kitchen to the next person. So you have to move it out.
By law a landlord can ask for up to 3 monthly rents as a deposit. The reason for this large deposit has to do with german tenant protection laws- even if a tenant fails to pay rent eviction is a long& bureaucratic process during which the tenant stays in the rented apartment /house .....and there are tenants who will destroy/loot the property during this time ( so-called "Mietnomaden") Also, most contracts state that tenants need to repaint/renovate the apartment when moving out.
ah ok...so a bit of what i suspected. thank you for sharing this information with more detail :)
You normally have to pay 2,38 monthly rents. The rent for two month, plus the sales tax (Mehrwertsteuer).
The rent + 19% MwSt * 2 = 2,38.
drunk4rd. Deposit up to 3 monthly rents. No additional tax since it is neither a sale nor a service provided - just a deposit.
Umsatz oder Mehrwertsteuerpflichtig ist eine Kaution nicht da es sich weder um eine Kauf /Verkauf noch um eine Dienstleistung handelt- es ist nur ein Pfand der hinterlegt wird ( max. 3fache der Kalt- oder wenn per Mietvertrag vereinbart Pauschalmiete)
deutschesmietrecht.de/kaution/66-mietkaution-drei-kaltmieten.html
drunk4rd du hast die Maklerprovision im Kopf.. Die Kaution ist keine Dienstleistungen.. also ist sie ohne Steuern.
There is not VAT / MwSt. in a safety deposit (Mietkaution). I guess you confused that with the fee for the real estate broker. That used to be 2 monthly rents + 19% VAT.
tip for the bags: fold them once and put them in one of the bags (so you have one bag with all the others in it. Then put this bag in a niche like the one you have because your kitchen doesn't fit correctly. Due to the fact, that the bags are flexible, they can be squeezed in pretty much any place and if they are inside eachother, they do not fly around like yours :).
I myself have some handmade bags made of two layers of thick cotton, which is perfect to keep cold stuff cold and is good for protecting fragile stuff at least a little bit. I have 4 of those but I always need to keep track of them, otherwise I don't have them, when I need them XD.
that system sounds much more reasonable than mine hahaha if you can even call it a system
Your German hotwater heater is a "Durchlaufheizer" a "flow-through-heater", and actually requires much more wattage than a boiler to heat the water. You are correct that for your usage it is probably more efficient. For a larger family, a hot water tank actually makes more sense. Some places in Germany use a heating concept called "Fernwärme", in which your heating and hot water is piped in directly from a nearby power plant, where the warmth produced in the power generation, instead of getting blown off into the atmosphere, is used to heat water for heating purposes in many homes in the region. This greatly increases the energy efficiency of the power plant, and is a very comfortable way of receiving your heating and hot water needs as a consumer.
thanks for sharing :) i didn't know about this Fernwärme concept
In the winter you can see under which streets there are pipes for Fernwärme because that's where the snow melts very quickly.
There are many concepts for heating and hot water in Germany. There is Fernwärme from power plants, boilers and Durchlauferhitzer running on electricity like you have, Gas-Etagen-Heizung which is a kind of Durchlauferhitzer and heating combo running on gas but only for one apartment and last but not least you have central heating and hot water running on oil for the whole apartment building.
@Eric:
Hot water doesn't need heating...it's already hot! Whether they are tank or tankless (on-demand) units, they all are just "water heaters." ;-)
-- BR
A 'flow through heater' needs a 3 phase connection (like the kitchen stove) because it needs a lot of energy to heat the water instantly. It's still more energy efficent than a boiler. Because there are no losses storing hot water and the water might be heater by a blank wire running through the water.
A boiler is better if you only have one phase (like most houses in the united states). Still, using electrical energy for this is a terrible waste unless it's like solar/wind energy.
There are natural gas variants, i remember the pilot flame happily burning visibly in the bathroom, but yeah, natural gas can lead to problems like your house exploding and sutff. (The house your apartement is in either had this or coal ovens before it got remodelled). So centrally delivered gas is kinda getting less used nowadays, oil/natural gas tanks are a thing with normal houses, though.
The point I made is that for a larger family, where much more hot water gets used throughout the day, a boiler can be more efficient, because in fact most of the water actually gets used without having to be kept warm and reheated needlessly, and clearly, it ought to be a gas or solar powered unit, and not electricity from the grid.
For a one or two person household, the flow-through device is certainly more efficient.
I'd put all your shopping bags into one of the big shopping bags and keep them in that empty space where the kitchen didn't quite fit. That's how we do it in the Balkans :)
The magic word is 'Klappbox' or 'Klappkiste'. No more bags needed.Ever.
Hot water heaters: The german system with the continuous-flow heaters normally doesn't work in US houses because you need very much electrical power instantly which the 110 volt electrical systems in the US can not provide.
i didn't even think about that! this whole time i've been like, why do we not use these?? well that's a shame...
Our hot water tanks run on 110 volts. We do have continuous water heaters, it is becoming more popular in the states.
I am not an electrical engineer, but that does not sound right. If that were the case, then you would also not have electrical ovens in the US, because they need a lot of power too. As far as I know, a continuous flow heater usually has a separate line with a powerful fuse in Germany, and I see no reason they could not provide that in the US as well. They just have to use thicker cables, because the current would be a little more than double of what it is in Germany to transmit the same power. But of course, that applies to all electric appliances.
Not that easy. US houses normally have 1 phase power connection for the whole house. Each german apartment has to have 3 phase power connection.
Kelly does her thing the same reason why electric kettles aren‘t a thing in the us. They would take too long.
I feel like the only people who watch these kinds of videos are germans, does anyone else even actually care? And why am I, a german, watching videos about germany? Don’t I already know everything? What is this
hahahaha i was also very surprised how many Germans like to watch these types of videos. my first "germany vs america" type video was my first apartment tour video (i published it in march i think) and it went through the roof in views, mostly all of germans. i had made the video thinking only americans would watch it haha i guess it's really interesting to see what a non-German thinks of Germany :)
Kelly does her thing maybe we’re looking for things to correct or questions to answer. I dunno
Katheyy you bring up a great point...i think there might really be something to that based on the types of comments i get on my videos
I also watch "silas nacita" and "wanted adventure" idk why 😓
its a mix of procastinating and pretending to learn for my english exam 😫
I am Irish and watching it, why? Because it is almost midnight and I'm bored.
No. You‘re not. We “store” our bags in the trunk of our car. So we’re always sure to have them along, when we do groceries 😂 ok, probably we’re nuts.
lol! that's a smart method though!
So you bring in your groceries than take your empty bags back out to the car? That is weird. Not everyone lives on the ground floor unit.
John Smith well, we take them back to the car the next day when we head to work. Most of the grocery we (Me&my wife) do after work, when we’re on the way home.
We do it exactly like antonbra. However, our trunk is full of bags... :)
I use reusable bags not to avoid the 5 cents a bag charge we have in Canada , but because the bag handles do not break or the bottom falls out like plastic bags.
We have the same thing with electricity bills here in Poland. It's because the electricity meters are installed in our houses/apartment buildings, and the electricity company needs to send an employee to read what the meter says. It's easier for them to do it once a year rather than once a month ;)
The kitchen doors are often also to get no food/ cooking smell all over the flat, most german foodsmells you can smell after a long while also in the room! So if you keep the door closed you can be for sure to just have the smells in the kitchen, most german people also open the kitchenwindows when they cook, because then the smell will go outside and not everywhere inside of your home, furniture, pillows, clothes. especially if you life in a small flat (maybe just one room) or in a flat with roommates (1 kitchen, maybe 2 rooms, each person have it‘s own room with everything inside - bed, table, closet ect), and in the area from flatdoor to kitchen (flur), all germans have their jackets and shoes and the people don‘t want the foodsmell on their jackets. Also it‘s for safety if maybe your flat burns, you can rescue yourself if closing the door in the room where you are. That can save your life. If you just have one big room with kitchen and everything inside and all will be full of smoke it will be much harder to save yourself. Sorry for any grammar mistakes, i‘m german and almost everything i know of english language i teached myself (learned from movies, audiobooks etc) lg
So people in german don‘t like to have foodsmells everywhere for a long time in their homes!
i guess i just never thought that much about food smells. maybe the food i cook doesn't have as strong of odors? your english is fine and it's very impressive that you taught yourself!
