I live in Germany and I have never seen a house without a freezer. Even small fridges usually have a little compartment to at least store icecubes and gelato. A standard would be a 2m tall freezer-refrigerator-combination with the fridge on top and the freezer below. Most people that live in a house rather than an apartment have an additional freezer in their basement.
I think few of my expat colleagues who live in the center of Prague enjoy buying fresh food on local markets and said they do not need a freezer, as they quit doing a half ton weekly megashopping.
I am a bit amazed that US frontdoors can be opened without a key. I mean: for a country where many people carry guns this seems to be an invitation to trouble...
Americans tend to let their doors open so everyone they know can come in. They get locked during nighttime or when they are gone, but usually are open. Sort of an "Open Door Concept" It would really drive me crazy, but for elders in the neighborhood it would be a great thing in germany.
@@Cranaghas depending on where one lives in Germany, many doors are unlocked throughout the day as well and have a doorhandle on the outside. It all depends on how rural the area is and how well one knows their neighbors (those two things usually correlate).
The thing with doors that can be opened from the outside is, yes your neighbor can come over to feed the cat, but so can any random stranger that comes along.
Most German households also have a freezer. This is seperately under the refrigerator as a smaller unit. In addition, freezer-trunks are also very popular, e.g. in the garage. But also American refrigerator types with ice dispenser are becoming more and more popular. But the latter take up a lot of space, which would not be feasible in many small apartments.
In all Europe there are screens, is your decizion if you have them or not (compared to other countries in Europe Germany has not so many flies...), windows like that, doors like that, wc like that, we all have freezers (attached or not, big/small, depending on how much you want to pay), bathrooms... this is a description of a europen house not just german.
Freezer in the garage is rather unusual. Because nothing should actually be in the garage, except for means of transport (bike e.g.) and things that serve to maintain means of transport. The garage is not a storage place. However, many houses here have a pantry or a cellar. City dwellers don't need large freezers, because they only need to walk 150m to the nearest supermarket. It's also not recommended to store food in the garage because of benzene, which is particularly fond of attaching itself to grease. That's carcinogenic. Benzene and the fumes are also the reason why - after a short phase in the 1960s when things were different - garage and house are not connected to each other as much as possible.
@@Frohds14 These limitations to garages are not valid for every region. And even if they are most people don't care 🙂. Our kitchens are usually not constructed for the big two door refrigerators (as can be seen in the video). So the freezer is in some sideroom, the cellar or even in the kitchen as a standalone unit.
1. In germany there are definitely houses with garages attached to them. 2. There are some doors that have a "Schnapper" if the Schnapper is up you can push the door open from the outside as well 3. A lot of people have a "normal" fridge that is not built in and has a freezer 4. You can buy window screens 5. Many toilets still have a back tank and go into the floor 6. A lot of apartments and houses only have the bathtub with the showerhead so therefor you either already have a shower curtain or you need to buy one
We definitely have freezers. Either as a small compartment at the top of the regular fridge or as a stacked appliance with a fridge on top and a freezer below (or vice versa). And when you have a house, you often have a separate freezer in the basement. That's usually set up just like a fridge with several drawers. The type of freezer that just looks like a big chest with a lid is uncommon over here.
I live in the house with my grandparents and we do have a freezer like a chest. And this freezer is, I think, older than me. I don't know how much power it takes.
yeah, those 'chest freezers' were definitely way more common in past decades. i guess people, who still store huge portions of meat (like 'private butchers' or people knowing butchers as well as hunters) still have those. but they've become more rare for people, who mainly get their meat in supermarkets (or are vegetarian/vegans).
Doorknobs aren't allowed in Germany because they are a fire hazard. In case of a fire, if the doorknob gets heated up you might be unable to open the door and end up being trapped in the room while the building is on fire. This can't happen with a door handle as you can still easily press it down with another object without burning your hands. The thing about closets is that German houses do not have set bedrooms. You can basically turn any room into a bedroom by putting a bed and a wardrobe into it. The steep roofs are because of snow. The higher amount of snowfall you have in winter, the steeper your roofs need to be to not collect enough snow for it to get dangerous. We can get insect screens, though there aren't that many insects in Germany so most people don't bother.
Bei _heißer Türknauf_ denk ich zuallererst an den feuchten (veuchten 😉) Banditen Harry, wie es ihm das M von McCallister in die Handfläche einbrennt lol Passt jetzt auch voll gut in die Jahreszeit! In 5 Monaten ist schließlich ja auch schon wieder Weihnachten!☝🏼 🎄🤭
@@LythaWausW Why are you locking your front door if you are at home? It's not as if someone can come in if you don't lock it. Of course if you purposefully block your own way of leaving quickly that is a fire hazard.
@@merrydiscusser6793 Ich muss meine Tür abschließen da ich zwei katzen habe die Türen öffnen können xD. Aber wenn das Feuer so fortgeschritten ist das ich nicht die zeit habe für ein paar sekunden die Tür aufzuschließen und das Haus zu verlassen, dann würde man sowieso aus den Fenstern geholt werden. In meiner Kindheit hatte ich schon mal die erfahrung mit einem brennenden Haus gemacht und alle wurden mit einem ... Lastzug(?) aus dem Haus geholt, niemand hat die Türen genutzt.
Im from Austria and I can confirm that in Europe nearly everyone has a freezer at home. But mostly separated from the refrigerator. (In an extra room or the basement etc)
nah like 90% in germany have a combination of both in one. and i would say only 20% have an external freezer. That is bc of the lack of space and/or money. Your information is incorrect.
One thing he forgot was, that most houses are built from bricks and concrete, and only few houses are built from wood. Also the roofs typically are covered with roof tiles and a most houses have a basement.
@@TheRockkickass mostly houses built from bricks, with parts like the ceiling (between floors) and the foundation made of concrete. Of course there is variety, but houses are typically very sturdy, but also expensive to build or purchase judging by the starting price.
Rotating door knobs are the norm here in Canada but when I visited Germany I loved the lever handles. It was so much easier to open doors with them. When I got back home I switched all my knobs to lever handles. Much easier for my elderly parents to use too.
and sometimes families with small children might turn some of the levers to certain rooms, so they're standing upwards. toddlers during a certain age (something around 1-2yo) are able to open the sideway-levers, but not the upwards-levers. super handy if you want your kid to be able to enter certain rooms, but not others (where they e.g. might fall down stairs or get onto the street).
It's so funny to see your reaction to our doors and windows 😂 especially the windows - your face was priceless 😂 when I was a kid and I watched American TV shows, I always wondered about the American windows and doors and how different they look from ours - why don't they have handles in America? everybody can open them from outside, super creepy 😅
It's the same with the 20 door locks americans have in apartments. They're only there because the door and the normal lock are so hilariously bad that you actually need extra. A german door has very high standards, for both lock quality / size and strength. An american door you can pick up and carry away. An average german door weighs around 120 lbs (both front and apartment door)
The Rolladen is actually great against heat. When it is hot you put the Rolladen completely down (in the morning) and the heat can't come in. And when it's cooler again, you pull them up, and open the window to let cooler air in again. Also, if you want to it completely darkens the room. As somebody who worked shift that is very convenient.
4:18 in Germany inner doors never ever had a door knob. We always have a door handle. One of the main reason is that door knobs can not be used without healthy hands. A door handle can be used with elbows, knees, feet, chin and so on. Our doors to the outside of our houses or apartments cannot be opened from the outside without a key. This is a security feature
Yes, the door to my appartment cannot be unlocked without a key from the outside. But all the houses in my home village have a two handle front door and are seldomly locked. Maybe it's a false sense of security but I grew up like this and it's my normal. I have relatives in Norway who also never lock their door.
@@sinusnovi3826 I was born and bred in Schleswig-Holstein. Might be an insurance issue but two handle front doors are still the most common front door of everyone near and dear.
@@sinusnovi3826 To be mor specific on the insurance topic, you also have to lock the front door with a key, otherwise the insurance won't pay (usually). So, just closing the door (which means, no one can enter without a key) is not enough in case someone breaks in. You also have to use your key and really lock the front door. If in doubt, check your insurance contract about this detail.
One thing to note about german front doors: Usually the mechanism that holds the door shut can be "switched" in a state where it will let you open the door by simply pushing against the door. It holds the door against wind etc, but you can get in without a key. Usually people use this switch when they go out to get the mail or just around the corner.
I am from Switzerland but actuallly can confirm the toilet thing. That handle with wood you see to the left of the toilet is a brush. So whenever, the water is not able to clean all your poop away, you can use the brush to clean the rest. So the toilet looks clean again for the next person. :)
German here 4:48 They don't locke automatically, they just don't have a doorknob on the outside, the door is technically unlocked 7:04 We have freezer either in the fridge oder stand alone, alternatively we have chest freezers 9:36 Yes, as long as the roller shutter is hanging, the slits are open, the segments are interlocked and if you close them completely, the slits also close 10:54 We also have fly screens
@@jewel79 Most doors in Germany have 2 bolts. Same concept as the doors that seperate your rooms indoors. The one bolt can be opened via the handle, the other one can only be opened with a key. In addition most locks have a little lever that you can use to unlock the "handle-bolt" and you can open the door from the outside. New selflocking frontdoors are still pretty uncommon since most buildings in Germany are old. You pretty much only find them in houses that are built after 2000 which to this day is the vast minority of houses in Germany.
als schweizer.. wusst ich nicht mal, dass ihr deutschen solche haustüren habt. Hätt mich wohl schon 20 mal ausgeschlossen. Unsere bleiben auf wenn sie mal auf sind und haben auf beiden seiten eine klinke
Some of the newer doors (like mine) have a completely automatic locking system, when closing it literally bolts itself into the wall (like when locking a normal door) Mine is unlocked with a RFID chip in my hand, but there are some that have a key (you just tilt it to open, you don't need to rotate) Mine has its own batterys so even when the power is out, it works.
Bad video selection, Ryan! That is the impression of a guy who has not seen much of Germany. In fact, there are also single family houses, villas, bungalows, etc. some also have garages right next to the house. Terraced housing estates in new building areas tend to have carports. Bathroom or kitchen appliances are also described very subjectively. You can buy all types of refrigerators, with or without a freezer, or separate freezers. It depends on how large or how many people live in the apartment / house, and what you need or don't need. House doors also have a regulator that prevents house doors from being locked tightly, but many American migrants do not know that. Doors can be opened without a key.
I fully agree. We have all kinds of houses, refrigerators, doors. Many doors have electric "unlock". Either by switches in the house, WEB interfaces, RFID, fingerprint sensors, intercoms, some even with camera. My opinion about thieves: There are, but really not that often. And if the front door is properly locked they will find another way to go inside.
"some" "there is also" ye but in videos like that u speak about majorities and i actually havent seen a single 1 floor house in my entire life ... yes sometimes the garage is attached to the house we actually have that but we are an exception in our town with that. Also the heaters are very correct again we dont have these(our house is quite new with 7 years and its pretty modern) but most older houses do Doorknobs are certainly nonexistent in germany and i think basicly all doors auto lock Also again most older houses have seperated freezers and modern refrigerators are often with freezer (probably because thx to modern times we adopt more and more from america) but my grandparents all had seperated freezers (which surprised me too the first time i saw them lol) Overall this video is very accurate its just that currently times are changing and we just adopted stuff like combined freezers/refrigerators and building a garage with ur house (back in the day people probably just didnt have that many cars i assume and no need for a garage gotta remember many german buildings are quite old) Also ye old houses again no screens for whatever reason both my grandparents done have them probably because we have a milder climate and less annoying bugs so back in the day germans just didnt bother that much
@@KerstinVomVulkan Where on Earth do you live? I'm 69 and have lived (always in Northrhine-Westphalia) both in cities (Düsseldorf, Bonn) and in rural areas (Sauerland, Münsterland), and I don't think I've seen more than two dozen houses with screens - all of them in the Münsterland close to a farm with cattle and horses - lots of flies.
I'm from Poland, we have handles both sides of the door. If the door is unlocked, you can use the handle both sides. When you lock the door, you can still move the handles, but the door is locked so it won't move :) Obviously :) How can you not have laterally opening windows in US? Entire Europe (it's not just a German thing) has this system of vertical tilt opening by about 30 degrees and lateral opening all the way like regular door. Since like...forever. I mean... My whole life I thought this is the same worldwide xD Can't you just use whatever works better in the US and not the other way around? And btw, how do you clean your windows from the outer side? You have to use ladders and clean them from the outside? This is nuts man xD And central heating - we also have air heating, but you can close the vents automatically (via app) or open them not all the way in some rooms where you don't need heating. Or in case of radiators, you only heat up the ones you need and there is a regulated power of heating from 1-5. Also - depending on what region or country you are in or how much money you have, central heating uses coal, natural gas or electricity (most common are with natural gas and heat pump system used with PV panels, however if you're poor you use coal). This is such a logical thing I just don't understand how you do not use this in US. This is crazy xD For freezers, you can buy a separate one or in most cases it is a fridge with freezer on top or bottom - two separate doors. It can stand on it's own or it could be put into kitchen furniture, so the front will look like the rest of the furniture in the kitchen. Bedrooms usually don't have closets, we buy wardrobes for clothes ;) It takes up place in the bedroom, but well, bedroom is used for sleeping and clothes storage only, so whatever. You guys don't have roller shutters? It is anti theft & protects you from the sun. It also protects from wind - when it's shut, it helps keep heat in house better. In case of garages - whatever works for the owner, either garage alongside with the house or close by.
I'm sooooo shocked to know there's no door handles in the US?! Never thought of that, that doors could be so different!? And especially in such a dangerous place. Plus the you can let down are mostly electronic by button in modern but houses/apartments 😊 In Switzerland, almost all newer homes have inbuilt underfloor heating too
For safety reasons, it is better if the door cannot be opened immediately from the outside for the time being. It is therefore a security aspect. In Germany, you always have your key with you. However, the door is not properly locked and the door can be opened quickly with a crowbar. Therefore, you would have to lock the door again with the key twice. And yes, if you want your neighbor to feed the cat or water the flowers, you have to give him a spare key beforehand. Otherwise anyone could walk into the house.
Most American homes are just left unlocked during the day and we lock them at night... at least where I live. I works guess it's different in big cities though.
@@SomeGuyFromUtah That sounds a little dangerous. Gangs of thieves then also know that you can get into most houses during the day. If a person's daily routine is observed, it's really easy for them. I live in a German village and even there there have been break-ins from time to time over the years.