Cabbage and fish tend to be some of the bigger offenders...
@kelly you‘re american or? My lovely friend from indiana always says the same ;) i think american people are so kind with people from other countrys (english people are not) so thank you so much. By the way, i think you make very funny and interesting videos i like to learn things ;)
The washer/dryer combos take up less space, but cost more than separate machines. The combos run twice as long, so they break down more quickly, and when they break they cost a lot more to fix. We had a combo, and it was ok until it broke, then it was impossible to get it repaired, so we ended up buying separate machines.
Jim Fortune they don't run twice as long. If you wash for two hours and dry four two hours it's 4 hours. When you use a Combo ist washes and dry for 4 hours, same time.
Also the price depends on the quality of the combo and the individual machines. You can buy a combo for 500€ and you can buy individual machines for 1000€ each.
No my washer dryer takes 2 hours to wash and 4 hours to dry its why i brought a dryer
PaulaSB12 Well my washdryer needs 4hours to wash and dry
6regor89
My washdryer also need 4 hours (from LG) and has the energy efficiency grade A...
those machines wont last more than 2 yrs.
I've never had an apartment here (in Germany) where my washer and/or dryer could fit in... so they are located in a room in the basement story, the "Waschkeller". This goes for every tenant in this house. Maybe because the kitchens are so small, mine is hardly the size of yours. Same for my bathroom, there is absolutely no space for a washer.
Regarding the weird moving with kitchens - I am from the north of Germany, close to Hamburg. 'up there' it's usual that the apartments also come with a kitchen in it. When I moved to Düsseldorf, I was surprised as you when I searched for an aparment and none of it came with a kitchen.
I always wonder what people do with their kitchens, because - like in your case - the kitchen doesn't always fit into the new 'kitchen-room' in the new apartment. Well, you just have some space left, but in many other cases the new room is too small for the kitchen people already own...
the kitchen thing is absolutely fascinating to me so i'm happy to see that i'm not the only one so confused/curious about it. i must've asked my boyfriend 100 questions about it. especially because he isn't a 'handy man' like...the idea of him installing a kitchen by himself is mind blowing to me. and especially when he started to tell me that he had to hand saw his counter top in half so that he could essentially split the kitchen into two parts to put on either side of his kitchen as shown versus how it was in his last apartment as one long kitchen agains the same wall.
Moin! 😄 I live and was born in Lower Saxony, 80km south of Hamburg. Here sometimes the kitchen comes with the apartment, so does mine...
I am from Hamburg, and my apartment did not come with a kitchen. Out of my friends, 2 moved into an apartment that included a kitchen, another one had to buy one like I did. So from my experience it's 50-50.
Victorian kitchens in Chicago up to the 1970's only had a sink. Tenents supplied their own stove, frig and a food cabinet. Sometimes there might be a small pantry. Rooms were much smaller than those of today.
Don't forget: But when you've only used400 Euro Worth of Electricity you also get your money back and the monthly rate will be reduced( the same way the monthly rate would be get higher if you would use more of course).
I think it is probably a way to motivate people to safe energy because the day of the electricity bill can be a party or a nightmare.
This system of paying for electricity (and gas for heating and cooking too btw.) is older than the idea to motivate people to safe energy. I think it's because the energy providers don't want to send out employees to check the meter every month, but rather just once a year.
so we have automatic meter readings...this idea of sending someone to read the meter is completely alien to me. i wish i would've thought to add that...like i said, i could talk about the differences in utilities for forever haha like it is absolutely mind-blowing to me that there will be a day every couple months that a German has to go home to be available to let a guy into his/her apartment in order to read the heater meters. you can read more about our AMRs here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_meter_reading
So Germany just keeping it Old School, saving Job Opportunities xD
Austria here, not Germany, but it seems the systems are quite similar. Kelly, do you have your meter IN your apartment? Usually they are somewhere in the common area of the building or somewhere in front of the building in a little extra housing in the case of single-family houses.
Google tells me we do since a few years, so I learned something today. Haven't seen any so far in real life though. But then, that's not actually my first concern when I enter a house or flat - lol. I guess all the new buildings will get them and the traditional ones in houses older than a couple of years will be exchanged over time. Btw. I also would prefer to pay on a monthly basis, just like my phone bill.
Yes, we have an entire storage area for the shopping bags and the "Pfandbag", too :D
I think they are also quite handy, for a lot of things other than shopping. Kind of like the bags from Ikea!
And yes, you are right about the deposit money, it's the landlords savety money. You usually get it back, plus the interest (Zinsen), when you move out and didn't do any harm to the landlords property, such as floors, walls, etc. But when the landlord has to repair things you left, he can charge that from the deposit money. It doesn't save the landlord from "Mietnomaden" (rental nomads) though, because they usually do way more damage plus months of unpaid rent, till the landlord is able to kick them out. Beeing a landlord may be a bigger risk in Germany than the US, because of certain laws.
the ikea bags are awesome!! the backpack style ones especially. i'm not exaggerating my excitement haha they were truly a lifesaver for me while living specifically at my last apartment. i lived on the 5th floor and grocery shopping was always so miserable for me to have to carry everything up in hand bags. That backpack style back was so much easier! thanks for sharing about the security deposit :) i am a homeowner in the US and rent out my place to tenants and don't have too many concerns about it (though i've heard the occasional nightmare story) but it seems to be very much the opposite here. i've heard many, many stories about bad tenants and how the laws are more toward protecting tenants than landlords, etc.
Kelly does her thing Yep...we live on the top floor, so we have all our bags for Glasmüll, Plastikmüll, and the "Pfandflaschtasch" ( :D) etc. in the staircase next to our apartment door.
Ohhhh, PFAND bag. I thing she was saying “fund” bag and, meaning “found”! Weird pronunciation. .
I slept in a bed like that when I was at University in Germany and it IS uncomfortable. German beds are horrific.
My apartment did, sort of, have a bathroom. . .a toilet in the kitchen. I remodeled so 5hat the toilet and shower were in the same room. Now, when people tell me how organized and efficient German are, I laugh in their face.
The reason for an annual electricity bill is most likely that it would be very annoying if a stranger has to enter your home every month to read the electric meter. Most likely that's the reason why electric meters in the U.S. are often installed outside the house. Reading the electric meter every month also occasion additional costs.
On average Germans don't move that often as U.S. Americans, so there is less of a need to read the electric meter that often.
Paying an identical amount every month makes it also easier to plan your monthly budget.
thanks for sharing :) yeah in the US, we usually don't even have anyone come read our meters at all. everywhere i've lived, it's been done digitally so the idea of having someone physically go house to house, apartment to apartment to read meters is completely foreign to me. you can read more about our auto meter reading here if you want since i didn't really take the extra time to explain it in the video en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_meter_reading
What stranger? I fill out a form the utility company gives me and pay according to that. There is some kind of law about smart meters needing to be installed in every new home, but I live in an old home that doesn't have those privacy-wreckers (no, seriously, you wake up at 2am and turn on the lights, and your utility company knows about that. Pretty horrible)
The UK is slowly moving over to smart meters but I still have the old style and can submit my meter readings via app/online account.
(In the last 5 years I think my meter has been read by an actual human person about 4 times).
Also in the UK you can pay 3 different ways.
1) Quarterly bill for actual use.
2) A pre-pay meter where you have a electronic meter that you buy credit for before you use it.
(People who are in large amount of arrears with an energy company or considered a bad credit risk can be forced to use this type of meter. Ironically it is the most expensive way to buy your energy)
3) Monthly direct debit which your expected annual bill divided by 12. You have an equal payment made each month (similar to the German system)
Part of the appeal of method #3 is that can stop winter 'bill shock'. So when you have you're heating is on during the winter you still pay in those months the same as you pay in the summers months.
Its allows your energy bills to be predictable as part of your outgoings for that month.
Another reason for annual instead of monthly is transfer costs: every time you transfer money from one bank account to another you pay a fee (maybe not in all banks though). The fee is usually fixed, meaning it doesn't matter wether you transfer 10€ or 100€ it's always gonna be (let's say) 20 cents. With a monthly payment you end up paying 2,40€ fees per year. With an annual payment the fee will only be 20 cents. Now for you as a private person the difference between 20 cents/y and 2,40€/y probably doesn't matter but your electricity provider has thousands and thousands of customers. To them it makes a difference of thousands of euros.
And since Germany is a highly burocratic country there's also a chance that this plays a role too. Let's say, the provider can choose wether they want to fill in 12 forms per household or 1.
@Raymond the annual pay I know from Germany is that you pay the whole sum in one go one year in advance. Not monthly. So I paid my electricity bill for 2018 in November/December 2017.
YTViewer different bank, different fees ;). I pay a fee for each Überweisung but maybe my Kontoführungsgebühren are lower than yours then..? 🤔
Your bed is a futon bed, so it is low on purpose. You can get a taller one.
Also you might mention the fixed and glued in carpets in the states. Only bureau buildings have that here. Wouldn't want live with a pre owned carpet. Yuck.
The yearly bill thing.. the guy/girl reading the meters came/comes once per year to read them. Like.. ever since electricity became a thing. Same with heating bill. They read it once per year, then calculate your bill once per year. they let you pay in 12 installments because they need your advance money and for you not to have such a high bill suddenly.
thanks for watching :)
So far the best US vs European flat comparison video on youtube. Please keep up doing videos like this, as a European it is really interesting to watch and compare.
The electricity up front payments are weird though, probably it is just a German thing as I don't think it is common in other parts of Europe.
@PatagonianFoodbat Thanks!! that really means a lot to me :) and i hope to keep up videos like this as i find them probably as interesting to make as you find them to watch. thanks for watching!
In Belgium we also pay upfront like in Germany (or the Netherlands)
We also send the meter numbers to the electric company ourselves.
Maybe once every 5 years or so, someone from the company will check to see the numbers themselves. (if you cheat, there are large fines)
In the uk you can choose to pay up front or as you use it
I pay up front as I use lots during the winter but not so much in the summer (no heating or air con)
I have a washer dryer combo that I love
The newest ones are great, but if you have lots of people using it then it would not be so good as it takes longer than two separate machines
We also pay upfront in Austria.
We did pay up front in Sweden. But the companies was slow to change the amount that it cost.
For example you move to a new house and the old family used 20.000kw and you onley use 15.000kw.
It could take a while (several calls and years )change to the amount you use.
So the goverment steped in and said that they cant take up front payments becouse they never is 100% correct.
It is strange for me to hear that someone is so seriously surprised of europien appartments and its details. It is the most normal appartment, nothing weird in it. First of all Americans have or can have relatively chip wooden houses with big spaces. To have a house in Germany (EU) means you have to be really rich, because those are build by red rocks and will stay for 300 years.
She means "cheap" and she is right! Why the hell they still maje thier houses out of cardboard and cheap Wood with the problems they have for more than a 100 years...is the proof in it's self or not? If Germany or any Europien Country suffered so many Tornados - They would of changed thier buildings long, long ago!
U.S is slowly starting to ban plastic bags.
I already have a surplus of reusable bags. They live inside one bag on a hook outside of my “pantry” (hall closet I converted because I don’t have a pantry)
Carlyn Prato Agreed, I live next to two cities that have banned plastic bags, so I have a bag in my car trunk that holds my reusable bags and a shelf in my hall closet for other bags. I use the bags a lot for Costco runs too, since they don't have bags there.
Moving your kitchen isn't just a German thing. Most unfurnished European apartments don't include a kitchen so you have to buy your own. I've experienced this in Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Serbia and Germany. In fact almost all the things you've noticed apply to apartments in other European countries! :)
Any German home I was in had the large water heater in the basement. There kitchens can be small but there is usually a large walk in larder/cupboard. German recycling is very strict, which I think is amazing. France and some other European countries are way ahead of the major countries in the world on recycling also. The light switches at the door of bedrooms also has a night light. The water in any toilet, shower room or bathroom can have the water switched off at the source of any leaks instead of having the water switched off completely leaving you without water at all throughout the house until the repair can be done. German supermarkets do expect you to bring your own bag or boxes when shopping. No plastic bags to ruin the planet. I adored Germany and the people and would love to go back, as would my son who was 11 on his first visit. They also have a Junken Day periodically throughout the year. Any items you need to dispose of are placed at the end of your garden or drive. People are free to take these unwanted items. The next day people come to take any wood, metal or other recyclables, the third day a lorry comes round to take what's left, which, believe me is very very little. Such a great concept so there is no fly tipping. Also, the streets are spotless. No litter allowed. They have to be commended.
In houses yes, but how would you do that in an appartment? That's not very practical and I don't even think it's allowed if gas is involved.
What is fly tipping?
streets are spotless it depends on the city...in my area sadly littering is a "fun" activity.... all streets are full of trash...the city has community clean days, many puplic trash cans but the people are dumb and ignorant butts and litter like hell...it makes me very sad... i started to pick up trash and dump it away...some people looking at me i am crazy but glady some are starting also to pick up but it is still not enough =(
Still the water is heated as and when it is tapped. Doing this electrically in the US faces the issue of 110V power supplies. It would take thick wires.
We have similar days here in Canada where we can put unwanted items at the end of the drive and others are free to take them. We call them exchange days, and exactly the same the next day anyone who does large recycling will pick up any wood/metal and after that the rest is picked up by the garbage. Again very little is left at that point. I live in a small town area and if you don't want to wait for that particular day people will put things out with a FREE sign on it usually on the weekend (Saturday) as people have yard sales then as well and someone usually will pick it up!! Much better than throwing it away. We also have a lot of charities such as the Salvation Army that will take usable furniture and other items and have pick up available.
I live in Hungary but as far as I know these things are similar there as well:
1. Beds:
- Usually the older style beds are higher, but I don't know the reason why our current beds are lower.
- If you have separate mattresses you still can buy a dedicated cover to connect them and do something about the gap between. Many hotels have that if they don't have a double mattress.
- The wooden frame below the mattress is common, but you can by a mattress what has springs in it.
- If you go back to the US once, please create a video about beds. For example I really want to see how those "top sheet" things work.
2. Water heater:
- We have those big water tanks, we call them "bojler". They are quite common in older homes. I hate them, because the usual setup is this (above your head):
www.kollar.at/fotogalerien/referenzen_bad_sanierung004/images/Kollar_Referenzen_Badsanierung04_02.jpg
- In other places the (gas) heating system producing the (on demand) warm water as well.
3. Built in storage:
- Regular homes sometimes has this small room (usually it opens from the kitchen) what we call "speiz". It comes from the german "speisekammer", so probably they have those too.
- What we don't have is a closet. Especially those walk in types. Unfortunately, because I like those...
thank you for taking the time to share all of this information! i can completely understand why you do not like the bojler set up. it looks awfully inconvenient. i haven't seen a speisekammer yet but maybe my friends just haven't pointed it out to me haha and as for the "top sheet" thing...do you mean like the flat sheet that is placed on top of the fitted sheet? or do you mean like a mattress cover? i should be able to cover this in a future vid so i want to make sure i know what you're referring to :) thanks for watching!
I want to see the whole bedding "system" :D
What I see now:
- EU: We have a sheet below and we have duvet (sometimes feather filled) with a duvet cover. Usually we have one medium sized pillow . Or sometimes a big and a small pillow as a pair.
- US: If I know right you don't have duvet cover but you have a second sheet above you and below the duvet/comforter. But it is so strange to imagine. I want to see it "in action" :P Btw the comforter is just another word for duvet?
@ordo my great grandma had the same setup for the water heater here in germany. First it was fired with coal later it was changed to an electric one. Also I have a 'Speisekammer' which opens from the kitchen and houses our freezer. So our fridge is bigger than most.
@Kelly I like your Videos because you have a natural style which I like.
Also the doors to the living room and kitchen is part traditional, at the beginning of the 20th century it was common to open the living room only for big celebrations like christmas and birthdays because there was the expensive china and furniture.