Germans don't want people to come unannounced and uninvited into their living spaces 🙄 make an appointment, come in time and you will be welcomed heartly
In NL it's the same thing doors automatically lock so you can't forget to lock it (keep the burglars out) NOT forgetting your keys or keep the door open with a tool (like a brick or helper/not leaving the doorway) is kinda drilled in at young age and of course give reserve keys to family/friends close by you trust might help if you lock yourself out (and we do have locksmiths) if you want to let someone in remotely buy a Nuki or similar that's compatible with European locks , you can lock it with an extra turn of the key or unlock with a double turn (an extra hardened pin comes out of the door (some even trigger what you would call deadbolts top and down but those are really expensive doors with that system "baked in")
2:05 Of course some houses have only 1 floor - those are called Bungalow (plural Bungalows). However they are uncommon in cities and usually only appear in newer suburbs. 7:00 Depends on the refrigerator - most do have a small freezer. Or people simply have a separate freezer. 8:05 Closets are very rare in Germany (and Europe in general) and most of the time they will be located in corridors or small side rooms, not bedrooms or living rooms. Closets use the same amount of space btw, if not more. It's just that the house has to be built in a way that already includes space for the closets. Without closets you have to put wardrobes in the rooms, however you don't loose any space because the rooms are bigger to begin with - there are no walls that are 2 meters thick just to put closets in them. 11:20 Most people don't open the windows completely. Birds cannot come in through windows that are not opened entirely. Bugs also rarely enter if the window is not opened completely. Besides - there are screens in Germany if you want them, you just have to buy and install them separately. 12:10 That depends entirely on the individual houses and can be different from house to house. Bungalows for example almost always have flat roofs. 15:40 He's referring to the fact that in many parts of the USA you flush like 100 liters down the toilet each time you push the button. There are more differences: Many US houses are built out of wood - German houses are more or less exclusively built out of stone, usually bricks.
Or wood and clay, the old houses. It would by the way be better for climate to build with wood, look at the CO2 concrete+steel causes. It's not needed, maybe just for the foundation. Sand is scarce, too.
@@t.a.yeah. I disagree. Because we build with concrete the houses keep the warm air outside in the summer and inside in the winter meaning less energy wasted on air conditioning. Also the obvious fact that concrete buildings last way longer so they can't be compared 1 to 1.
@@dayko. Houses from wood and clay already are 200 to 500 years old (or even older?), concrete doesn't exist this long. And there are ways to have a cool home out of other materials. (We have just mostly forgotten how to do it, because we think, concrete would be the best. Good advertising..) I once lived in a concrete building, that was the hottest I've ever lived in, even hotter than in a house from the 50's (which are the worst, because built after war). The house of my parents, from around 1900, out of bricks, is very cold, too, just like the concrete house from my uncle. (We find it even too cold (in my parent's home), we have to put on cloth inside.) Most old buildings with wood and clay have thin walls and no or too little isolation, because their facade should not be changed. But if this is allowed, or a new building, there are ways to make you feel more comfortable than in a concrete home, because wood and clay "breathes". Concrete houses also mostly are hazardous waste (Sondermüll), wood and clay can be reused.
@@dayko. I have just researched a littlebit, and it seems like technically clay and concrete have the same capacity to hold heat outside. And have a look at wood wool for insulation, it's also very good to hold heat outside. Just to mention, that with solar energy there is a lot energy especially in summer that could be also used to cool down houses, because you'll have to install a lot of solar panels for the winter (but I know, it might be more complicated). To me it seems there are many misconceptions on that topic, and that's really not good for the environment, because a huge amount of emissions are from building(s).
I always thought that the main difference is the material of the walls. In Europe you find houses made of stone, bricks or concrete and very rarely out of wood. Most german houses would stand a tornado easlily,, maybe the roof leakes, but the rest would stand firm. Also many german houses have an underground floor, called cellar (Keller). There you find the heating systems and rooms where you do the laundry. Or rooms for bikes, skis and other gym products.
Thanks....now i must not explain the real Different!!! And about Storm an Tornados....thanks for this Answer...that was my biggest Question. I thought it is like you said, but no one can confirm it to me
@@andreasmensch3931 Wait, were you wondering about German houses or US houses? You have a German username, but it sounds to me as if you were wondering about German (or generally European) houses.
Watching this as a German is funny and weird at the same time. Idk why he thought we have no freezers. We def have. In a modern German house, you’d often find an American style refrigerator with an incl. icemaker. There are also electric blinds and invisible screens to keep insects outside. At least that’s what we have in the house we bought this summer. P.S.: you use the toilet brush to keep everything neat and clean after you used it, not to brush anything down. 🙈🙄 Also, the house he lives in is a little old or outdated reg. the bathroom and the kitchen. Most modern German kitchens look like the American one he showed in his video. Modern bathrooms look a little different/better, too. You’d rather have underfloor heating in a newly built house other than radiators on the walls, as well. I prefer to live in a (renovated or newly built) German house. The only thing we really need to standardize in Germany is air conditioning. 🙄 Btw I grew up in the countryside, outside the village, and our neighbors were at least 500 m and 250 m away, large gardens and meadows inbetween. Modern neighborhoods look different, too. The 'built into each other look' is more common in small villages and old towns. There are also houses with one floor, they’re called bungalows in Germany. Whenever I watch videos like this, I instantly switch to a 'but' & ‘that’s not true' explanation mode.
@@WE-DID-THAT We (Germans) do. I think it’s because the flush intensity or type of flush 😅 or however you call it, is different. But really, it’s just brushing everything clean not brushing anything down.
I used to live in Germany, now back in the UK and I do miss those windows. The blinds are so useful and secure. The windows opening option means even if your house has three floors or you live in a flat you can easily clean the windows. They also have safety locks on them to stop.children opening them.
A one floor house in Germany is called "Bungalow" and they do exist. I think the number is increasing as the population is getting older and people realize that someday they might not be able to use stairs, so they build aging-proof houses. Given that they can afford a piece of land wide enough to accomodate the whole house on one floor. It's more common in cheap, rural areas. I do know many Bungalows that were built in the 70s and 80s.
The number of such houses is decreasing, actually. EU and German politics are making them increasingly harder to get approved since they're not space-efficient.
@@AmedamaCherry When I hear bungalow, I think of a holiday home, not necessarily any single-storey house. You say you live in a bungalow, people probably picture you a full-time camper....
1. One Floor houses arent really common but they also exist in Germany 2. Doors (of houses; dont know how it is with Apartment doors, they are often simpler then the ones of housen) often have little "toggle switches" at the inside of the door frame, so you can change them to "push to open" 3. We have freezers, as little compartment in the fridge or as a separate appliance (either looking like a freezer or a chest/cabinet (dont know the correct translation in this case)) 4. We have screens against Bugs, for the Windows and the doors.
I asked some of my friends if they have this door switches (they all have houses) some of them had to take a look but everybody responded to me that they dont have these kind of switches... it may depends on where you live in Germany...?!
@@TBAZombie Door latch switches are quite common. However, a lot of apartment houses intentionally don't use them, to avoid residents locking each other out by accident, and to prevent intrusions when people inevitably leave it open at night. Other's use switches controlled by a timer, so the door opens on push only during the day. Naturally, in your own house, the type of lock you have is the one you bought. Door latches with switches are more expensive and easier to break due to the mechanical parts, so that might play into it too.
You could say, without a closet, the room you choose as a bedroom is more freely. Often enough, families change the rooms when their kids grow or even leave the house.
9:06 His reaction is so adorable! I'm living in Germany and I'm totally used to those windows, but when I was one year in Japan I couldn't sleep the first weeks because it was so bright...! Out of sheer desperation, I stuck aluminum foil over my windows to make it dark (which worked great, by the way, since there are double windows in Japan!).
Guess it comes down to what you are used to. Those shutters give me the creeps. My childhood home didn't have them, we just gazed out into the starry night from our beds. Whenever I stayed over at a friends place and the shutters came down in the evening I felt locked in 😅
I'm not from Germany, I'm italian. I just wanted to say that every European house or apartment has those type of windows and the not too old houses do have those blinds as well. I think it's more a European thing. Asyway, I love your videos and you should also do some reaction videos about other European countries as well. :)
Yeah, well I guess the types of windows which were invented in Germany spread to other places after people discovered how nice they are. By the way, there are also newer windows with an additional mode which allows windows to be in a parallel position (there is a nice video showing these called Winkhaus activPilot Comfort PADK)
A good reason for building your houses touching each other: less surface area, so you lose less heat during winter (and don't heat up as quickly during summer). So either way, you save energy :)
@@kingofmontechristo Good reason not to in germany: you only can if you build your house in the middle of nowhere because you can't pay that much land without selling a liver or too. And if you found your nowhere you probably aren't allowed to build a house there, because it is probably not building land because the Bauaufsichtsbehörde (Building Inspectorate?) said so. Here you just can't start building everywhere since land is valuable and sealing more surface than necessary really takes its toll on the environment, groundwater levels and a higher risk of getting mega floods.
@@kingofmontechristo In Germany you always have your freedom in a single-family house, no matter how close it is to other houses. Noone bothers me when i'm in my garden, I don't hear sounds from my neighbours house cause our walls aren't made of cardboard and overall germans are more private and reserved people
I think the foremost reason's coming from the past. A villag with houses build like that can by far be better defended than the newer ones (today you don't have to :) ) And in the middle ages a village had to be defendes against foreign knights or raiders.
Hey Ryan - nice channel, really fun to watch. At 52 i am literally decades of documentaries and travel ahead - but i really like how curious you are about other countries as well as cultures. Knowledge is power - so you are strengthening yourself :)
Of course we have freezers in Germany. There are refrigerators that only have a small freezer compartment. However, these are usually separate units of a similar size and the large two-door refrigerators are also becoming increasingly popular.
"Do you not have ice?" had me wheezing!! 🤣🤣 we do have ice and every home I've ever been in has a freezer. Often times in smaller apartments it just one or two shelves built into the fridge so you wouldn't necessarily know from the outside
05:22 no you can’t. And nobody can go in unannounced and steal your stuff without actually breaking in. I never understood the USA concept of the frontdoor not automatically locking when closed. But its a case of what you are used to, that sounds the most logical for you. For me, I would not feel safe thinking that somebody could just walk into my house. Or that I really had to lock it from inside as I would like to be able to leave my house immediately in case of an emergency. 15:45 I think he was talking about skidmarks in the toilet, not the complete 💩. I heard that USA toilets have a lot of water in their bowl so less skidmarks. But lower water pressure so more floaties.
It's that style of toilet. The actual water bowl is set further back, and closer to the front of where you sit, is a shelf. Obviously invented by a man who doesn't ever clean toilets.
@@Kayenne54 Obviously invented by a man who doesn't like to get his ass wet. Water rinses away the traces of a normal shit, the brush is just a back-up.
5:00 The good thing about that is, you don't need to use the key to lock your door if you go inside the house. You just close it behind you and no one from outside the house, can just open your door and sneak in. If someone visits you, he rings the bell and you move to the door :D If you leave your home for a week, you give a key to a neighbour that you trust and than he can feed your cats or water your plants and so on. Some informations about the other topics: There are also houses with just 1 floor in germany, we call them "Bungalow". 50% of the refrigerators have also a freezer included but there are people that want a bigger refrigerator and bigger freezer and those ppl buy both things as seperated units. About the toilets: There are to versions if it comes to the shape. The one like in the vidoe and a version where the whole is more toward your feets if you sit on them. They have a flat space where the one in the video has its waterhole. Tahn there are 3 different versions in the way the flush works. The most comon is like the one you know from the US, with a visible tank. Than there are those like the one in the video, where the tank is hidden and than there is a rly old and rare variant that my granparents had. It's no tank at all, it's just conected to a pipe with good water pressure and you pushed a handle on the pipe to flush. Oh and about the "Brush" XD Its seen in the video to the left of the toilet. You brush while you flush so the brush will also get cleaned by the water. Damn i will make a video and use Nutella to show it XD
Moin! I’m from Northern Germany. Thank you for your content. Really enjoying it❤ And yes we have freezers and screens and American Style Kitchen appliances 😂
So about the freezers, we do have them. But they are not always attached to the fridge. At my house we have 2 fridges. One in the kitchen and the other in the cellar. And the freezer is in the cellar too. The second fridge is honestly only really there because it's a leftover from when we renovated the kitchen.
9:00 as a german I love this! Never thought that such a normal thing here in Germany could be this impressive to an American. I mean, I'm so used to having them on my window. Like, I've never lived in a house without. Same goes for the windows.
It is unusual that a fridge does not have a freezer section, but it is not that big, that is why most of us have a seperate big freezer either in the kitchen or if you life in a house in the basement. It is all about the use of space. Germany is roughly the size of Texas but has 4 times the population. German population density is 623/sq mile The USA has a density 94/sq mile. Yes, there are large areas in the USa that are only sparcely populated but we also have huge swats of land that are forests or national parks. That is why our cities and towns are built to house as many people as possible without craming them into huge concrete towers (we are not fans of those). You also have to understand that our cities were not designed, well with the exception of Mannheim, they have all grown for centuries (sometimes even millenia) from small villages to towns to cities. Some of our cities were founded by the Romans 2000 years ago, when no one outside of the Americas even knew that this continent even existed.
"It is unusual that a fridge does not have a freezer section" Depends how you live. If you live in a house or a bigger apartment where you have en extra room (cellar / storage room / utility room) where you can put your washer / dryer you might need that for a freezer and take a fridge without freezing section to have more space there. If you have a garden and grow yoir own vegetables / fruits you might also have a big freezer.
It depends on whether you have a separate freezer or not, or where your freezer is located. If you have one or if it's right in your kitchen, then your fridge doesn't need a freezer compartment. This has nothing to do with the size of the fridge or the size of the flat. I usually know that you put the freezer and the fridge on top of each other, so they have enough space even in the smallest kitchen.
The Window he opened was a Velux Window. Is one of the Major Brands here in Germany, and they have standardized screens to insert. But they don't come standard. They work together with the German Blinds (Rolladen). And there is a nice trick to reduce Insects comming in: Let the Rolladen about 1/3 down, and open the Window half. Then you don't have many Bugs and don't have to clean your screens. Mostly Screens are only at Bedroom Windows in Summer in German houses and they are detachable. The slanted Ceilings are some nice tricks as well: You don't pay for anything below 3 Foot in Taxes or Rent, but you can putt a Shelf or a chest of drawers there. This house is even not a three-story house but a two-story and a half Story. Which means another building permit and another taxation.
The wall mounted toilets came around end of the 1990s in common use in new houses. The water tank is hidden in the drywall behind the toilet together with necessary mounting points for the toilet. you can already find the old-style floor mounted toilet with visible water tank in older houses.