The beds are so low because at the end of the 90s something called a futon took over the market, for older people there are higher beds because with higher beds it is easier to stand up from.
Viele Grüße
Oliver
@Ordo ok! I will work on this. We have Duvet covers too but I will say they are quite a bit newer here and a lot of people still use comforters. on my bed, I had a Duvet cover but i'm laughing at myself because i would still use a top sheet because that's what i'm used to having from growing up (with comforters)...but it makes no sense to have that haha
@Oliver Thank you! :) and thanks for sharing. i didn't know about this custom. some people in the US have "formal" living rooms which are used only for special occasions as well but this is always just so confusing to me because it's yet another room to furnish and clean versus (because it's in addition to the regular living room). and thanks for explaining why the beds are so low :) i hadn't been able to figure it out!
Floor Plan and doors and windows are mostly like that in Germany to save heating and electrical costs
Thank you so much for showing how a German bed works. I've wanted to do something similar for a while, and your video finally gave me the information to make it happen! The one thing I still have to figure out is where to get mattresses without a hard edge... are they memory foam or some other material? Thanks again!
In the UK we often have fire doors for the kitchen, which are heavier and more robustly made than the other doors, this is to allow the occupiers more time to exit the building should a fire start in the kitchen.
The space between the mattresses is called in German jokingly "Besucherritze" (visitors crack)
"Besucher" in this case often are the kids that come at night into their parents' beds...
lol!
I always slept in the Besucherritze between my grandparents when I was a kid - and one time I got lost in it! My parents were looking for me but I was sleeping like a baby rolled together totally into a tiny lil human ball.
We used to call it "Gräbele". But I'm not sure if that is a regional or family thing. ;) I've never heard "Besucherritze" before.
"Gräbele" sounds Swabian and is certainly not high German
Hallo Kelly, tolles Video wie immer, weiter so.👍
Kleiner Tipp zu den vielen Einkaufstüten: Wenn man die eigenen Tüten vergessen hat keine neue kaufen, sondern auf die Warenkartons im Supermarkt zurückgreifen. Die sind kostenlos und Zuhause kann man sie zum Lagern weiterverwenden oder in die blaue Tonne hauen. Vor allem die aus der Früchteabteilung sind groß, gut stapelbar und sehr stabil.
Hi Kelly nice video as always, keep going.
Just a little tip for your grocery bags: If you forgot to BYO, just make use of the markets cardboard boxes, the groceries are stored in. They are for free. At home they can be useful for storing or you just put them in the blue bin. Especially those from the fruits section are big, stackable and very durable.
that's a good tip!! thank you for sharing :) and thanks for watching!
75peda Toll und wie trage ich die Früchtekartons nach Hause (wenn kein Auto) oder vom Auto in die Wohnung (wenn kein Parkplatz vor der Haustür)? Hier spricht wahrscheinlich ein autofahrender Garagenbesitzer.😂
SSdC(tm) guter Einwurf aber Tüten muss man dann genauso weit schleppen😉.
Es ging mir nur drum eine Notlösung anzubieten, wenn man mal keine Tüte/Rucksack o.ä. dabei hat.
Bspw. die kleinen/mittleren Kartons für so Sachen wie Äpfel, Pfirsiche passen quer, wie dafür gemacht, zwischen Gepäckträger und Sattelstange vom Fahrrad. Den Großeinkauf im Bananenkarton bekommt man auf der Stange zwischen Lenker und Sattel wegbalanciert.
Es ist nicht optimal aber ein machbarer Plan B gegenüber dem Horten von Plastiktüten.
SSdC(tm) Also viele von den Kartons haben Griffe. Ich find das manchmal sogar praktischer als Tüten
75peda, thanks so much for putting the translation of your comment. I was reading as best I could in German, which I studied a couple years in junior high. When I scrolled down, I saw your translation so I could check myself. Very nice of you! ;-)
Pfand bottles: There are two sorts of pfand bottles. Einweg and Mehrweg. You only described the Einweg pfand bottles. Mehrweg pfand bottles don't have these stickers but you also get money back. They get shiped back to the bottler and refilled. The Einweg pfand bottles get destroyed.
are the Mehrweg ones the glass bottles? that get reused after washing?
Quote : "are the Mehrweg ones the glass bottles? that get reused after washing?"
Perhaps, although i believe beer is always bottled in new bottles.
The beauty of the pfand-system is that when you are lazy/drunk and throw away your bottle in nature or in the park, there will always be children or homeless people that can use the 'pfand' to have some extra money. The benefit is of course that we have less pollution in the parks and in nature.
Same goes for the 1 euro coin you need to release your shopping cart. When you are to lazy to bring it back, some children will gladly do it to earn the coin.
Since it's Germany it's much more complicated. There are Mehrweg glass bottles and Mehrweg plastic bottles (which both get reused) but only Einweg plastic bottles. You can feel the difference between Mehrweg plastic and Einweg plastic in the thickness of the plastic. Mehrweg plastic bottles are way harder to scrunch when empty than Einweg plastic bottles.
Also, the Pfand for the one-way bottles is 25 cents, but only 15 cents for the reusable bottles.
Glas bottles are always Mehrweg or without Pfand. Mehrweg plastic bottles are made from harder plastic usually. Like the Coca Cola bottles.
Really high "american style" beds are called Senioren betten in Germany; literally, beds for old people.
Also, I must point out that I detest German pillows... it doesn't matter how many times you fold it, it will always go flat like a pancake. Thankfully now you can find 80x40cm pillows in foam instead of the traditional down.
haha i really like the German pillows...but it did take me awhile to get used to it. i was always trying to ball it up as much as possible for stiffer support
I have the problem, that I can´t use normal non-flat pillows, like in hotels or otherr countries. I just cannot sleep, my neck and back hurts whem i am not laying flat... In some cases I had to sleep without a pillow, because they were only these fluffy and big things.
MY DAD BUY A BMW AT GERMANY AND A TESLER AT USA I WENT WITH HIM TRAVELING AND WE COME BACK TO NEW YORK CITY
yep, almost every german has a bag full of bags. I made my own bagdispenser. fold the bags to small squares secure with rubber band and stack them in a Box. cut an opening on the bottom. sometimes you see tea bag dispenser working the same way.
the window is an 'oberlicht' so the hallway is never pitch dark.
That’s a really smart idea!!
We do that in the UK and then I forget to take one when I go shopping only to feel the guilt of paying the the 5p bag charge. It is not the cost it is the shame of not received re using the old bag.
Hey, Kelly!
I live in Romania, Bucharest and from all the things you have mentioned some things here are similar to the US.
I must first mention that I live in an an apartment that has been renovated and a few things have changed.
Not in particular order, but here they are:
1. High beds with high mattresses - nowadays people prefer to buy these stiff tall mattresses for better back support. And they also have those thick seams too.
2. We pay the electric bill every month for the exact amount we used.
3. Apartments come with their own kitchen, and you cannot modify it much.
4. Most apartments have an entry hallway - it's probably an Europe thing.
5. There is in most cases a door to the kitchen (which is very practical to keep smells away from other rooms), except for one bedroom apartments that are one big open space.
6. People have a long tradition of collecting bags, don't know why.
7. Not so much for collecting empty bottles, recycle machines are a relatively new thing here.
8. Some bathrooms have a window, others have a fan (depending on the construction)
9. The windows above the doors .... I hate them! We used to have them, but during renovation, the builder said he hated those too and just replaced them with plasterboard. Now we have normal doors!
10. Yes, every apartment announcement that says "2 rooms" means a living room and a bedroom, which took me a long while to understand too. But that is the way it is.
I love the fact that you are very analytical, yet you do not complain about stuff being different. Your attitude is very healthy!
thank you! i'm glad you liked my video :) while i'm sure i can always find something to complain about (lol) i think i've really embraced the differences i've encountered here in Germany. i think that's what travel is all about, after all! :) thank you for sharing all of this information. i had some friends that lived in bucharest almost 2 years ago and i was lucky enough to be able to visit them in their apartment. i didn't pay too much attention to the details, though, so i'm glad you've shared your experience with me!
Here in Poland, they often use the living room as a bedroom - or at least they certainly did when we first came in 1994. Thus doors on the living room - were very practical. They often called it their parent's room as the bed was a pull out couch - which had to be made up every day, of course.
that small window above the door - we call that in the states a "transom" small window used to bring natural light to common inner space, use to be more common in older commercial loft or apartments
wall water heater - in the states we call that an on-demand or tankless water heater, it too has its disadvantages, like unit costs and its installation is much higher compare to more conventional tank unit, in some cases retrofit can be very expensive depending on the existing layout of the space
Ever wondered, why your bathroom has that two small parallel windowstrings? The left windows used to belong to the Speisekammer, which used to be the missed pantry. So, when your landlord renovated your appartment, he restructered the rooms in order to get a larger bathroom.
whoaaaaa! thank you i didnt know that
The doors in a kitchen is to block out any smells from cooking and is this same with the living room to block out as much noise and smell incase you have someone sleeping in the bedroom and you are having a louder company
The washing machine/dryer combo is a nightmare! Literally the worst machines ever. 1. they take FOREVER to run. 2. the dryer function is effectively a super powered dehumidifier, so it takes 8 billion years to dry something. And 3. I am not convinced they do a good job of actually cleaning (because all the lint etc. seems to stick inside the machine because there is no filtering of it like a dryer would do). I HATE THEM!
same problem here in my apartment: too many grocery bags and too many bottles. I had a combination washer/dryer for lack of space but I do not recommend it: 1. one washing and drying cycle last eternally 2. the drums in combo-machine are of the size of washing machines... for drying efficiently, you need bigger drums
thanks for sharing! :) i have a feeling those washer/dryer combos aren't very popular
so do I. They only make sense in very small apartments.
First video I've seen of yours... I'm intrigued the first 30 seconds in. 😁Moving kitchens! How fascinating! I subbed. ~ Much love!
i'm glad you like it!! enjoy :)
You have a beautiful apartment. It's huge compared to the apartments I was in when I lived in Berlin. Your video brought back a lot of memories of things I also found strange at the time.
I’m 64 years old, and many of the things you have identified as “unique” to Germany, and different from the US style of living, I have seen for a number of years in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are more energy conscious here, and there is also an IKEA store here which has similar styles of furniture and lamps that you showed as German. Also, apartment deposits can be higher here, as there are rent control laws.
There is no one that brings their own kitchen cabinets to an apartment, although many people will do a kitchen remodel as their first project after buying a home. Also, no doors between the main living rooms, although on older homes ( built before 1940) there are often doors to close off rooms.
Hope you are enjoying Germany! It’s a great country to visit.
I’ve heard so many great things about San Francisco and hope to visit one day! It’s on my list :) thanks for sharing...I hear rent is insaaaanely expensive there. Thanks for watching!
I have a question about American houses: why do you have formal living rooms? I've visited the States several times and I've seen many houses that had a second living room that was only used for special occasions and usually also had nicer furniture in it. I did a student exchange to the US and my host family only used this room at Christmas. Weird.....
Also, what is the purpose of that drawer underneath American ovens?
I don't think moving a kitchen is all that difficult (I've helped a lot of my friends move). The cabinets are usually designed to come apart into several smaller modules. The only thing you often need to buy new is the countertop, if the new kitchen set-up is different from the old one.
i also wonder why people have formal living rooms hahah i tried to explain it to my boyfriend once and i really couldn't even find the right way to justify it...but maybe that's because i've never had one and didn't grow up with one. as for the drawer...i've always kept my pans there, but i think i've seen an oven or two where the drawer is sort of like a roasting area.
nessagirl1911 well if you check before 1950’s in America we didn’t have things like build in closets you had a bunch of empty rooms and they didn’t have anything built in your clothes closet was a big wardrobe cabinet many were from Germany. Around 1920’s they started making wood & gas stoves and putting them into the houses they did have some cabinet some with water tank that you could fill in the kitchen around 1950’s they started building in kitchen cabinets in the 1960’s things started booming and people wanted more room and bigger houses a lot of people still had there living room for guests only so a lot of people wanted a place to play games in and watch tv 📺 in and not have to clean up for company so they left there front room and sealed in there garage or just made another big room for this the one my brothers mother in law had was probably 150 feet by 25 feet and it connected to the front room. Another thing that we changed was the entry hall some places In colder climates keep a small one but when I was studying architecture they said around 1960’s people were getting scared of long empty hallways so they tried to get rid of them whenever possible that why when you go into a newer house or apartment made in the last 40 years it will be open into the front room and the kitchen the only doors 🚪 go to the bathrooms, bedrooms, closets and leaving the living area. If your interested there are some really interesting videos on kitchen furniture and how it has changed from 1900 to present day on RUclips
That was normal in Europe in the past. but well we dont have so much space anymore.
I think the idea of the rarely used "formal" living room is left over from the Victorian Era, when larger houses and the middle class emulating wealthy British or European manners and gender divisions. After dinner, women retired to the "front parlor" (the formal living room today) for tea, men went to the billiard room or smoking lounge for cocktails (today's family room where the TV is and kids play with their toys). Average Houses in North America in the last 50 years have done away with the formal living room in favor of larger all purpose entertainment living rooms or "great" rooms that combine the kitchen/eating/living/entertainment rooms.
Graham Parks That's what the drawer is typically used nowadays, but it was designed to keep the baked food warm before/during dinner.
I have a washer/dryer combo by LG, it is the best thing ever. Just put the laundry inside, choose a program and it is ready to take out a few hours later. Plus doesn’t take up too much space. Highly recommend.
On the electric thing chances are your meter is inside the apartment ( usually in a closet near the door ) so it would be a pain for everyone to arrange for a monthly meter reading. With the yearly system you set it up so someone is home or there for them to come in to your flat once a year rather than every month. In the states we generally have meter rooms or banks of meters outside the building so they can do the monthly reading thing but then you kinda have to worry that someone can tamper with your meter and it happens a lot more than you might think.
The doors on every room help in the event of a fire and also again with the utilities readings some people choose to arrange for a neighbor or building attendant to let them in.So the doors allow the rest of the rooms to be closed off and even locked to allow them in to the closet where the meter is without your whole flat being open. They also help to insulate sounds so if someone is in the living room watching TV someone else can study or sleep in another room without so much of the living room noise.
yeah i've never lived somewhere in the US where a person had to physically come to my apartment or house to check my electric meters so this concept is incredibly foreign to me
When I first moved to the Netherlands I was beyond freaked out about the meter in my flat thing but then a friends ex messed with the meter to her apartment and I changed my mind. Now I wish I could put the meter in my house because who knows if one of the rotten kids out here might figure out how to mess with it if I piss em off or just for giggles.
I think most of my friends had it like that but mine was in a closet outside the WC by the entry door. I think that may be because we were buying and not renting the unit. I forgot the name for that in Nederlands but here we call apartments you buy condominiums. Perhaps that's why it was there?
That's only the case with the old meters. A lot of homes here in the Netherlands (and I also think in Germany) have the new smart meters which can be read out externally. I think it's convenient to pay an exact amount for electricity each month, so you know exactly what your monthly fixed costs are. Most of the of the time this is structured in a way that you pay a little bit more than you actually use, so you always get money back at the end of the the year.
Also the the open floor plan you mention is more of a thing in newer homes. I think most European homes build in this century have a L-shaped living room with an open kitchen. I thinks the over-all differences are becoming smaller. Boxspring beds are becoming more populair these days and I'm aso starting to see heating systems with air vents becoming a thing in newly built houses. But of course there will always be small differences like for example doorhandles and power outlets.
Oh and here in the Netherlands almost everyone has a cabinet or a drawer (or something) with a lot of grocery bags stuffed into it, just like you have. I think that's not weird at all..
Is that so? Do you think there are actual differences between Dutch and German apartments? I just thought some things she mentioned are because she lives in an older apartment, built in the 80's or 90's or maybe even older..