One storey houses are called " Bungaloes" and they DO exist in Germany, lol ! I NEVER lived without a freezer in decades here, more lol ! Entrance doors can have a latch to avoid being shut out if you want to , more more lol ! And last but not least you can decide how much water you want to waste after using the toilet as there are either stoppers or a two button system available for modern toilets ! To assume that ONE house is the "role model" of all types of houses here is ....laughable !
"Entrance doors can have a latch to..." I think the latch is the part you move when locking the door with the key. The other is called striker plate. So further explanation. When the door is shut, the striker plate locks the door. It is also the part that moves when you push the handle on the inside. When the door gets locked with a key, the latch is additional to the striker plate. If you open with a key, the lacth is the first that is moving and then they key will also move the striker plate. I thought other door locks would work the same way and the only difference is that there is no door know or handle that can move the striker plate from the outside.
@@helloweener2007 nope its not. what they are taalking about is a small latch besides the striker plate which you can push up and the door can be opened without a key with just a push.
@@denizkarabiber3195 Oh yes, could be. The part in the wall that is catching the striker plate. In some doors it is a part that can be switched between fix in position and turning. When it turns, you can just push open the door. And I think there are also locks where you can fix the striker plate that it can't snap in. So the door won't shut at all.
13:10 The water tank is in the wall ... and you can see the plate with the "flush knob", which you can remove to reach inside the tank in case there is a problem. Not having the toilet on the floor makes it easier to clean ... it just depends on your choices though which type of toilet you want. 13:50 HINT: SIT DOWN to pee! Just remember this "poem": *_Some go there to shit and stink, I go there to sit and think!_*
Feli from Germany has more of that kind of videos describing in detail American vs German houses. Go check her channel. :) All this what's been presented here actually applies to most of European houses/appartments - like I live in Poland and it's pretty much the same. However we do use screens in windows (I do, I hate insects & mosquitos), we have freezers and shower courtains. :) I enjoy watching your videos - currently I catch up with old ones, as just a few days ago I discovered your channel.
In Germany, we don't think in the amount of bedrooms the way you do. We'd e.g. say 3 ZKDB which is an abbreviation for "3 Zimmer Küche Diele Bad", so "3 rooms kitchen entrance hall bathroom". For the US, this would probably be 2 bedrooms as you don't count the living room in the list. There's no distinction between living rooms and bedrooms as everybody can flexibly decide if a room shall be a living room or a bedroom. I'd say that most people choose the room next to the balcony or garden or the room next to the kitchen or just the biggest room to be their living room. So, there's no criteria to meet to call anything a bedroom, as we just have "rooms".
There are freezers in a household, of course, but space in the kitchen is often limited. Refrigerators and freezers are often two separate units. The fridge is smaller than US ones. A refrigerator often has just a small freezer compartment to have more space for perishable goods like dairy, soda, cold cuts, fresh meat and produce that you’ll use daily. In the freezer compartment you have your ice cubes, frozen herbs or pizza that you’ll about to consume soon. A separate full-size freezer unit is often located in the basement etc. where frozen but less needed things like the other pizzas, frozen meats etc.
We do have screens in Germany, I usually only have mine in during summer. Most of the things he said left me like "maybe you don't but that is not common ". Some actual differences would be that we usually build thicker walls and we build our foundations differently.
It is mostly about efficiency in Eurpean houses: -There are houses consisting of only the ground floor, sometimes with a (part-)basement, these are called "Bungalow", but they are not really efficient in a size/heating cost ratio. Stacking the floors up needs less surface area where heat or cold could get throught, so you don't need to use so much energy for heating or cooling. - Most american woodhouses are considered in Europe as better garden houses if you look at the insulation standard. That is why there is not much need for an airconditioning, the houses in Europe are insulated better so there is not that much of cooling needed if at all. There are exceptions like really old houses with practically no insulation and one-glass-windows, but these get demolished and rebuild proper to normal insulation standards or are upgraded in terms of insulation and insulated windows with 3 layers of glass. and being built out of brick and stones, they don't heat up this much in the summer. - Refrigerators don't need the inefficient freezer department, this is just for really, really small houses or apartments. Normally there is a refrigerator in the kitchen and a freezer in the basement or storage room next to the kitchen. - A closet is much more space eficient than a whole room only for clothes which get messy anyways. You can put two or more closets in a room if you have so much clothes in your master bedroom. The not needed clothes (like pullovers in summer) are usually stored in the basement so you don't clog up your closet. - Radiators are the most efficient way to transfer heat in the needed amounts. If you don't need heating in a room, you just turn the radiotor of. Using airvents to heat and dust up a room is just cheap and only used in factorys or very old houses. Nowaydays radiators in new buildings are gone and underfloor heating is used which makes it possible to use heat pumps and have a much more confortable way of heating your house, often on cold but sunny days with electricity from your own roof. - There is in most cases one radiator left even in houses with underfloor heating - it is called "Badheizkörper" and used to dry hand towels after showering. - There is no real need for screens on the windows - but if you need one because you live near a pond, they can get clipped on with no problem. Mosquitos are not a thing here. And, regarding the efficiency in general: No one in Europe would put towns in the middle of a desert, put not really insulated woodhouses there and then wondered why there is a strong need for airconditioning and problems with the power grid due to the need of having the houses AC's on at full blast for the whole year. But you will find examples of things going wrong due to lack of common sense and/or bribing in every country.
Yeah, in German houses or apartments, the rooms aren't necessarily pre-defined. Houses (often) don't come with closets (although some do) and don't come with built-in kitchens. Whoever moves in decides what they are going ro use each room for. Granted. Plumbing sometimes decides that for you, but if you are willing to rip open some walls, that's not a hindrance either.
The door and window thing is probably common to most of Europe, not just Germany. It is the same in Denmark and Czech, the windows might not be a thing on some old houses or the houses that are considered historical but new houses and apartments have this for sure.
You seem pretty amazed by the functioning of the "Rolladen". Those are common in the majority of houses, still, there are differences depending on the region you're living in. You have those manual (like there) or automatic. Automatic ones go up/down on touch like with a lightswitch or in modern homes you can even control them via Smartphone. Often they have sensors and adjust to light levels, so they help maintain a certain room temperature. They're installed on the outside of the windows and as they're let down they provide shelter from the heat. If your home is well isolated and you have such a system your room temperature won't raise much above 70F, even if it's way above 95F outside - so no real need for air conditioning. Rolladen also help secure your home in case of heavy weather. Most of them are made with a metal core and some plastic mantle. Rolladen are made out of many solid lamellas connected by mostly aluminum stripes with varying sizes of holes in them (this is where you saw the light come through). When you're letting them down you see the characteristic holes, those are great as they're big enough to let some light through and keep the air ventilating to a certain degree if you open up your window. As soon as your Rolladen reaches the bottom of your window and you let it down even further the lamellas come to rest on each other and the aluminum stripes are completely invisible in between those lamellas. When you pull the Rolladen all the way up they are rolled up in a cavity above the window and that's also a reason for the aluminum stripes: They keep the Rolladen flexible enough to be rolled up. Massive aluminum lamellas either couldn't be rolled up or if you'd connect them with some sort of joint they'd use more space and wouldn't be as stable when shut completely. Feel free to contact me and ask any questions if you miss something or want to know anything else.
On the subject of refrigerators, in Germany there are smaller refrigerators with a small freezer compartment. These refrigerators are intended for small apartments, such as student housing. In much larger fitted kitchens, refrigerators and freezers are usually separate devices. There are also large chest freezers, which are more likely to find space in the basement of a family home.
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA IT'S SO FUNNY TO SEE YOUR REACTION TO THE "ROLLLADEN" (the thing on the windows which go down) cuz for us German it's the most normal thing in the world and we can't imagine of an other thing except of Rollladen
Germany and Scandinavia do not need AC as Well as in South of Europe.. the houses in the southern part off Germany , Australien and Schwitzerland, Spain, Italy, Portugal are made with Stone Think Walls and floor to keep the House cold. I live i Denmark just 25 kilometre from germanboarder. My House is from 1911, it has the same temperature all yr round. In my House 19 degrees c. Because Walls are build very good, to both protest and to keep Weather conditions out
The window/Toilet wallhanging etc is also used here in Norway, so I guess it goes for most of northern Europe, not just Germany. Also the brush is for cleaning the toilet.
German doors normally have electrical door openers. So, if you are on the 2nd floor and someone rings the bell, you can ask via intercom who is there or see the guy on a screen and can open the door. If you have to go in frequently and don't want to use ther key you can move a little lever inside the lock and the door is permanantly open. I am sure, everyone -like us- has a spare key somewhere hidden outside the house. Newer houses normally have underfloor heating. you switch it on in autumn and off in spring. No way to increase the temperature of a certain room since the coils are embedded in tons of concrete. takes time to heat up and is not necessary. One feature of the European style windows is never mentioned: they have two seals. Should a strong wind press rain water against the window and the first seal fails, the is a second one. In the bottom of the frames are little holes, so excess water will flow to the outside. Horizontal blinds normally have electronical controllers. You can program those to open and close the blind at a certain time and if you have light sensors they will close if the sunshine is too much. Some house have central controllers which can be used with smartphones etc. The tank for the toilet is in the wall. If you need access, you have to remove the plate with the push buttom. Difficult to remove lime or if something is stucked. You need a small hand to access.
Buildings with outer walls being shared: mostly a space issue, back then and today as well. "Back then" being the middle ages, with only major towns and larger cities being able to afford a city wall for protection against raids and invaders. As such the area inside a city or town wall was limited and had to be very efficiently used to house as many people, crafts stores, and amenities as possible. So houses were built basically touching each other along streets. In villages farm houses were also built back to back, or side-by-side, directly touching. This offered some minor protection from invasion by providing large courtyards surrounded by the farm walls and neighbors being able to hear any ruckus going down. That style of building seeped into tradition and people tended to keep to that building style for a looong time after the outside pressure of city walls had vanished. Today it is that farming land inside Germany has become a much rarer commodity, and has to be preserved, meaning, people STILL have to build fairly closely together. Also close built buildings means that distances from one to the next are still walkable. So you get walkable neighborhoods with combined usage for housing, groceries, pharmacies, doctors, you name it. In essence a microcosm of work, eat, sleep in a highly concentrated area. But still, there are separate one or two family homes as well here in Germany but those tend to be more along the more affluent quarters of cities where people can afford the outrageous real estate lot prices. Or they are in rural areas of smaller towns that now have unused farmlands on their outskirts. Front doors only: many front doors have two different settings. Either the bolt clicks into the fittings of the frame when you close it with a light spring load. Or the second setting you again turn the key once or twice for even more secure setting of the bolt into the frame. Because the first setting is spring-loaded and can be jimmied open with a thin wire or some other such implement. A truely locked door (second setting) the bolt can't be moved without engaging the keyhole, either by key or by lockpicking. No, on most front doors there are no knobs or handles you can turn on the outside to open the front door, it always requires a key. With one exception: there is a tiny switch that can be flipped inside the door frame that clicks open the front door lock so that it holds shut against minor pressure like breezes, but will open by a push from a human being or faster winds. Freezers: nope, can't agree with Steven about that. I've lived in Germany all my life, and visited many countries as well. In all the German houses and apartments I've lived, pre-furbished, or furbished on my own, have there always been at the very least, freezer trays in them. Yes, they were tiny in my student apartment more than 30 years ago. But yes, they did exist, and they have spread even more since then. In most cases those are fridge/freezer combos, with a larger fridge on top, and the smaller freezer compartment with a separate door on the bottom, rather than the US side-by-side arrangement. Usually freezer comparments below fridges tend to have at least two large trays, most probably will have three deep trays. But yeah, fridge/freezer combos in Germany tend to be a lot smaller, as package sizes tend to be smaller as well. Bulk buying and storing is less common in Germany than in the USA. In many cases there are either freezer chests or separate freezer cabinets in basements as well for the long term storage, if such space is available. So I have to reverse Steven's argument there: I've never seen a fridge without a freezer compartment in my life in Germany. Closets are nice to have, but they do tend to limit the usage of a room to one type of usage, ie bedroom in most cases. You may use it differently but using a closet as storage in office space is a bit clunky, I'd wager. Also a built in or wall closet limits the usage of the floor area as well. Getting access to a closet, thus getting full usage out of a closet, means that the wall it is mounted in can't have anything standing in front of the closet doors. Which again limits the placement of other furniture in the room. With many German homes being built for many generations to live in it, one after the other, usage of rooms may shift many times during the life span of a house built for a century or more. As such multi-useability is fairly high on German architects minds when building a house. Closets do exist in Germany, but they are much rarer than in the USA. The Rolladen / roll-down shutter has been around for more than 70 years, at least. The roll-down shutters are interlocking panels separated by a sliding panel with holes in them. These offer some light if they are not set down on the ground and they hang loosely, one from the other. Yes, you can stop the Rolladen at any height you want, it will hang there indefinitely. But when the panels set down on the ground the two interlocking solid panels 'swallow' up the panel with the holes in between them, shutting out virtually all the light, allowing you to darken a room completely even during the day. That also offers a next set of insulation and protection to the glass in the window frames in case of severe storms. It also makes breaking and entering through such a locked Rolladen very difficult. The multi-panel construction allows for the bending of the panels, thus making them be stored in a compartment above the window, either in a casing outside the house, or inside a wall mounting for a more flush outer or inner look. Nope, no magic, simply boring standard construction for most German homes. The problem with most Rolladen is that they are fairly close to the windows in guidance frames which makes mounting of screens on the outside a bit difficult in some cases. With the windows opening to the inside makes mounting on the inside of a window virtually impossible. With the recent uptick in invasive mosquito species to Germany screens on windows may become a priority refit for many home owners, so the type of Rolladen guidance may switch a bit in the future. Or maybe extremely thin screen mountings. I don't know what the solution will be. Toilet stains when pooping: The size of the water surface is smaller than in the USA. I believe that's what Steven meant when he said, German toilets don't have much water in them. Which means if you don't hit the water perfectly with the poop then you wll get stains on the toilet bowl walls. So stains do occur regularly. But every toilet tends to have a toilet brush. When stains do occur we use the brush immediately to clean the bowl. The actual flushing seems to be more efficient in German toilets than the rising, swirling Poseidon's kiss version from the USA.
Energy reduction is a very important issue around here. You need to have very good insulation even to get the needed permits to build. And sharing the wall with another house gets you better values. And it might be a bit cheaper to build. You will also need a bit less area. So you will find lots of new 2 family houses.
as a german i really like your videos :D it's interesting that there are so many differences to the US. but yes, we could need those screens for the bugs here too :D we HAVE those, but you have to buy them yourself and if you move, you gotta take them with you. i have never ever seen a fridge without at least a tiny freezer in it. you can at least put 3 pizza and some icecream in it.^^ i love your face when he puts the "rolladen" down on the window xD
1. We have a little freezer in our refrigerator. And we have a whole freezer chest (2 metres x 1 meter) in our basement. 2. We have automatic shatters. Icontrolöed by a switch (like a light switch just split in half) with one triangle up 🔺️ to make the shatters go up and one with a triangle down 🔻 to make them go down. 3. We have 2 toilets. One where there is no water tank and one still with a water tank. And you really seldomly need the brush. The water quite always gets everything down.