I have a question to all of you: Do you have a high-voltage power line at your house? I live in Germany and our house has one, mainly for powering heavy machinery like Log splitters, circular saws or grinders, but I think that's still not too common, because when there was a festival in my village, they set up a power line from the festival to our house and bought the high-voltage power they needed from us, although it is further away then other houses. So I want to know if other Germans have this and if this is also a thing in the US.
For the scenario you laid out in US cities they made municipal power sources they tap into for lighting on holidays or festivals and the pet company charges the city directly
If you pay the energy beforehand, there is only an advantage for the company (directly). They can work with the money earlier. But this becomes an advantage for the consumer, cause it helps to keep the prices low (for german standards. Compared to the U.S. it's quite expensive)
good point! and yes, electricity is WAY more expensive in Germany!
It's because of the regenerative energies and because they want to force people to safe energy.
Bad point. You are giving an interest free loan to the utilities. You lose the opportunity to do with your money what you want.. unless, of course, you can choose to not pre-pay the bill and pay it all at once at the end of the year.
we pay voluntarily more than we got estimated and in the summer we always have a holiday for the money we get back...
I have never come across a company (we have several) that wil alow you to pay for the whole year at once. They are afraid you can't pay the full amount at the end of the year or when you move out a different energie use will mess it up. They get all iffy if they have to pay YOU back at the end of the year and want to lower your advance anyway.
This obviously isn't always the case but a lot of buildings in Germany were either built or rebuilt after the war and had to initially accommodate more people because of those who had been made homeless. Sometimes the doors were installed because they were used as bedrooms. Modern apartments have them because Germans have a greater need for privacy (which is also why you won't see a lot of streets on Google Street View.) My German great-grandfather built his home in 1905. At first the ground floor was the village post office, the second floor was living space and the top was attic. After WW2 the ground floor became an apartment for a displaced family and eventually for my great aunt Eva who lived there until she passed about 20 years ago. The two top floors became my Oma and Opa's house with my mom, aunt and uncle when they were kids living in the top floor which was converted into bedrooms.
This is all very interesting and I never heard anything about this before. Fascinating! Thank you for taking the time to write and share it with me!
Btw yes, we too in our family have a special section of the kitchen were we put our Bags for shopping and we too have a Pfandbag xD.
lol! ok so we at least aren't the only ones :)
I use a huuuuge ikea bag for Pfand - works great
The thing that is interesting is that older apartments in most east coast cities that would have a lot of European influence are built just like this - front doors opening into hallways not into rooms, and doors on all rooms off the hallways and very few rooms connected through rooms. This is very common in EU and UK, although the UK is slowly drifting away from it a bit. The idea of open rooms into other open rooms in more of a US and perhaps Asian style than it is European, and while it may seem strange to an American, it is more common then the floor plans we have in the US so in many ways its the US that is odd, at least in more modern apartment buildings. Its also not odd in that a kitchen moves like you would most other rooms, you move your kitchen furnishing like you do any room. The US does this oddly, unlike most countries, probably cause of the idea of 'built in ' cabinets and such, but some places still expect you to move with appliances like stove and refrigerators while others provide it. I do find it amusing when people from the US do move to Europe and expect dwellings not be like they were in the US like the US sets the expectations for the world in how a dwelling should be set up and furnished. Most of what you see as odd is common place in the EU/UK and totally accepted. The US does it differently but that does not mean either is wrong. I expect the reason you splash guards are out of sync with the kitchen is they were put in by the last occupants to fit tehir kitchen and the building owner choose not to remove them or could not remove them without damage and extra expense and just assumed you would either make do with them or remove them your self and fix the walls the way you wished. We loved in 5 different apartments where we had to redo the back splash to fit with our kitchen furniture and it was expected that if we wanted it different than we found it we would make the adaption. If you lived in many places in the Stats, like where I live, plastic bags are outlawed, grocery stores and other stores cannot even offer them - you either pay 5 cents for a paper bag or bring your own reusable shopping bag. This is becoming more and more common world wide to get rid of the problem of plastic bags. I have a whole section of my front closet that holds re-usable bags. More and more in the US too we are paying "deposits" on plastic bottles, the problem in the US is that we don't get the deposits back as they have not set up a way to return deposits yet. 2-in 1 washer/dryers have been around for years - my parents had one when I was little and we were living in Ohio. Its just that they don't perform as well as two separate appliances and take a great deal longer to run a load. They are also a nuisance when they break down. My mother was very glad to get rid of hers and go back to separate appliances. The window over your front door, and in your bathroom are seen in older architecture of building that incorporate a main hallway down the center in apartments and office buildings. Often called 'transom' windows I have even seen them over doors to kitchens, living rooms and bedrooms to allow light into the hallway. Transom windows also often open so that you can get ventilation through the rooms and into and through the hallway, especially in hot weather.
Hi Kelly, we are in Barcelona, Spain: 1. electricity/gas/water: we pay every three months. The utility company puts a notice on our building front door and we have to write down our meter readings. 2. shopping bags: If you didn't think about it - you can wash them in the washing machine. Turn them inside out and wash/hang over bathtub to finish drying. 3. washing machine combos: We have one but never use the dryer. The machines in the US are vented, where most over here are with a condenser and take forever to dry. Electricity is expensive here and the weather is mild year round so we hang clothes outside to dry. Love hearing about your experiences as we never know where we will be moving in 2.5 years. We filmed an episode of House Hunters International if you want to see what the homes look like in Barcelona: ruclips.net/video/mMrEoy7DtV8/видео.html. behind the scenes filming: howellomaha.wordpress.com/2017/04/12/we-are-filming-house-hunters-international/
oh wow, yeah...we should probably wash ours haha. thanks for sharing :) and this video...you said you filmed it?? or this is you in it? thanks for linking me to it!
Sorry... I wasn't clear: that is us (the couple) in the video. I don't know if you ever watched the show before. There is some 'acting' in it: we filmed each scene 3-5 times (for different camera angles), filmed it out of order, walked around with different changes of clothes to give the illusion of 'just arrived, house shopping, making a decision, and the reveal'. We were living in our apartment for 6 months by the time they came to film (they hired movers to clear all of our personal stuff out) and the two other apartments were not even really for rent. But who says tv is 'real' anyway. They never told us what to say so we pulled our real prior apartment hunting experiences into it when we were 'apartment hunting' for the show. The show filmed over 30 hours for our 18 minute episode. People have no idea how much time and energy YOU put into YOUR German life videos to make them... I appreciate all your hard work. They are a lot of fun to watch...and so informative.
Wow, Honey Garrett! I love that show. Thanks so much for linking to it. I can't wait to watch it. I haven't had cable for about five years. I just stream. Househunters International is one of the very, very shows I miss seeing.
Well, that's a bummer. I went straight over to watch your episode and RUclips has taken it down. :-(
I used to live in Germany. We simply folded all the bags up and placed them inside ONE bag. Then kept it in it's own spot. (For instance, that empty space you showed us in your kitchen).
The door in the kitchen is to keep the heat and cooking smells in the kitchen.
Also , crack the bathroom window open while you take your shower. It takes the moisture out faster.
The window above your door going outside used to be very common. It's called a transom. It's for providing light. Sometimes, they used to be able to be opened to help with air flow.
Door in the living room is for privacy (someone sleeping over) and to keep noise down from the rest of place.
Enjoy Germany. I miss being there. It's a wonderful country. Very beautiful.
At 2:20:
"I am also just cooking for my boyfriend and I".
This is something I have found to be increasingly common for Americans to say. Would you also say "I am also just cooking for I"? So how come that suddenly the "me" turns into an "I" when the boyfriend becomes part of the sentence?
About the shopping bags: You are supposed to use the ones you already have again and again. We have a total of three. When one breaks (which will be the case aftar about five or eight years maybe), you buy another one.
The electric bill thing (gas also) we do here in the States as well. It's called being on a budget. The benefit is having an exact bill amount you can budget for every month over the year,and yes,there is a make-up month where either you pay to catch up the difference or they pay you. It's nice,especially if you own a home instead of living in an apartment. Weather changes don't affect apartments as drastically as a stand-alone house because you're partially insulated by the apartments around you. If you own a home though,spring and fall months your electric or gas bill can be fairly low due to moderate temps,whereas in summer and winter your bills can get extremely high due to severe heat or cold. So,instead of having a couple of months where you pay say $50 for electric but in dead cold or 100 deg heat your bill goes to $400, you may pay $150-200 per month every month. This makes it much easier to budget for. Hope this helps!
In Switzerland you would NEVER find an apartment without a kitchen..!! 😂 😂 😂 😂
I guess in Germany, they’ve changed it in the past ten or 15 years since I’ve never experienced it there either-except for appliances, which we always bought ourselves. But then, I had to buy my own appliances here in the US too when I moved into my rental 12 years ago...
Yes, you do. In the cantons of Geneva and Vaud that is quite common!
I ran into your videos by accident. I enjoyed a couple - thanks for sharing this info! I really like the bags and the deposit bottles.
hi yes. i lived in the uk with a washer/dryer machine. i would run the washer if i were doing tshirts and underwear, but otherwise, i would hang my clothes on my heaters. most combo machines are terrible for sweaters and jeans.
also, the doors on the kitchen and living room are fire doors. [yes, fire doors, even if they're made of wood.] having the door there starves the fire of oxygen long enough for you to get out.
now i live in south africa, and sooooo much is american-style. you can get european style, but then it will be assumed that you're european and have the money to pay much, much more. [ugh.]
thank you for sharing :) and that's really interesting about south africa. i've never been and would love to go. so they assume europeans are richer than americans?
Washer In Canada work on a normal 12ov plugin in , the Dryers need a separate 240V special plug in like a electric kitchen stove. What do these washer Dryer all in ones run on? 120V would take forever to dry clothes.
John Smith in North America, the only 120 volt electric dryers are compact models, and do take longer to dry clothes. Otherwise, they operate on a 2 phase 240 volt dedicated circuit. Otherwise, clothes dryers on 120 volt circuits use natural gas or propane to heat the dryer. As for combo units, the reason there aren't many models, is because in the past, what few models that were available, required even more repairs than separate units. I had a family member who had one of those combo units, and if say a part on the dryer side broke down, it disabled the washer too. Also, the older models were mostly vented models, and the dryer portion either had a heating element, or a gas burner heating the drum.
I can answer the part on what her washers and dryers (also washer/dryer combos) all operate on a 1 phase 240 volt service. Unlike North American washers, their washers have the ability to heat their own water, since European homes use only tankless water heaters. With tankless water heaters not being able to keep up with certain demand, that is why their washers and dishwashers have heating elements in them. It doesn't cost them that much more to operate them that way. It would if we did that in North America, because then, the washer and dishwasher would need their own dedicated 2 phase 240 volt circuits (2 phase meaning that it has 2 120 volt hot wires, and depending on the wiring, a ground, or neutral and ground, or 3 or 4 wires).
When they do get the bugs out of the combos , I would give it a try. Imagine dirty clothes go in and ready do fold come out. Its man feature seem to be space saving though so home owner may be slow to try it.
Having doors on all your rooms has multiple purposes I think. 1, keeping heat in or out of specific rooms saving energy costs. 2, if you are unfortunate to have a fire we are taught to close the door and not open without doing the ‘back of the hand ‘ test for heat. Keeping the doors closed slows the spread of fires. 3, reduces noise from each area of the house. There may be more reasons but those are the ones that came to mind instantly.
I use bags to store bags.
In Finland we also have many of these things, like the "pantti" bottles (as they are called here) - which, btw, make a great chore for kids, since they literally have to do the chore to get the money from doing it. When I was a child, that was one of my chores. We also loaded and unloaded the dishwasher (me and my two brothers) and cleaned our own rooms.
We also have front doors opening to hallways and don't have big water heaters, don't have pantries, our washers and dryers are in the bathroom if we don't have separate laundry rooms (if we do, they're next to the bathroom) etc.
We also have sauna in every apartment or at least in the apartment building. If a house does not have a sauna, it's remarkably cheaper because sauna is considered a necessity. Sauna has two major pieces of "furniture" - kiuas (an electric device that turns water into steam, basically) and lauteet (build-in benches, sort of) and those are like the "furniture" in kitchens and bathrooms - it stays in the house/apartment when you move, you don't take it with you.
We don't take our kitchens with us, unless it's a rental that didn't have a dishwasher when you moved in (had a slot for it but not the machine in the slot), then you either take it with you or sell it to the landlord.
Old Finnish houses/apartments have kitchen/dining rooms separate from the living room, but an open concept has been the standard for decades. We don't have dining rooms. We just have space for a table and few chairs in the kitchen. A family home has space for a bigger table and more chairs, generally 6-8 chairs or long benches on both sides of the table. If you get an apartment that's open concept, generally the kitchen/dining/living room is just called "a room", and sometimes, so are the bedrooms. Especially if the floor plan is suitable for the "living room" area been used as another bedroom, so the apartment can be shared with roommates that don't need a separate living room (usually this happens if two strangers move in together to save up in living expenses).
Don't worry, we have at least ten times more bags than you do😉😁
lol!!! i'm glad we aren't alone
I just go outside with a bag, if i do have to much i give some to homeless people - they really can use them, because of the don‘t have bags etc. Very often to put their stuff into. So mostly they are thankful for that. I know this because of i spend some free time to help them!
that's a great idea!
Kitchen: In Finland, we have dish drying cabinets... I fold all of my grocery bags. We do not, however move kitchens. Bathroom: I use a 2 in 1 machine bothin the US and in Finland. Smaller loads help, but because the dryer uses steam (convection) to dry, it takes longer and you need to take out the clothes IMMEDIATELY or they get wet again. I prefer hanging outside or using a drying cabinet for heavier items like towels and jeans. FYI it is a water heater.... hot water does not need to be heated. Bedroom: Finland also uses 2 mattresses/2 blankets, but they do sell "Yankee" style beds lol. Living room: We take our lamps with us, and also list the house by rooms. 3h, k + s is 3 rooms (could be 2 bedrooms and living room or could be bedroom, living room, and dining room etc), kitchen and sauna lol. Electricity: we have to pay 2 electric bills here, one to the producer and one to the company who "moves" it from the producer to us. Water bills are paid on row houses, semi-detached and detached homes like your electricity is paid there. Hope this gives some perspective.
Sei froh, dass deine Küche so groß ist! Meine befindet sich im Durchgang zwischen dem Wohn-/Ess-/Arbeitszimmer und der kleinen Schlafnische!
oh wow!
I think a washer/dryer combo is good. You can turn on the washing machine, go shopping, in the city to the movies whatever and when you come back your laundry is washed and dry. You can fold it and put it away :D
I think it’s neat, but the repair geek in me freaks out about heavy heating elements in an environment that also get’s wet, and similar concerns about airflow during the drying cycle somewhere you want things water-tight… But if we can keep the ISS flying, these things can be overcome.
The Walrus we also didn't use the dryer for every laundry. Most of our stuff we dry on the drying rack. We only use the dryer part for bedsheets and towels. Bedsheets because they are so big and towels because my boyfriend likes how soft they are after this :D
So it is one to two loads in a month of drying in the machine.
I have a wrapped up nylon shopping bag in my rucksack..... never need plastic ones from the store
i need to get one of those and keep it in my purse so that i always have it with me!
tjb62 A Nylon bag is actually also a plastic bag. Just more sturdy and nearly forever reusable. Nylon is a brand name from the DuPont company. It is Polyhexamethylenadipinsäureamid (German, the English is probably quite similar).
...true...also a "Kunststoff", albeit, I have been using the exact same one for over five years now ;-)
Normally you know how much energy you are going to need. For one person you say you need about 50€ a month but if you know you have an old oven or washing machine which are causing much higher costs you better go with 60€ a month. For every more person in your household, you would expect 30€ more. So three people living in a household would be around approximately 110€ a month, I already counted a cost buffer in. Another thing is when you know you spend much time at home you probably want to pay a bit more than if you are out of the house most of the time. You probably also want to pay a bit more each month in advance to not have a negative surprise at the end of the year. In fact, there are some companies like "Yellow Strom" which are offering a machine to count your energy for your basement which you can supervise via smartphone. So you always have the control over your costs and you can detect energy consuming devices very fast. But those machines cost you like 20€ a month on top of your bill.