Just stumbled upon your videos and they crack me up. These facial expressions are truly hilarious.... especially the genuine confusion about the toilet brush ... oh and the fascination for "Rollladen" (which btw are nothing short of an ingenious invention and were one of the few things in missed every day (or night) when I stayed in the US for 2 years). I hope you get the chance to come to Germany one day and experience everything first hand ;)
So Yes we do have freezers in our fridges, most of the time, the size varies tho. The American two door fridge is mostly uncommon, but does exist in Germany. There are one store houses, actually they were quite popular to be built from the 70-s on. The shades or Rollladen are pretty cool if you want to sleep during the day and to keep the heat out. And yes we have screens to prevent bugs from coming in.
The reason why in Germany, and probably many other European cities, the houses are so close to each other, has to do with the Middle Ages. At that time the houses were built near the church, the market place, and were then surrounded by a city wall in order to better defend it. So the closer you built it, the smaller you had to build the city walls, and the less vulnerable you were. That's why it was built upwards. It was also partly an advantage if the city was situated near a river and the river therefore offered a kind of natural protective on one side. Disadvantage of the whole are, of course, fires, since they could quickly wipe out entire cities. My neighboring town, for example, was built completely surrounded by a river, as if the land it was built on was an island in the river. Nowadays, however, new buildings are not always built house to house, there are different models in Germany: "Einzelhaus" (the detached house), "Doppelhaus" (the duplex - is that really the correct term or is Google trying to make fool of me - 2 families each have 1 house that is directly adjacent to the other as if it were 1 house) and "Reihenhaus" (here google has two possible translations: 1st the terraced house - which I think my be correct, or 2nd townhouse - seems to me wrong. Here are still house to house to house..., albeit mostly very similar because they were built/designed by one and the same company/engineer, but usually get their own touch from the "future" owner). The reason why, even today, people tend to build upwards rather than across the land is above all the price of land, which are measured by the square meter, and the limited building space available, especially in cities. We don't have mosquitoes in Germany (fortunately) but enough other bugs, to keep them away, you can attach a fly screen (a kind of net) to the window frame. Birds don't usually fly into our windows, which of course doesn't mean it can't still happen.
Although houses in a medieval city weren't actually that crowded together and there was a lot of free space inside the city walls used for gardening ect. , some of it could later then be filled in with more houses. So it wasn't actually that tightly planned. Houses were arranged either in rows (usually like 6-10 houses) or in squares around a garden area. But the streets between those rows/blocks could be quite wide. There also had to be space for so called Ehgräben which were basically above-ground sewage systems. There aren't really proper city maps for the medieval times, but there are very detailes ones from the 16th century and it's usually still very medieval-ish in design, just with upgraded city walls that were more specialized for a time with firearms and cannons with bastions that minimized blind spots for the stationary cannons. Medieval cities weren't these dark, dirty place with dark alleys full of thieves as depicted in a lot of modern fantasy. Well, maybe London was, but that was a giant city and already had a lot of problems other cities would only developed in later times due to higher population densities. Examples, all by Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg: Emden 1575 Bremen 1600 Eckernförde ca. 1618 Duisburg 1575 Frankfurt 1572 Brussel 1572
In German the word Mosquito is solely used for the subspecies that carries the Malaria virus. But in the English language mosquito is used for all those pesky little bugs that drink your blood and leave you itching. The German translation for the English word mosquito is Mücke.
In Germany there are indeed single-storey houses, which are called bungalows here. A bungalow is usually a one-storey house that can have different roof shapes. The term is often used in connection with holiday homes and summer houses, but it is also used for normal residential houses in this special design. This single-storey house style is particularly suitable for older people who can no longer climb stairs. With the same living space, however, a much larger property is needed here than if the living space were distributed over two or even three floors. As a result, such a house is not necessarily cheaper, especially in urban centers with high property prices, although one might have expected this.
In my region you can build on quite small property areas whereas in other areas you need a minimum area. If you don't have much space you need to build higher. There are lots of properties with more ground which are divided, so that another house can be built on that space. I live in such a house.
I live two countries east to Germany, but the same points apply. Just to illustrate, I periodically adjust the "rolo" on the windows throughout the day, depending on how much light/privacy I want. I like your reactions so far, fascinating to watch first time reactions to things so evident in Europe :) You know often just little things can make a huge difference. Oh, about fridges.. Consider the different lifestyle; shops are intermixed with residential areas, even in suburbs. Most people shop often, and buy less in one go, so you don't need that much space. Also shopping is not really reliant on driving, except maybe if you plan on buying a lot of stuff at once. But even then I personally prefer home delivery. I guess the guy in the video just did not show it, but freezers are usually below the fridge in a separate cabinet or compartment of the fridge.
solution to the "cat-problem" (dore wise): pass one of your spare keys to the neighbour for the time you are on vacation. cat saved! :) if you rent a house or appartment in germany, it usually comes with 3 keys, sometimes more. EDIT: btw thanks for your face-expression while watching the window-thing "Rolladen" - i had a good lough! :D
As we say in Germany "Doppelhaushälfte". This actually helps quiet a lot with lowering heating costs. On my side of the house I live in another house is right next to it, on the other side there is none (parking space and walkway to the garden). My heating cost is 30-40% lower compared to my neighbour, arguably I don't heat that much and am a very ressourceful person, but still it makes quiet the difference. And obviously we have a freezer :D It's simply seperated. In my refrigerator it is integrated but below as seperate unit and I can turn it off seperately too, so if I want to defrost it I don't have to turn off my refrigerator. If you have a smaller one often there is just a small area we call it "Eisfach" where you can maybe put like 1 pizza maybe some ice cream or frozen fruits in but not a lot of stuff, so if you are a person who likes to have a couple of frozen pizzas in the house just in case some friends come visiot or whatever then you would need a seperate freezer. And for screens I have them, costed me like 10 bucks and was 10 minute of work, very simple to put on and very easy to replace too actually.
8:10 we simply don’t categorize rooms as bedrooms. We just list rooms, bathroom and kitchen. Everything else is just a room and you can do whatever you like with it. Want to turn the living room into a bedroom? Do it. Your choice.
The reason why the garage is separated from the house is because the sewage fees are calculated by the floor -surfaces of the house. If the garage is attached to the house the surface of the garage is added and causes higher fees.
We surely can leave our doors unlocked. We can unlock the snapping mechanism that normally keeps the door closed and then can open the door by just pushing against it. Also freezers are very common in Germany. A lot of people have combo units where the freezer and refrigerator is combined, while others have big freezers and put them in the cellar etc. It's very rare to see a house without a freezer.
5:23 yeah we(Germans, Austrias) have to give our neighbour the keys in Order to feed out cats, dogs and so on if we are on vacation. I think our architecture is like that so that it is harder to Break into our homes. But sometimes, if for example Kids of one apartment building are playing outside, we have something we call „schnapper“ oder something with the Same meaning. The schnapper is used so that Kids can come in because the schnapper prevent the door from closing completely.😄 Hope I helped, have a nice day😊🧡
7:06 Refrigerators without freezer compartment is an option in Germany and vice versa. A small Refrigerator with included small freezer compartmant is common. But you can also buy a combination of fifty/fifty refridge and freezer. Or a Refrigerator without Freezer compartment. Reason is, that Germans mainly do not use crushed ice. And you can by two stand alones: Refrigerator and Freezer as seperated stand alone devices. This is nice for "Frozen goods" in larger quantities, to be stored for a longer period of time. In Germany we are very flexible at this point.
The main entrance door usually snaps shut like he just showed, but people - especially in rural areas - leave side doors open so friends can enter through the garden. Or they leave a spare key with their neighbor's like my family does. Most refrigerators are instead integrated into the kitchen cabinets, but most families I know have one with a additional small freezer units integrated into them which usually fit some pizzas or something. Plus often - when they got a house not just a flat in one - additional chest freezers or upright ones often situated in the cellar. Oh, and the thing about the ACs: especially older residential buildings don't have any, but modern often got HVACs installed to e sure they meet the criteria of the "Gebäudeenergiegesetz" by optimizing heating and cooling the building and therefore not spending so much money - that also means, though, that German HVACs generally aren't blasting on full - in the best cases they are so well calculated that the air temps are comfortable and you don't even feel that an additional system is pumping cool/ warm air into your rooms. Oh and, you can totally.get screens here, we don't live on the dark side of the moon after all ;), they just don't come or installed ^^'
for the closet thing: its actually nice for renters/new buyers to have freedom in the layout of the house, some want a bigger bedroom, others a bigger living room, others a big dining room etc. each room basicially can become the bedroom since generally all rooms have windows and everybody owns wardrobes they bring when they move.
My father worked for IBM throughout the 50s 60s and 70s, and at one point in the 1970s we lived in Germany. Our kitchen had a mini fridge that didn’t hold very much. But it did have a tiny freezer. It was a small dorm size fridge, actually. But the way Germans got away with that was they went shopping every day for food. Shopped in the morning, fixed supper that night & there was no need to store food for very long. It took us a while to get used to it, but eventually we converted as we didn’t have a choice! The metal shutters (roldadens) were cool & one of the things I miss most about German houses. The house we rented was made of cinderblock, not timber frame & that kept the inside cool in the summer (mostly). But the shutters could be lowered with tension on the rope to allow the perforations to stay open & let some light in. Or you could lower them completely & the shutters would close down tightly from their own weight. If I remember correctly, it was invented during WWII as a way to still have lights on in your house during blackouts from bombing raids. And they can get away w/no screens because they don’t have very many mosquitos & black flies like we do here in the states. Or, at least they didn’t when I was there in the ‘70s.
A lot of the Germany stuff goes for us in the Netherlands too, the absence of closets, the front door locking, the handles everywhere, the clever windows and the rolling shutters, etc, but we do have mosquito screens and freezers. Another big difference is that houses are generally made of concrete and bricks, no wooden skeletons, and hitting a an indoor wall, will break something of your body, not the wall.
German houses also have freezers and many also install mosquito screens, since having flies or mosquitos inside is just really annoying. The video generalized too much on these parts from very limited experience.
This was something that confused my whole psychology/pedagogy class, including the teacher, in 2004: We watched a film about serotonin deficiency in which a teenager punched a wall, resulting in a whole in the wall. I sat there, thinking that that young man had to be really strong and really angry due to his health issue to be driven and able to do that. I didn't consider that no matter how strong he was, in my own bedroom at the time he just would have broken his hand in several places.
what always baffles me as a german about many dutch houses is the lack of curtains. i'm not sure if this is (still) true, but wasn't there something about a tax (or something similar) for curtains in the netherlands? super weird for me as a 'privacy loving german'.
door handles are becoming more popular in the US, a few months ago i exchanged all my exterior doors to handles instead of knobs and my parents did so over 20 yrs ago. i believe in Canada, possibly in British Columbia there is regulation that all new houses have to build with door handles, one reason it is easier for older people dealing with arthritis, also cats too (i am told some cats are learning to open the handles)
Depending on the lock you can leave your front door open by flipping a tiny lever that's been built into the frame, then you'd just need to push the door open. My parents have that kind of door. Or you simply hand a spare key to your neighbor/friend. I managed to lock myself out several times and I'm afraid it'll happen again 😅
I know that feeling! I've locked myself out so many times, I figured out alternative ways in. We had a cat door in one of our basement windows at the back of the house, where I could reach in, grab the handle of the window next to it to open that and climb in through that window. One time I forgot to close that window after climbing in, damn was my mom pissed as she found out a few days later... how often do people go in all their basement rooms after all?
The screens thing is actually easy to explain. Because it's usually cold in Germany from october to late april/ early may, you don't need screens most of the year. If bugs and stuff really do bother you in the approximately 4,5 months of the year there even are any flying around, you can easily buy screens.
I live in England in a house which is nearly 200 years old in the middle of the countryside which was originally 3 barns on three sides of a square mwhich were part of a farm. The outer walls are 15 inches thick! It was converted into a single house in 1972. It is quite a large house with lots of windows. And a large garden. There are lots of birds both small (robins, blackbirds, blue tits etc) and also pheasants, partridges and the inevitable pigeons wondering and flying around in the garden which I enjoy and have several bird feeders for them. Some of them are quite tame and don’t panic and fly away when I go out and although I leave a couple of the patio doors open quite often I only once had a bird fly into the house (s little robin) and the poor thing was so panick stricken trying to find its way out again. But it is lovely having all these birds wondering all over the place. Last week when I opened my curtains first thing in the morning there were 3 pheasants wandering around the garden. It is such a joy to see them and makes one happy to be alive. I also have lots of bees and butterflies in the summer. It is all so nice to have all these b irds. There are also some squirrels in my garden but I am not so keen on them because they dig up my flower beds which is very annoying but overall it is a lovely existence. We don’t have screens on any windows because we don’t have bugs. Definitely no mosquitoes!
European housedoors usually can only be opened with a key from the outside, the handle from the inside, or remotely with the buzzer (electric opener). Though the latch usually has a switch which - if engaged allows the door to be pushed open from the outside, though this is rarely used.
I live on an Austrian farm and like 99,99% of the community is the separated from us through fields and forests. The 00,01% is our neighbor who is a farmer aswell and my grandma who live one floor above her garage. And grandma's house once upon a time was supposed to be a chickenbarn. Besides the "no door knob"-thing. Some building do have those door but I seen more door handles on both sides the door in my entire life than those doors. The freezer thing I personal have 1 fridge, 1 fridge which has a freezer attached below, 1 fridge-alike-looking freezer, on top a mini freezer in which we put our self made breed, and another freezer. But that's only my farmer household. The closet thing is true, we have wardrobes instead of closet rooms The windows show in the video aren't common in old building like my and the neighbors house, we still have only curtains. But I do see them often. Other than the roll shutter windows, the windows are identical to old building. The Insect net/screen we had to install it extra on our own (in my case, but other than that I haven't been in another building with a screen yet). The thing with the "diagonal roof" part (
That moment he was so schocked with the "Rolladen" reminded me so much of me being a little kid and just pulling it up and then down again a few times to figure out what happens. xD
1.) There are separated houses in Germany of course, and some are even hundrets of meters apart. Especially some farmers houses. 2.}Germans have strong security needs, so they try to keep it easy to leave (in case of fire) and difficult to enter the house. 3) EVERY house (apartment) has a freezer. Either a separat part of the fridge or a separate device outside the kitchen. 4.) Most of my windows have a screen. You can buy them everywhere (Grocery store, Online) to keep the bugs out. 5.) No closet - 100% true. 6) No AC - true. Energy in Germany is quite expensive.
The Freezer Part is a little off😅, I am German and I never saw a house without freezer😳😳🤷🏼♀️ But if People have much to freeze they could have a separate freezer unit in the cellar...🤷🏼♀️ But mostly we have combined Units in the kitchen. The Freezer is either a smal part on Top, or a little bigger underneath the fridge. An I was missing one of the biggest differences: German Houses are allways built of stone! (That's by the way, one reason you don't need AC in the summer if you close the shudders of your windows to the sunny side during the day☝🏼🕵🏼♀️ If there is a wooden house, it is very insulated and built very massive.
There are also many apartments where the toilet cisterns are in the room and the bedrooms are 2.46 meters high. The bedrooms are often designed to face the street. But there are some special windows that reduce street noise significantly or even completely.
I live in Germany and I have never seen a house without a freezer.
Even small fridges usually have a little compartment to at least store icecubes and gelato. A standard would be a 2m tall freezer-refrigerator-combination with the fridge on top and the freezer below. Most people that live in a house rather than an apartment have an additional freezer in their basement.
What kinda fridge do you have? 😭😂
my home actually has two fridges and one of them has a freezer
200 likes
@@robinraadhi2541 wdym?
I think few of my expat colleagues who live in the center of Prague enjoy buying fresh food on local markets and said they do not need a freezer, as they quit doing a half ton weekly megashopping.
I am a bit amazed that US frontdoors can be opened without a key. I mean: for a country where many people carry guns this seems to be an invitation to trouble...
Americans tend to let their doors open so everyone they know can come in. They get locked during nighttime or when they are gone, but usually are open. Sort of an "Open Door Concept" It would really drive me crazy, but for elders in the neighborhood it would be a great thing in germany.
@@Cranaghas depending on where one lives in Germany, many doors are unlocked throughout the day as well and have a doorhandle on the outside. It all depends on how rural the area is and how well one knows their neighbors (those two things usually correlate).
My in-laws live in a very rural area and they usually leave their keys in the lock outside all day.
I don’t know where you live,but you can’t open my front door without a key.
The thing with doors that can be opened from the outside is, yes your neighbor can come over to feed the cat, but so can any random stranger that comes along.
Most German households also have a freezer. This is seperately under the refrigerator as a smaller unit. In addition, freezer-trunks are also very popular, e.g. in the garage. But also American refrigerator types with ice dispenser are becoming more and more popular. But the latter take up a lot of space, which would not be feasible in many small apartments.
The freezer might also be in the basement (in case it is not part of the fridge)
In all Europe there are screens, is your decizion if you have them or not (compared to other countries in Europe Germany has not so many flies...), windows like that, doors like that, wc like that, we all have freezers (attached or not, big/small, depending on how much you want to pay), bathrooms... this is a description of a europen house not just german.
Not most, all that dont have a combined refrigerator have a freezer!
Most have a combined version and some a freezer extra.
Freezer in the garage is rather unusual. Because nothing should actually be in the garage, except for means of transport (bike e.g.) and things that serve to maintain means of transport.
The garage is not a storage place.
However, many houses here have a pantry or a cellar. City dwellers don't need large freezers, because they only need to walk 150m to the nearest supermarket.
It's also not recommended to store food in the garage because of benzene, which is particularly fond of attaching itself to grease. That's carcinogenic.
Benzene and the fumes are also the reason why - after a short phase in the 1960s when things were different - garage and house are not connected to each other as much as possible.
@@Frohds14 These limitations to garages are not valid for every region. And even if they are most people don't care 🙂. Our kitchens are usually not constructed for the big two door refrigerators (as can be seen in the video). So the freezer is in some sideroom, the cellar or even in the kitchen as a standalone unit.
1. In germany there are definitely houses with garages attached to them.
2. There are some doors that have a "Schnapper" if the Schnapper is up you can push the door open from the outside as well
3. A lot of people have a "normal" fridge that is not built in and has a freezer
4. You can buy window screens
5. Many toilets still have a back tank and go into the floor
6. A lot of apartments and houses only have the bathtub with the showerhead so therefor you either already have a shower curtain or you need to buy one
bei uns heißt das glaub kläpple 😹
And we have one Story houses !! These are the newer build ones but we have them
Bei uns stellt man die Haustür " auf Klick"😅
Es gibt aber häufig einbaukühlschränke und nen Gefrierschrank extra
Dankeschön
We definitely have freezers. Either as a small compartment at the top of the regular fridge or as a stacked appliance with a fridge on top and a freezer below (or vice versa). And when you have a house, you often have a separate freezer in the basement. That's usually set up just like a fridge with several drawers. The type of freezer that just looks like a big chest with a lid is uncommon over here.
Most of the time the refrigerator is a combination of freezer and refrigerator. The freezer usually is in another room or the basement.
I live in the house with my grandparents and we do have a freezer like a chest. And this freezer is, I think, older than me. I don't know how much power it takes.
yeah, those 'chest freezers' were definitely way more common in past decades. i guess people, who still store huge portions of meat (like 'private butchers' or people knowing butchers as well as hunters) still have those. but they've become more rare for people, who mainly get their meat in supermarkets (or are vegetarian/vegans).
Kühltruhe 😂
The big chest with lid used to be more common 40 years ago in Germany, as well. Just not so common anymore nowadays.
Doorknobs aren't allowed in Germany because they are a fire hazard. In case of a fire, if the doorknob gets heated up you might be unable to open the door and end up being trapped in the room while the building is on fire. This can't happen with a door handle as you can still easily press it down with another object without burning your hands.
The thing about closets is that German houses do not have set bedrooms. You can basically turn any room into a bedroom by putting a bed and a wardrobe into it.
The steep roofs are because of snow. The higher amount of snowfall you have in winter, the steeper your roofs need to be to not collect enough snow for it to get dangerous.
We can get insect screens, though there aren't that many insects in Germany so most people don't bother.
Bei _heißer Türknauf_ denk ich zuallererst an den feuchten (veuchten 😉) Banditen Harry, wie es ihm das M von McCallister in die Handfläche einbrennt lol
Passt jetzt auch voll gut in die Jahreszeit! In 5 Monaten ist schließlich ja auch schon wieder Weihnachten!☝🏼
🎄🤭
@@stefankaiser3354 Kevin allein Zuhaus das war auch das 1. an was ich gedacht habe😂
In my German home, if I lock my front door, I need a key to get out of my home. That is a death-by-fire hazard.
@@LythaWausW
Why are you locking your front door if you are at home? It's not as if someone can come in if you don't lock it.
Of course if you purposefully block your own way of leaving quickly that is a fire hazard.
@@merrydiscusser6793 Ich muss meine Tür abschließen da ich zwei katzen habe die Türen öffnen können xD. Aber wenn das Feuer so fortgeschritten ist das ich nicht die zeit habe für ein paar sekunden die Tür aufzuschließen und das Haus zu verlassen, dann würde man sowieso aus den Fenstern geholt werden.
In meiner Kindheit hatte ich schon mal die erfahrung mit einem brennenden Haus gemacht und alle wurden mit einem ... Lastzug(?) aus dem Haus geholt, niemand hat die Türen genutzt.
Im from Austria and I can confirm that in Europe nearly everyone has a freezer at home. But mostly separated from the refrigerator. (In an extra room or the basement etc)
Yes me too
we tend to put the freezer in the coldest place of the house. It saves electricity.
We have a freezer and a refrigerator in one.
True!
nah like 90% in germany have a combination of both in one. and i would say only 20% have an external freezer. That is bc of the lack of space and/or money. Your information is incorrect.
One thing he forgot was, that most houses are built from bricks and concrete, and only few houses are built from wood. Also the roofs typically are covered with roof tiles and a most houses have a basement.
You live in concrete houses?
@@TheRockkickass mostly houses built from bricks, with parts like the ceiling (between floors) and the foundation made of concrete. Of course there is variety, but houses are typically very sturdy, but also expensive to build or purchase judging by the starting price.
@@tobiastriesch3736 interesting, I only see brick houses in the USA in the plaines area,
@@TheRockkickass We use double layer brick walls with a small space in between for isolation we called them "spouwmuur" (cavity wall).
@@TheRockkickass depends on where you live actually. Apartment buildings made mostly out of modular concrete panels are pretty common in the east.
Rotating door knobs are the norm here in Canada but when I visited Germany I loved the lever handles. It was so much easier to open doors with them. When I got back home I switched all my knobs to lever handles. Much easier for my elderly parents to use too.
It's especially useful when you are carrying stuff, since you can open the door with your elbow alone
@@doktormerlin we aint walking two times !
and sometimes families with small children might turn some of the levers to certain rooms, so they're standing upwards. toddlers during a certain age (something around 1-2yo) are able to open the sideway-levers, but not the upwards-levers. super handy if you want your kid to be able to enter certain rooms, but not others (where they e.g. might fall down stairs or get onto the street).
And safer in case of an emergency where you have to get out really fast.
also easier for cats.
It's so funny to see your reaction to our doors and windows 😂 especially the windows - your face was priceless 😂 when I was a kid and I watched American TV shows, I always wondered about the American windows and doors and how different they look from ours - why don't they have handles in America? everybody can open them from outside, super creepy 😅
You lock it from the inside. Sometimes there are multiple locks.
@@TJay05 > multiple locks
and none of them really work...
It's the same with the 20 door locks americans have in apartments. They're only there because the door and the normal lock are so hilariously bad that you actually need extra.
A german door has very high standards, for both lock quality / size and strength. An american door you can pick up and carry away. An average german door weighs around 120 lbs (both front and apartment door)
The Rolladen is actually great against heat. When it is hot you put the Rolladen completely down (in the morning) and the heat can't come in. And when it's cooler again, you pull them up, and open the window to let cooler air in again.
Also, if you want to it completely darkens the room. As somebody who worked shift that is very convenient.
in the US every house has air condition... energy wasting...
@@barfuss2007 They also build cities in deserts if they do not have air conditioning, they just broil until they develop a nice golden brown crust.
@@GilbMLRS
LOL.
Don't get confused. Every German household has a freezer. Either inside the fridge or as a separate device.
I bet if the guy had opened the door below the fridge, it would be the freezer. It's just usually a separate compartment.
4:18 in Germany inner doors never ever had a door knob. We always have a door handle. One of the main reason is that door knobs can not be used without healthy hands. A door handle can be used with elbows, knees, feet, chin and so on. Our doors to the outside of our houses or apartments cannot be opened from the outside without a key. This is a security feature
Yes, the door to my appartment cannot be unlocked without a key from the outside. But all the houses in my home village have a two handle front door and are seldomly locked. Maybe it's a false sense of security but I grew up like this and it's my normal. I have relatives in Norway who also never lock their door.
@@hightidemidafternoon In Germany all front doors of houses or aparments have to be locked from outside, it is an insurance issue
@@sinusnovi3826 I was born and bred in Schleswig-Holstein. Might be an insurance issue but two handle front doors are still the most common front door of everyone near and dear.
@@sinusnovi3826 To be mor specific on the insurance topic, you also have to lock the front door with a key, otherwise the insurance won't pay (usually). So, just closing the door (which means, no one can enter without a key) is not enough in case someone breaks in. You also have to use your key and really lock the front door. If in doubt, check your insurance contract about this detail.
Also, a door handler allows the cat to open the door 🤭
One thing to note about german front doors: Usually the mechanism that holds the door shut can be "switched" in a state where it will let you open the door by simply pushing against the door. It holds the door against wind etc, but you can get in without a key. Usually people use this switch when they go out to get the mail or just around the corner.
Wir nennen es "Häkchen rein machen" 😂
Ach echt!? Das habe ich bisher nie gesehen. Aber danke für den Tipp. Wird beim nächsten Türenkauf auf jeden Fall ein Thema sein.
I am from Switzerland but actuallly can confirm the toilet thing. That handle with wood you see to the left of the toilet is a brush. So whenever, the water is not able to clean all your poop away, you can use the brush to clean the rest. So the toilet looks clean again for the next person. :)
In Germany there are 9 Liter (1 Liter = 32 ounces) each flush. Often there is a second button for only 3Liter (after only peeing).
Du hast ihm jetzt nicht wirklich erklärt wie ne Klobürste funktioniert? Er ist nicht blöd. Auch Amis haben Klobürsten.
German here
4:48 They don't locke automatically, they just don't have a doorknob on the outside, the door is technically unlocked
7:04 We have freezer either in the fridge oder stand alone, alternatively we have chest freezers
9:36 Yes, as long as the roller shutter is hanging, the slits are open, the segments are interlocked and if you close them completely, the slits also close
10:54 We also have fly screens
about the door... nope, at least the new front doors actually lock themselves when you close it... greetings from Bremen
@@jewel79 Most doors in Germany have 2 bolts. Same concept as the doors that seperate your rooms indoors. The one bolt can be opened via the handle, the other one can only be opened with a key.
In addition most locks have a little lever that you can use to unlock the "handle-bolt" and you can open the door from the outside.
New selflocking frontdoors are still pretty uncommon since most buildings in Germany are old. You pretty much only find them in houses that are built after 2000 which to this day is the vast minority of houses in Germany.
new Door's can lock automatic like the system from GU-SECURY Automatic 4
als schweizer.. wusst ich nicht mal, dass ihr deutschen solche haustüren habt. Hätt mich wohl schon 20 mal ausgeschlossen. Unsere bleiben auf wenn sie mal auf sind und haben auf beiden seiten eine klinke
Some of the newer doors (like mine) have a completely automatic locking system, when closing it literally bolts itself into the wall (like when locking a normal door)
Mine is unlocked with a RFID chip in my hand, but there are some that have a key (you just tilt it to open, you don't need to rotate)
Mine has its own batterys so even when the power is out, it works.
The more videos like this I watch the happier I am to live in Germany 😂 it just looks so much more practical and safer and more thought-trough
And then you remember the amount of digitalization we have…
It’s the same in the Netherlands, with the locks and the freezer being separate
But then you remember the bad internet
@@Friendly_Neighborhood_Dozer we have a lot of digitalization. What's your point?
@@Sonau_fan and its better in the us? lmao
Bad video selection, Ryan!
That is the impression of a guy who has not seen much of Germany. In fact, there are also single family houses, villas, bungalows, etc. some also have garages right next to the house. Terraced housing estates in new building areas tend to have carports. Bathroom or kitchen appliances are also described very subjectively.