Every country has it's good, well-thought out things, and every country has it's own ridiculousnesses. The German concept of 'moving a kitchen' is absolutely ridiculous and idiotic. The sink and cabinetry ought to be fixed. It would make sense that you move your own appliances: ~stove ~fridge ~dishwasher ~etc. The idea of an instant-on water heater is of course intelligent, ditto with the 'natural lighting' windows (not an original German idea BTW). Many countries take this a step further making the windows openable (for air circulation). Remember that Germans are mechanical; it's the French, Italians, Spanish ~etc that have style; Germans have no real concept of style, their style is frankly very STERILE and COLD (BORING).
Peter Parsley Schermer >>> Yes. Many times. I've lived there for long periods of time as well.
The point is nearly everyone payed for his kitchen a lot of money and you never would make a such a gift to the next people. We can´t go out of this system ;) We are GEIZIG- stingy.
And it´s maybe a hygiene thing that we Germans a bit different.
These Outlets are called "Putzsteckdosen" or translated "Cleaning Outlets" used for vacuum cleaners or similar. For more questions on german electrical installation please write me a personal message, because this is heavely regulated
We also have no kitchen door that we can bring the food out without open the door everytime
You can keep your door open if you want. :'D
You can even easily unhinge your kitchen door and put it in a storage area eg cellar storage if you don’t want/don’t need a kitchen door
Most of european do have dinning table in the kitchen so there is actually no need to take the food out.
your ktchen is big
my biggest kitchen was half of yours and that was in a 3 room apartment
My boyfriend kept reminding me that his kitchen is really big in comparison to the average german kitchen lol
I live in Finland, and a lot of these are weird to me also (like moving the kitchen). We used to have the same system with electricity bills, but in the last 10 years or so it has changed, because the electric companies now have meters that they can read remotely, and now you get billed for only the amount you use. The weird thing is that you might have to pay two different electric companies. One that actually generates the electricity that you use, and your local company for transfer. You can also just use your local company but often it is cheaper to buy the electricity from another company. And the transfer bill is always bigger than the actual electricity bill. Another weird thing we have is water billing. It has also changed in the last 10 years, the system used to be that your whole apartment building calculated an estimate for the water used by the whole building, divided it by how many people lived in the building, and you paid that estimate directly to your apartment building. Now, because lot of the older buildings (built in the 1960s) have had big renovations with pipes and stuff, every apartment has an individual water meter. You still pay an estimate for each person, and at the end of the year you get a bill or a refund. This system is way more fair because you used to have to pay for your neighbor's water if they used a lot and you used a little.
You mean you don't take your toilet with you when you move? How strange.
Jim Fortune. I was thinking the same thing. And the sinks and all the associated plumbing.
Mojo Jim
Good name! ;->
Jim Fortune. The best. And Fortune and Mojo sort of mean the same thing, too. Are you my RUclips twin?
Jim Fortune But we take the toilet seat with us which called in Germany Brille. In Germany toilets wear glasses. Brille = glasses
I bought a washer/dryer machine 1,5 months ago: if you have limited space it's better than nothing, but it might take a few initial failed attempts before you get dry clothes. It isn't efficient enough at washing and drying quickly to be useful for a large family (dailywash is 1hr 15-30m, drying is 2hrs-ish maybe more)
It works but I would be lying if I said it work just as well as seperate washer dryer solutions. The washing function is just like any other machine, the dryer can get a bit tricky: at first I didn't think it was working because the clothes were still damp after a full drycycle - turns out you got take it out of the machine, leave it in the basket for the water to evaporate fully. Also you can't dry as big a load as you can wash - our's will wash 8 kg and dry 6 kg, which means even if you just wash 6 kg, because it is wet, and therefore heavier, it won't dry properly.
Usually in my area, a normal apartment has a cellar and with that a washing room, where all the apartments have their washing machines. Usually, that "washing machine in the kitchen or bathroom" thing isnt something, that people would normally do...especially outside of big cities. That is a big city thing.
A lot of floorplans in the city were made back in the day and they tended to bunker down every room. Probably in the big city, it is an opportunity to have an apartment fitting different demands. People can choose how outfit the rooms....that comes at the cost of being more open. I would say, that real houses built by people for themselves are nowadays more open and less of a maze. Sometimes, when there is a lot of smaller rooms, it really is something uncomfortable even for germans. Best way in big cities to escape your nasty home is go out and fill the day with activity. Back at my parents in the countryside outside of cologne, I like relaxing in the garden or even in the house, but in those apartments I fell the need to get out and escape my living space for as long as possible. :)
really? huh...yeah i guess i looked at apartments mainly in the cities of Mainz and Wiesbaden and the surrounding areas, and they all had "in house" washer/dryers.
Yeah, wrong vocabulary! :) German: Keller ...so I chose cellar, my fault
only 38 % of all Germans live in individual houses. The rest lives in apartments which are in buildings with more than one apartment. 45 % of all Germans live in apartment buildings with more than 3 apartments. I have always lived in city apartments and I have always had my washer in the kitchen or bathroom. I feel very cosy in my Berlin apartment and I do not feel the need to "escape"
You can check your electric meter by yourself and calculate how much you have used.
I know people who have an Excel sheet for that. Every month they check the meter for electricity, water and gas and calculate how much they have used. So they don't have a surprise at the end of the year.
And you can usually adjust how much you pay per month very easily, so I always try to pay 5€ more than the estimated amount and have a guaranteed payback.
I like that system, it makes it easy to plan your monthly budget and you don't have to worry, if you used more in one month, maybe because of visitors or anything, it evens out til the end of the year.
Love the red cabinets
Me too! There's no reason that cabinets can only look like natural wood. Bright colors are great.
Another advantage to the German bed is when one sleeper tosses and turns, it doesn't interrupt the sound sleeper. The separate blankets prevent people from sleepstealing, leaving the sound sleeper freezing. This is a sound-sleeper friendly bed.
That’s so weird. You rent an apartment but have to bring your whole kitchen.
Not weird in Germany at all.
There are Apartments with furniture. But they cost a lot more than without.
Sometimes you can buy the kitchen from the last owner
I wouldn't want the kitchen of the person before me... Other people sometimes have different hygienic standards and.... Nope xD
It is not weird at all. Some people like modern kitchens other people love old fashioned ones...better to bring your own kitchen. ;) I do not want to have a kitchen other people have used before, it´s kind of disgusting.
Welcome to IKEA!! Flash heaters like she is showing were in use when I was stationed in Germany both in the 60's and 70's. We had flash heaters at every location that had water coming in. Many of the clothes washers heated their own water with an internal flash heater. Combo washer/dryers were small and did take an inordinate amount of time to wash and dry. The wall plug seen next to her arm by the door is for 220/240 volt wiring. If you were/are using any American devices that require electricity to operate, they either have to have an internal transformer built in, or you need a transformer box to plug your items into or you WILL FRY them instantly. Her apartment looks very much like the two different ones I and my family lived in, except ours were larger in size.
I do find her very informative as to the differences between the US and Germany. Simply put, they have some items we do not have that would work well here, and the US has items that would work well in Germany that they would wonder about.
Classic American. You talk like in "the States... We have this, we don't have this...", VT, CA, MA, etc. uses the same system for plastic and glass bottles. Same for washer/drier machines, actually it saves space and they are in the bath. Light-Windows are common to allow natural light.... Fold the recycling bags... All that we use bags are foldable... Your apartment is huge!!! (For Germany), make it nicer no ugly. Put order.
David Squires lived in 12 states in US any hood is good enough to keep the fire alarm off while cooking steak, simple fish or so... From Vermont down to Florida.
I wish I had a door like in other countries and window.
I do limit my cooking while in the States.... Meat? Oh, yes that's right north americans use grills!!! (Out of the house).
In the US, a bedroom is defined by as having a window, a closet and ventalation.
However, it depends on the state in which you live. Codes are set by the state .
U r beyond entertaining
right?! she is the best!
Michail Ostrowski agree
ya'll are making me blush!
Kelly does her thing ha