You can buy all types of refrigerators, with or without a freezer, or separate freezers. It depends on how large or how many people live in the apartment / house, and what you need or don't need.
House doors also have a regulator that prevents house doors from being locked tightly, but many American migrants do not know that. Doors can be opened without a key.
I agree. Very bad video selection🙈
I fully agree. We have all kinds of houses, refrigerators, doors. Many doors have electric "unlock". Either by switches in the house, WEB interfaces, RFID, fingerprint sensors, intercoms, some even with camera. My opinion about thieves: There are, but really not that often. And if the front door is properly locked they will find another way to go inside.
In addition: screens are common especially in rural areas.
"some" "there is also" ye but in videos like that u speak about majorities and i actually havent seen a single 1 floor house in my entire life ... yes sometimes the garage is attached to the house we actually have that but we are an exception in our town with that.
Also the heaters are very correct again we dont have these(our house is quite new with 7 years and its pretty modern) but most older houses do
Doorknobs are certainly nonexistent in germany and i think basicly all doors auto lock
Also again most older houses have seperated freezers and modern refrigerators are often with freezer (probably because thx to modern times we adopt more and more from america) but my grandparents all had seperated freezers (which surprised me too the first time i saw them lol)
Overall this video is very accurate its just that currently times are changing and we just adopted stuff like combined freezers/refrigerators and building a garage with ur house (back in the day people probably just didnt have that many cars i assume and no need for a garage gotta remember many german buildings are quite old)
Also ye old houses again no screens for whatever reason both my grandparents done have them probably because we have a milder climate and less annoying bugs so back in the day germans just didnt bother that much
@@KerstinVomVulkan Where on Earth do you live? I'm 69 and have lived (always in Northrhine-Westphalia) both in cities (Düsseldorf, Bonn) and in rural areas (Sauerland, Münsterland), and I don't think I've seen more than two dozen houses with screens - all of them in the Münsterland close to a farm with cattle and horses - lots of flies.
I'm from Poland, we have handles both sides of the door. If the door is unlocked, you can use the handle both sides. When you lock the door, you can still move the handles, but the door is locked so it won't move :) Obviously :)
How can you not have laterally opening windows in US? Entire Europe (it's not just a German thing) has this system of vertical tilt opening by about 30 degrees and lateral opening all the way like regular door. Since like...forever.
I mean... My whole life I thought this is the same worldwide xD Can't you just use whatever works better in the US and not the other way around? And btw, how do you clean your windows from the outer side? You have to use ladders and clean them from the outside? This is nuts man xD
And central heating - we also have air heating, but you can close the vents automatically (via app) or open them not all the way in some rooms where you don't need heating. Or in case of radiators, you only heat up the ones you need and there is a regulated power of heating from 1-5. Also - depending on what region or country you are in or how much money you have, central heating uses coal, natural gas or electricity (most common are with natural gas and heat pump system used with PV panels, however if you're poor you use coal). This is such a logical thing I just don't understand how you do not use this in US. This is crazy xD
For freezers, you can buy a separate one or in most cases it is a fridge with freezer on top or bottom - two separate doors. It can stand on it's own or it could be put into kitchen furniture, so the front will look like the rest of the furniture in the kitchen.
Bedrooms usually don't have closets, we buy wardrobes for clothes ;) It takes up place in the bedroom, but well, bedroom is used for sleeping and clothes storage only, so whatever.
You guys don't have roller shutters? It is anti theft & protects you from the sun. It also protects from wind - when it's shut, it helps keep heat in house better.
In case of garages - whatever works for the owner, either garage alongside with the house or close by.
I'm sooooo shocked to know there's no door handles in the US?! Never thought of that, that doors could be so different!? And especially in such a dangerous place.
Plus the you can let down are mostly electronic by button in modern but houses/apartments 😊
In Switzerland, almost all newer homes have inbuilt underfloor heating too
For safety reasons, it is better if the door cannot be opened immediately from the outside for the time being. It is therefore a security aspect. In Germany, you always have your key with you. However, the door is not properly locked and the door can be opened quickly with a crowbar. Therefore, you would have to lock the door again with the key twice. And yes, if you want your neighbor to feed the cat or water the flowers, you have to give him a spare key beforehand. Otherwise anyone could walk into the house.
Most American homes are just left unlocked during the day and we lock them at night... at least where I live. I works guess it's different in big cities though.
@@SomeGuyFromUtah
Honestly, I wouldn't feel comfortable in my own home if anyone could just walk in at any time
@@SomeGuyFromUtah That sounds a little dangerous. Gangs of thieves then also know that you can get into most houses during the day. If a person's daily routine is observed, it's really easy for them. I live in a German village and even there there have been break-ins from time to time over the years.
Germans don't want people to come unannounced and uninvited into their living spaces 🙄 make an appointment, come in time and you will be welcomed heartly
In NL it's the same thing doors automatically lock so you can't forget to lock it (keep the burglars out) NOT forgetting your keys or keep the door open with a tool (like a brick or helper/not leaving the doorway) is kinda drilled in at young age and of course give reserve keys to family/friends close by you trust might help if you lock yourself out (and we do have locksmiths)
if you want to let someone in remotely buy a Nuki or similar that's compatible with European locks , you can lock it with an extra turn of the key or unlock with a double turn (an extra hardened pin comes out of the door (some even trigger what you would call deadbolts top and down but those are really expensive doors with that system "baked in")
2:05 Of course some houses have only 1 floor - those are called Bungalow (plural Bungalows). However they are uncommon in cities and usually only appear in newer suburbs.
7:00 Depends on the refrigerator - most do have a small freezer. Or people simply have a separate freezer.
8:05 Closets are very rare in Germany (and Europe in general) and most of the time they will be located in corridors or small side rooms, not bedrooms or living rooms. Closets use the same amount of space btw, if not more. It's just that the house has to be built in a way that already includes space for the closets. Without closets you have to put wardrobes in the rooms, however you don't loose any space because the rooms are bigger to begin with - there are no walls that are 2 meters thick just to put closets in them.
11:20 Most people don't open the windows completely. Birds cannot come in through windows that are not opened entirely. Bugs also rarely enter if the window is not opened completely. Besides - there are screens in Germany if you want them, you just have to buy and install them separately.
12:10 That depends entirely on the individual houses and can be different from house to house. Bungalows for example almost always have flat roofs.
15:40 He's referring to the fact that in many parts of the USA you flush like 100 liters down the toilet each time you push the button.
There are more differences: Many US houses are built out of wood - German houses are more or less exclusively built out of stone, usually bricks.
⬆️ this!
Or wood and clay, the old houses. It would by the way be better for climate to build with wood, look at the CO2 concrete+steel causes. It's not needed, maybe just for the foundation. Sand is scarce, too.
@@t.a.yeah. I disagree. Because we build with concrete the houses keep the warm air outside in the summer and inside in the winter meaning less energy wasted on air conditioning.
Also the obvious fact that concrete buildings last way longer so they can't be compared 1 to 1.
@@dayko. Houses from wood and clay already are 200 to 500 years old (or even older?), concrete doesn't exist this long. And there are ways to have a cool home out of other materials. (We have just mostly forgotten how to do it, because we think, concrete would be the best. Good advertising..) I once lived in a concrete building, that was the hottest I've ever lived in, even hotter than in a house from the 50's (which are the worst, because built after war). The house of my parents, from around 1900, out of bricks, is very cold, too, just like the concrete house from my uncle. (We find it even too cold (in my parent's home), we have to put on cloth inside.)
Most old buildings with wood and clay have thin walls and no or too little isolation, because their facade should not be changed. But if this is allowed, or a new building, there are ways to make you feel more comfortable than in a concrete home, because wood and clay "breathes".
Concrete houses also mostly are hazardous waste (Sondermüll), wood and clay can be reused.
@@dayko. I have just researched a littlebit, and it seems like technically clay and concrete have the same capacity to hold heat outside.
And have a look at wood wool for insulation, it's also very good to hold heat outside.
Just to mention, that with solar energy there is a lot energy especially in summer that could be also used to cool down houses, because you'll have to install a lot of solar panels for the winter (but I know, it might be more complicated).
To me it seems there are many misconceptions on that topic, and that's really not good for the environment, because a huge amount of emissions are from building(s).
I always thought that the main difference is the material of the walls. In Europe you find houses made of stone, bricks or concrete and very rarely out of wood. Most german houses would stand a tornado easlily,, maybe the roof leakes, but the rest would stand firm. Also many german houses have an underground floor, called cellar (Keller). There you find the heating systems and rooms where you do the laundry. Or rooms for bikes, skis and other gym products.
Thanks....now i must not explain the real Different!!!
And about Storm an Tornados....thanks for this Answer...that was my biggest Question. I thought it is like you said, but no one can confirm it to me
@@andreasmensch3931 Wait, were you wondering about German houses or US houses? You have a German username, but it sounds to me as if you were wondering about German (or generally European) houses.
Watching this as a German is funny and weird at the same time. Idk why he thought we have no freezers. We def have. In a modern German house, you’d often find an American style refrigerator with an incl. icemaker. There are also electric blinds and invisible screens to keep insects outside. At least that’s what we have in the house we bought this summer.
P.S.: you use the toilet brush to keep everything neat and clean after you used it, not to brush anything down. 🙈🙄
Also, the house he lives in is a little old or outdated reg. the bathroom and the kitchen. Most modern German kitchens look like the American one he showed in his video. Modern bathrooms look a little different/better, too. You’d rather have underfloor heating in a newly built house other than radiators on the walls, as well.
I prefer to live in a (renovated or newly built) German house. The only thing we really need to standardize in Germany is air conditioning. 🙄
Btw I grew up in the countryside, outside the village, and our neighbors were at least 500 m and 250 m away, large gardens and meadows inbetween.
Modern neighborhoods look different, too. The 'built into each other look' is more common in small villages and old towns. There are also houses with one floor, they’re called bungalows in Germany.
Whenever I watch videos like this, I instantly switch to a 'but' & ‘that’s not true' explanation mode.
@@WE-DID-THAT We (Germans) do. I think it’s because the flush intensity or type of flush 😅 or however you call it, is different. But really, it’s just brushing everything clean not brushing anything down.
I used to live in Germany, now back in the UK and I do miss those windows.
The blinds are so useful and secure.
The windows opening option means even if your house has three floors or you live in a flat you can easily clean the windows. They also have safety locks on them to stop.children opening them.
How do you clean your windows outside in the UK? German ones are very useful. Aren't they?
A one floor house in Germany is called "Bungalow" and they do exist. I think the number is increasing as the population is getting older and people realize that someday they might not be able to use stairs, so they build aging-proof houses.
Given that they can afford a piece of land wide enough to accomodate the whole house on one floor. It's more common in cheap, rural areas.
I do know many Bungalows that were built in the 70s and 80s.
...and have no ROOF! ;) dont forget to say this.
@@andreasmensch3931 Oh yeah, sorry! But some of them do have one! 😁
Still most houses have a 2nd floor, you can have it as a seperate flat and rent it out later if you want.
The number of such houses is decreasing, actually. EU and German politics are making them increasingly harder to get approved since they're not space-efficient.
@@AmedamaCherry When I hear bungalow, I think of a holiday home, not necessarily any single-storey house.
You say you live in a bungalow, people probably picture you a full-time camper....
Wow seeing a grown man amazed by Basic Windows and Window shudders it's actually amazing
😄Because they are so cool! I was amazed when I moved here. If I moved back to the US, I would want German-style windows and Rollladen installed.
I mean I am fom Germany and I very much like this too
Wow seeing a commenter who thinks they are called "shudders" rather than "shutters".
1. One Floor houses arent really common but they also exist in Germany
2. Doors (of houses; dont know how it is with Apartment doors, they are often simpler then the ones of housen) often have little "toggle switches" at the inside of the door frame, so you can change them to "push to open"
3. We have freezers, as little compartment in the fridge or as a separate appliance (either looking like a freezer or a chest/cabinet (dont know the correct translation in this case))
4. We have screens against Bugs, for the Windows and the doors.
I asked some of my friends if they have this door switches (they all have houses) some of them had to take a look but everybody responded to me that they dont have these kind of switches... it may depends on where you live in Germany...?!
@@TBAZombie
Door latch switches are quite common. However, a lot of apartment houses intentionally don't use them, to avoid residents locking each other out by accident, and to prevent intrusions when people inevitably leave it open at night. Other's use switches controlled by a timer, so the door opens on push only during the day.
Naturally, in your own house, the type of lock you have is the one you bought. Door latches with switches are more expensive and easier to break due to the mechanical parts, so that might play into it too.
You could say, without a closet, the room you choose as a bedroom is more freely. Often enough, families change the rooms when their kids grow or even leave the house.
It's the first time I see someone so amazed by the outside blinds 😂 I kept looking at my window with the blinds pulled down and giggling 😂
9:06 His reaction is so adorable! I'm living in Germany and I'm totally used to those windows, but when I was one year in Japan I couldn't sleep the first weeks because it was so bright...! Out of sheer desperation, I stuck aluminum foil over my windows to make it dark (which worked great, by the way, since there are double windows in Japan!).
Guess it comes down to what you are used to. Those shutters give me the creeps. My childhood home didn't have them, we just gazed out into the starry night from our beds. Whenever I stayed over at a friends place and the shutters came down in the evening I felt locked in 😅
I'm not from Germany, I'm italian. I just wanted to say that every European house or apartment has those type of windows and the not too old houses do have those blinds as well. I think it's more a European thing. Asyway, I love your videos and you should also do some reaction videos about other European countries as well. :)
Yeah, well I guess the types of windows which were invented in Germany spread to other places after people discovered how nice they are. By the way, there are also newer windows with an additional mode which allows windows to be in a parallel position (there is a nice video showing these called Winkhaus activPilot Comfort PADK)
I confirm. I am from France and I have the same blinds (electric and manual ones) and windows. And all the other mentioned things are the same.
This kind of windows is common in Europe, except UK 🤣
Same for netherlands
In france I had sometimes problems to open the front door. To open it the grip had to be pulled upwards. Never seen that in germany.
A good reason for building your houses touching each other: less surface area, so you lose less heat during winter (and don't heat up as quickly during summer). So either way, you save energy :)
Good reasons not: you have your freedom and your own house away from everything
@@kingofmontechristo Good reason not to in germany: you only can if you build your house in the middle of nowhere because you can't pay that much land without selling a liver or too. And if you found your nowhere you probably aren't allowed to build a house there, because it is probably not building land because the Bauaufsichtsbehörde (Building Inspectorate?) said so. Here you just can't start building everywhere since land is valuable and sealing more surface than necessary really takes its toll on the environment, groundwater levels and a higher risk of getting mega floods.
@@kingofmontechristo In Germany you always have your freedom in a single-family house, no matter how close it is to other houses. Noone bothers me when i'm in my garden, I don't hear sounds from my neighbours house cause our walls aren't made of cardboard and overall germans are more private and reserved people
@@kingofmontechristo sounds miserable
I think the foremost reason's coming from the past. A villag with houses build like that can by far be better defended than the newer ones (today you don't have to :) ) And in the middle ages a village had to be defendes against foreign knights or raiders.
Hey Ryan - nice channel, really fun to watch. At 52 i am literally decades of documentaries and travel ahead - but i really like how curious you are about other countries as well as cultures.
Knowledge is power - so you are strengthening yourself :)
Of course we have freezers in Germany. There are refrigerators that only have a small freezer compartment. However, these are usually separate units of a similar size and the large two-door refrigerators are also becoming increasingly popular.
"Do you not have ice?" had me wheezing!! 🤣🤣 we do have ice and every home I've ever been in has a freezer. Often times in smaller apartments it just one or two shelves built into the fridge so you wouldn't necessarily know from the outside
05:22 no you can’t. And nobody can go in unannounced and steal your stuff without actually breaking in. I never understood the USA concept of the frontdoor not automatically locking when closed. But its a case of what you are used to, that sounds the most logical for you. For me, I would not feel safe thinking that somebody could just walk into my house. Or that I really had to lock it from inside as I would like to be able to leave my house immediately in case of an emergency.
15:45 I think he was talking about skidmarks in the toilet, not the complete 💩. I heard that USA toilets have a lot of water in their bowl so less skidmarks. But lower water pressure so more floaties.
It's that style of toilet. The actual water bowl is set further back, and closer to the front of where you sit, is a shelf. Obviously invented by a man who doesn't ever clean toilets.
@@Kayenne54 it doesn't splash, if you don't hit the shit directly into the water
@@Kayenne54 Obviously invented by a man who doesn't like to get his ass wet. Water rinses away the traces of a normal shit, the brush is just a back-up.
5:00 The good thing about that is, you don't need to use the key to lock your door if you go inside the house. You just close it behind you and no one from outside the house, can just open your door and sneak in. If someone visits you, he rings the bell and you move to the door :D If you leave your home for a week, you give a key to a neighbour that you trust and than he can feed your cats or water your plants and so on. Some informations about the other topics: There are also houses with just 1 floor in germany, we call them "Bungalow". 50% of the refrigerators have also a freezer included but there are people that want a bigger refrigerator and bigger freezer and those ppl buy both things as seperated units. About the toilets: There are to versions if it comes to the shape. The one like in the vidoe and a version where the whole is more toward your feets if you sit on them. They have a flat space where the one in the video has its waterhole. Tahn there are 3 different versions in the way the flush works. The most comon is like the one you know from the US, with a visible tank. Than there are those like the one in the video, where the tank is hidden and than there is a rly old and rare variant that my granparents had. It's no tank at all, it's just conected to a pipe with good water pressure and you pushed a handle on the pipe to flush. Oh and about the "Brush" XD Its seen in the video to the left of the toilet. You brush while you flush so the brush will also get cleaned by the water. Damn i will make a video and use Nutella to show it XD
@@martinsmelderis3451 :D Okay, i than need to find food that let my guts make some liquidshitglue XD
Moin! I’m from Northern Germany. Thank you for your content. Really enjoying it❤
And yes we have freezers and screens and American Style Kitchen appliances 😂
So about the freezers, we do have them. But they are not always attached to the fridge. At my house we have 2 fridges. One in the kitchen and the other in the cellar. And the freezer is in the cellar too. The second fridge is honestly only really there because it's a leftover from when we renovated the kitchen.
9:00 as a german I love this! Never thought that such a normal thing here in Germany could be this impressive to an American. I mean, I'm so used to having them on my window. Like, I've never lived in a house without. Same goes for the windows.
It is unusual that a fridge does not have a freezer section, but it is not that big, that is why most of us have a seperate big freezer either in the kitchen or if you life in a house in the basement.
It is all about the use of space. Germany is roughly the size of Texas but has 4 times the population. German population density is 623/sq mile The USA has a density 94/sq mile. Yes, there are large areas in the USa that are only sparcely populated but we also have huge swats of land that are forests or national parks. That is why our cities and towns are built to house as many people as possible without craming them into huge concrete towers (we are not fans of those). You also have to understand that our cities were not designed, well with the exception of Mannheim, they have all grown for centuries (sometimes even millenia) from small villages to towns to cities. Some of our cities were founded by the Romans 2000 years ago, when no one outside of the Americas even knew that this continent even existed.
"It is unusual that a fridge does not have a freezer section"
Depends how you live.
If you live in a house or a bigger apartment where you have en extra room (cellar / storage room / utility room) where you can put your washer / dryer you might need that for a freezer and take a fridge without freezing section to have more space there.
If you have a garden and grow yoir own vegetables / fruits you might also have a big freezer.
Germany is about half the size of Texas.
It depends on whether you have a separate freezer or not, or where your freezer is located. If you have one or if it's right in your kitchen, then your fridge doesn't need a freezer compartment. This has nothing to do with the size of the fridge or the size of the flat. I usually know that you put the freezer and the fridge on top of each other, so they have enough space even in the smallest kitchen.
The suprise in his face when the "Rollladen" goes down 😂😂😂 so funny!
The Window he opened was a Velux Window. Is one of the Major Brands here in Germany, and they have standardized screens to insert. But they don't come standard. They work together with the German Blinds (Rolladen). And there is a nice trick to reduce Insects comming in: Let the Rolladen about 1/3 down, and open the Window half. Then you don't have many Bugs and don't have to clean your screens. Mostly Screens are only at Bedroom Windows in Summer in German houses and they are detachable.
The slanted Ceilings are some nice tricks as well: You don't pay for anything below 3 Foot in Taxes or Rent, but you can putt a Shelf or a chest of drawers there. This house is even not a three-story house but a two-story and a half Story. Which means another building permit and another taxation.
The wall mounted toilets came around end of the 1990s in common use in new houses. The water tank is hidden in the drywall behind the toilet together with necessary mounting points for the toilet.
you can already find the old-style floor mounted toilet with visible water tank in older houses.
One storey houses are called " Bungaloes" and they DO exist in Germany, lol !
I NEVER lived without a freezer in decades here, more lol !
Entrance doors can have a latch to avoid being shut out if you want to , more more lol !
And last but not least you can decide how much water you want to waste after using the toilet as there are either stoppers or a two button system available for modern toilets !
To assume that ONE house is the "role model" of all types of houses here is ....laughable !
"Entrance doors can have a latch to..."
I think the latch is the part you move when locking the door with the key.
The other is called striker plate.
So further explanation.
When the door is shut, the striker plate locks the door. It is also the part that moves when you push the handle on the inside.
When the door gets locked with a key, the latch is additional to the striker plate.
If you open with a key, the lacth is the first that is moving and then they key will also move the striker plate.
I thought other door locks would work the same way and the only difference is that there is no door know or handle that can move the striker plate from the outside.
@@helloweener2007 nope its not. what they are taalking about is a small latch besides the striker plate which you can push up and the door can be opened without a key with just a push.
@@denizkarabiber3195
Oh yes, could be. The part in the wall that is catching the striker plate. In some doors it is a part that can be switched between fix in position and turning. When it turns, you can just push open the door.
And I think there are also locks where you can fix the striker plate that it can't snap in.
So the door won't shut at all.
13:10 The water tank is in the wall ... and you can see the plate with the "flush knob", which you can remove to reach inside the tank in case there is a problem. Not having the toilet on the floor makes it easier to clean ... it just depends on your choices though which type of toilet you want.
13:50 HINT: SIT DOWN to pee! Just remember this "poem": *_Some go there to shit and stink, I go there to sit and think!_*
Feli from Germany has more of that kind of videos describing in detail American vs German houses. Go check her channel. :) All this what's been presented here actually applies to most of European houses/appartments - like I live in Poland and it's pretty much the same. However we do use screens in windows (I do, I hate insects & mosquitos), we have freezers and shower courtains. :) I enjoy watching your videos - currently I catch up with old ones, as just a few days ago I discovered your channel.
In Germany, we don't think in the amount of bedrooms the way you do. We'd e.g. say 3 ZKDB which is an abbreviation for "3 Zimmer Küche Diele Bad", so "3 rooms kitchen entrance hall bathroom". For the US, this would probably be 2 bedrooms as you don't count the living room in the list. There's no distinction between living rooms and bedrooms as everybody can flexibly decide if a room shall be a living room or a bedroom. I'd say that most people choose the room next to the balcony or garden or the room next to the kitchen or just the biggest room to be their living room. So, there's no criteria to meet to call anything a bedroom, as we just have "rooms".
There are freezers in a household, of course, but space in the kitchen is often limited. Refrigerators and freezers are often two separate units. The fridge is smaller than US ones. A refrigerator often has just a small freezer compartment to have more space for perishable goods like dairy, soda, cold cuts, fresh meat and produce that you’ll use daily. In the freezer compartment you have your ice cubes, frozen herbs or pizza that you’ll about to consume soon. A separate full-size freezer unit is often located in the basement etc. where frozen but less needed things like the other pizzas, frozen meats etc.
We do have screens in Germany, I usually only have mine in during summer.
Most of the things he said left me like "maybe you don't but that is not common ".
Some actual differences would be that we usually build thicker walls and we build our foundations differently.
It is mostly about efficiency in Eurpean houses:
-There are houses consisting of only the ground floor, sometimes with a (part-)basement, these are called "Bungalow", but they are not really efficient in a size/heating cost ratio. Stacking the floors up needs less surface area where heat or cold could get throught, so you don't need to use so much energy for heating or cooling.
- Most american woodhouses are considered in Europe as better garden houses if you look at the insulation standard. That is why there is not much need for an airconditioning, the houses in Europe are insulated better so there is not that much of cooling needed if at all. There are exceptions like really old houses with practically no insulation and one-glass-windows, but these get demolished and rebuild proper to normal insulation standards or are upgraded in terms of insulation and insulated windows with 3 layers of glass. and being built out of brick and stones, they don't heat up this much in the summer.
- Refrigerators don't need the inefficient freezer department, this is just for really, really small houses or apartments. Normally there is a refrigerator in the kitchen and a freezer in the basement or storage room next to the kitchen.
- A closet is much more space eficient than a whole room only for clothes which get messy anyways. You can put two or more closets in a room if you have so much clothes in your master bedroom. The not needed clothes (like pullovers in summer) are usually stored in the basement so you don't clog up your closet.
- Radiators are the most efficient way to transfer heat in the needed amounts. If you don't need heating in a room, you just turn the radiotor of. Using airvents to heat and dust up a room is just cheap and only used in factorys or very old houses. Nowaydays radiators in new buildings are gone and underfloor heating is used which makes it possible to use heat pumps and have a much more confortable way of heating your house, often on cold but sunny days with electricity from your own roof.
- There is in most cases one radiator left even in houses with underfloor heating - it is called "Badheizkörper" and used to dry hand towels after showering.
- There is no real need for screens on the windows - but if you need one because you live near a pond, they can get clipped on with no problem. Mosquitos are not a thing here.
And, regarding the efficiency in general:
No one in Europe would put towns in the middle of a desert, put not really insulated woodhouses there and then wondered why there is a strong need for airconditioning and problems with the power grid due to the need of having the houses AC's on at full blast for the whole year. But you will find examples of things going wrong due to lack of common sense and/or bribing in every country.
Yeah, in German houses or apartments, the rooms aren't necessarily pre-defined. Houses (often) don't come with closets (although some do) and don't come with built-in kitchens. Whoever moves in decides what they are going ro use each room for. Granted. Plumbing sometimes decides that for you, but if you are willing to rip open some walls, that's not a hindrance either.
The door and window thing is probably common to most of Europe, not just Germany. It is the same in Denmark and Czech, the windows might not be a thing on some old houses or the houses that are considered historical but new houses and apartments have this for sure.
You seem pretty amazed by the functioning of the "Rolladen".
Those are common in the majority of houses, still, there are differences depending on the region you're living in.
You have those manual (like there) or automatic. Automatic ones go up/down on touch like with a lightswitch or in modern homes you can even control them via Smartphone. Often they have sensors and adjust to light levels, so they help maintain a certain room temperature. They're installed on the outside of the windows and as they're let down they provide shelter from the heat.
If your home is well isolated and you have such a system your room temperature won't raise much above 70F, even if it's way above 95F outside - so no real need for air conditioning.
Rolladen also help secure your home in case of heavy weather. Most of them are made with a metal core and some plastic mantle. Rolladen are made out of many solid lamellas connected by mostly aluminum stripes with varying sizes of holes in them (this is where you saw the light come through). When you're letting them down you see the characteristic holes, those are great as they're big enough to let some light through and keep the air ventilating to a certain degree if you open up your window. As soon as your Rolladen reaches the bottom of your window and you let it down even further the lamellas come to rest on each other and the aluminum stripes are completely invisible in between those lamellas.
When you pull the Rolladen all the way up they are rolled up in a cavity above the window and that's also a reason for the aluminum stripes: They keep the Rolladen flexible enough to be rolled up. Massive aluminum lamellas either couldn't be rolled up or if you'd connect them with some sort of joint they'd use more space and wouldn't be as stable when shut completely.
Feel free to contact me and ask any questions if you miss something or want to know anything else.
9:00 The pure, child-like amazement is so fun to watch
On the subject of refrigerators, in Germany there are smaller refrigerators with a small freezer compartment. These refrigerators are intended for small apartments, such as student housing. In much larger fitted kitchens, refrigerators and freezers are usually separate devices. There are also large chest freezers, which are more likely to find space in the basement of a family home.
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA IT'S SO FUNNY TO SEE YOUR REACTION TO THE "ROLLLADEN" (the thing on the windows which go down) cuz for us German it's the most normal thing in the world and we can't imagine of an other thing except of Rollladen
Germany and Scandinavia do not need AC as Well as in South of Europe.. the houses in the southern part off Germany , Australien and Schwitzerland, Spain, Italy, Portugal are made with Stone Think Walls and floor to keep the House cold.
I live i Denmark just 25 kilometre from germanboarder.
My House is from 1911, it has the same temperature all yr round. In my House 19 degrees c. Because Walls are build very good, to both protest and to keep Weather conditions out
The window/Toilet wallhanging etc is also used here in Norway, so I guess it goes for most of northern Europe, not just Germany. Also the brush is for cleaning the toilet.
German doors normally have electrical door openers. So, if you are on the 2nd floor and someone rings the bell, you can ask via intercom who is there or see the guy on a screen and can open the door. If you have to go in frequently and don't want to use ther key you can move a little lever inside the lock and the door is permanantly open. I am sure, everyone -like us- has a spare key somewhere hidden outside the house.
Newer houses normally have underfloor heating. you switch it on in autumn and off in spring. No way to increase the temperature of a certain room since the coils are embedded in tons of concrete. takes time to heat up and is not necessary.
One feature of the European style windows is never mentioned: they have two seals. Should a strong wind press rain water against the window and the first seal fails, the is a second one. In the bottom of the frames are little holes, so excess water will flow to the outside.
Horizontal blinds normally have electronical controllers. You can program those to open and close the blind at a certain time and if you have light sensors they will close if the sunshine is too much. Some house have central controllers which can be used with smartphones etc.
The tank for the toilet is in the wall. If you need access, you have to remove the plate with the push buttom. Difficult to remove lime or if something is stucked. You need a small hand to access.
Buildings with outer walls being shared: mostly a space issue, back then and today as well. "Back then" being the middle ages, with only major towns and larger cities being able to afford a city wall for protection against raids and invaders. As such the area inside a city or town wall was limited and had to be very efficiently used to house as many people, crafts stores, and amenities as possible. So houses were built basically touching each other along streets. In villages farm houses were also built back to back, or side-by-side, directly touching. This offered some minor protection from invasion by providing large courtyards surrounded by the farm walls and neighbors being able to hear any ruckus going down.
That style of building seeped into tradition and people tended to keep to that building style for a looong time after the outside pressure of city walls had vanished.
Today it is that farming land inside Germany has become a much rarer commodity, and has to be preserved, meaning, people STILL have to build fairly closely together. Also close built buildings means that distances from one to the next are still walkable. So you get walkable neighborhoods with combined usage for housing, groceries, pharmacies, doctors, you name it. In essence a microcosm of work, eat, sleep in a highly concentrated area.
But still, there are separate one or two family homes as well here in Germany but those tend to be more along the more affluent quarters of cities where people can afford the outrageous real estate lot prices. Or they are in rural areas of smaller towns that now have unused farmlands on their outskirts.
Front doors only: many front doors have two different settings.
Either the bolt clicks into the fittings of the frame when you close it with a light spring load.
Or the second setting you again turn the key once or twice for even more secure setting of the bolt into the frame. Because the first setting is spring-loaded and can be jimmied open with a thin wire or some other such implement. A truely locked door (second setting) the bolt can't be moved without engaging the keyhole, either by key or by lockpicking.
No, on most front doors there are no knobs or handles you can turn on the outside to open the front door, it always requires a key.
With one exception: there is a tiny switch that can be flipped inside the door frame that clicks open the front door lock so that it holds shut against minor pressure like breezes, but will open by a push from a human being or faster winds.
Freezers: nope, can't agree with Steven about that.
I've lived in Germany all my life, and visited many countries as well. In all the German houses and apartments I've lived, pre-furbished, or furbished on my own, have there always been at the very least, freezer trays in them. Yes, they were tiny in my student apartment more than 30 years ago. But yes, they did exist, and they have spread even more since then.
In most cases those are fridge/freezer combos, with a larger fridge on top, and the smaller freezer compartment with a separate door on the bottom, rather than the US side-by-side arrangement. Usually freezer comparments below fridges tend to have at least two large trays, most probably will have three deep trays.
But yeah, fridge/freezer combos in Germany tend to be a lot smaller, as package sizes tend to be smaller as well. Bulk buying and storing is less common in Germany than in the USA.
In many cases there are either freezer chests or separate freezer cabinets in basements as well for the long term storage, if such space is available.
So I have to reverse Steven's argument there: I've never seen a fridge without a freezer compartment in my life in Germany.
Closets are nice to have, but they do tend to limit the usage of a room to one type of usage, ie bedroom in most cases. You may use it differently but using a closet as storage in office space is a bit clunky, I'd wager. Also a built in or wall closet limits the usage of the floor area as well. Getting access to a closet, thus getting full usage out of a closet, means that the wall it is mounted in can't have anything standing in front of the closet doors. Which again limits the placement of other furniture in the room.
With many German homes being built for many generations to live in it, one after the other, usage of rooms may shift many times during the life span of a house built for a century or more. As such multi-useability is fairly high on German architects minds when building a house. Closets do exist in Germany, but they are much rarer than in the USA.
The Rolladen / roll-down shutter has been around for more than 70 years, at least. The roll-down shutters are interlocking panels separated by a sliding panel with holes in them. These offer some light if they are not set down on the ground and they hang loosely, one from the other. Yes, you can stop the Rolladen at any height you want, it will hang there indefinitely.
But when the panels set down on the ground the two interlocking solid panels 'swallow' up the panel with the holes in between them, shutting out virtually all the light, allowing you to darken a room completely even during the day. That also offers a next set of insulation and protection to the glass in the window frames in case of severe storms. It also makes breaking and entering through such a locked Rolladen very difficult.
The multi-panel construction allows for the bending of the panels, thus making them be stored in a compartment above the window, either in a casing outside the house, or inside a wall mounting for a more flush outer or inner look. Nope, no magic, simply boring standard construction for most German homes.
The problem with most Rolladen is that they are fairly close to the windows in guidance frames which makes mounting of screens on the outside a bit difficult in some cases. With the windows opening to the inside makes mounting on the inside of a window virtually impossible.
With the recent uptick in invasive mosquito species to Germany screens on windows may become a priority refit for many home owners, so the type of Rolladen guidance may switch a bit in the future. Or maybe extremely thin screen mountings. I don't know what the solution will be.
Toilet stains when pooping: The size of the water surface is smaller than in the USA. I believe that's what Steven meant when he said, German toilets don't have much water in them. Which means if you don't hit the water perfectly with the poop then you wll get stains on the toilet bowl walls.
So stains do occur regularly. But every toilet tends to have a toilet brush. When stains do occur we use the brush immediately to clean the bowl.
The actual flushing seems to be more efficient in German toilets than the rising, swirling Poseidon's kiss version from the USA.
Energy reduction is a very important issue around here. You need to have very good insulation even to get the needed permits to build. And sharing the wall with another house gets you better values. And it might be a bit cheaper to build. You will also need a bit less area. So you will find lots of new 2 family houses.
as a german i really like your videos :D it's interesting that there are so many differences to the US. but yes, we could need those screens for the bugs here too :D we HAVE those, but you have to buy them yourself and if you move, you gotta take them with you.
i have never ever seen a fridge without at least a tiny freezer in it. you can at least put 3 pizza and some icecream in it.^^
i love your face when he puts the "rolladen" down on the window xD
1.
We have a little freezer in our refrigerator. And we have a whole freezer chest (2 metres x 1 meter) in our basement.
2. We have automatic shatters.
Icontrolöed by a switch (like a light switch just split in half) with one triangle up 🔺️ to make the shatters go up and one with a triangle down 🔻 to make them go down.
3. We have 2 toilets.
One where there is no water tank and one still with a water tank. And you really seldomly need the brush. The water quite always gets everything down.
Just stumbled upon your videos and they crack me up. These facial expressions are truly hilarious.... especially the genuine confusion about the toilet brush ... oh and the fascination for "Rollladen" (which btw are nothing short of an ingenious invention and were one of the few things in missed every day (or night) when I stayed in the US for 2 years).
I hope you get the chance to come to Germany one day and experience everything first hand ;)
So
Yes we do have freezers in our fridges, most of the time, the size varies tho. The American two door fridge is mostly uncommon, but does exist in Germany. There are one store houses, actually they were quite popular to be built from the 70-s on. The shades or Rollladen are pretty cool if you want to sleep during the day and to keep the heat out. And yes we have screens to prevent bugs from coming in.
I love how curious you are and mostly not judgmental about the cultural differences
Its awesome to see your emotions about things ive never noticed cause these are basics :)
The reason why in Germany, and probably many other European cities, the houses are so close to each other, has to do with the Middle Ages. At that time the houses were built near the church, the market place, and were then surrounded by a city wall in order to better defend it. So the closer you built it, the smaller you had to build the city walls, and the less vulnerable you were. That's why it was built upwards. It was also partly an advantage if the city was situated near a river and the river therefore offered a kind of natural protective on one side. Disadvantage of the whole are, of course, fires, since they could quickly wipe out entire cities. My neighboring town, for example, was built completely surrounded by a river, as if the land it was built on was an island in the river.
Nowadays, however, new buildings are not always built house to house, there are different models in Germany: "Einzelhaus" (the detached house), "Doppelhaus" (the duplex - is that really the correct term or is Google trying to make fool of me - 2 families each have 1 house that is directly adjacent to the other as if it were 1 house) and "Reihenhaus" (here google has two possible translations: 1st the terraced house - which I think my be correct, or 2nd townhouse - seems to me wrong. Here are still house to house to house..., albeit mostly very similar because they were built/designed by one and the same company/engineer, but usually get their own touch from the "future" owner).
The reason why, even today, people tend to build upwards rather than across the land is above all the price of land, which are measured by the square meter, and the limited building space available, especially in cities.
We don't have mosquitoes in Germany (fortunately) but enough other bugs, to keep them away, you can attach a fly screen (a kind of net) to the window frame. Birds don't usually fly into our windows, which of course doesn't mean it can't still happen.
Yes, we do have mosqitoes in Germany, in our area at least. And we have screens in front of the windows.
Although houses in a medieval city weren't actually that crowded together and there was a lot of free space inside the city walls used for gardening ect. , some of it could later then be filled in with more houses. So it wasn't actually that tightly planned. Houses were arranged either in rows (usually like 6-10 houses) or in squares around a garden area. But the streets between those rows/blocks could be quite wide. There also had to be space for so called Ehgräben which were basically above-ground sewage systems. There aren't really proper city maps for the medieval times, but there are very detailes ones from the 16th century and it's usually still very medieval-ish in design, just with upgraded city walls that were more specialized for a time with firearms and cannons with bastions that minimized blind spots for the stationary cannons.
Medieval cities weren't these dark, dirty place with dark alleys full of thieves as depicted in a lot of modern fantasy. Well, maybe London was, but that was a giant city and already had a lot of problems other cities would only developed in later times due to higher population densities.
Examples, all by Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg:
Emden 1575
Bremen 1600
Eckernförde ca. 1618
Duisburg 1575
Frankfurt 1572
Brussel 1572
In German the word Mosquito is solely used for the subspecies that carries the Malaria virus.
But in the English language mosquito is used for all those pesky little bugs that drink your blood and leave you itching.
The German translation for the English word mosquito is Mücke.
In Germany there are indeed single-storey houses, which are called bungalows here. A bungalow is usually a one-storey house that can have different roof shapes. The term is often used in connection with holiday homes and summer houses, but it is also used for normal residential houses in this special design. This single-storey house style is particularly suitable for older people who can no longer climb stairs. With the same living space, however, a much larger property is needed here than if the living space were distributed over two or even three floors. As a result, such a house is not necessarily cheaper, especially in urban centers with high property prices, although one might have expected this.
In my region you can build on quite small property areas whereas in other areas you need a minimum area. If you don't have much space you need to build higher. There are lots of properties with more ground which are divided, so that another house can be built on that space. I live in such a house.
Bungalows were pretty popular in the 1960s and 1970s. That's when most were built, even if they might have been renovated later on.
I live two countries east to Germany, but the same points apply. Just to illustrate, I periodically adjust the "rolo" on the windows throughout the day, depending on how much light/privacy I want. I like your reactions so far, fascinating to watch first time reactions to things so evident in Europe :) You know often just little things can make a huge difference. Oh, about fridges.. Consider the different lifestyle; shops are intermixed with residential areas, even in suburbs. Most people shop often, and buy less in one go, so you don't need that much space. Also shopping is not really reliant on driving, except maybe if you plan on buying a lot of stuff at once. But even then I personally prefer home delivery. I guess the guy in the video just did not show it, but freezers are usually below the fridge in a separate cabinet or compartment of the fridge.
solution to the "cat-problem" (dore wise): pass one of your spare keys to the neighbour for the time you are on vacation. cat saved! :) if you rent a house or appartment in germany, it usually comes with 3 keys, sometimes more.
EDIT: btw thanks for your face-expression while watching the window-thing "Rolladen" - i had a good lough! :D
As we say in Germany "Doppelhaushälfte". This actually helps quiet a lot with lowering heating costs. On my side of the house I live in another house is right next to it, on the other side there is none (parking space and walkway to the garden). My heating cost is 30-40% lower compared to my neighbour, arguably I don't heat that much and am a very ressourceful person, but still it makes quiet the difference.
And obviously we have a freezer :D It's simply seperated. In my refrigerator it is integrated but below as seperate unit and I can turn it off seperately too, so if I want to defrost it I don't have to turn off my refrigerator. If you have a smaller one often there is just a small area we call it "Eisfach" where you can maybe put like 1 pizza maybe some ice cream or frozen fruits in but not a lot of stuff, so if you are a person who likes to have a couple of frozen pizzas in the house just in case some friends come visiot or whatever then you would need a seperate freezer.
And for screens I have them, costed me like 10 bucks and was 10 minute of work, very simple to put on and very easy to replace too actually.
I love the way of your reactions on some videos :D
8:10 we simply don’t categorize rooms as bedrooms.
We just list rooms, bathroom and kitchen. Everything else is just a room and you can do whatever you like with it.
Want to turn the living room into a bedroom? Do it.
Your choice.
The reason why the garage is separated from the house is because the sewage fees are calculated by the floor -surfaces of the house. If the garage is attached to the house the surface of the garage is added and causes higher fees.
We surely can leave our doors unlocked. We can unlock the snapping mechanism that normally keeps the door closed and then can open the door by just pushing against it. Also freezers are very common in Germany. A lot of people have combo units where the freezer and refrigerator is combined, while others have big freezers and put them in the cellar etc. It's very rare to see a house without a freezer.
Loved your reaction to the Rolladen 😂😂
5:23 yeah we(Germans, Austrias) have to give our neighbour the keys in Order to feed out cats, dogs and so on if we are on vacation. I think our architecture is like that so that it is harder to Break into our homes.
But sometimes, if for example Kids of one apartment building are playing outside, we have something we call „schnapper“ oder something with the Same meaning. The schnapper is used so that Kids can come in because the schnapper prevent the door from closing completely.😄
Hope I helped, have a nice day😊🧡
The windows are pretty standard in the EU, they also have insulated glazing.
7:06 Refrigerators without freezer compartment is an option in Germany and vice versa. A small Refrigerator with included small freezer compartmant is common. But you can also buy a combination of fifty/fifty refridge and freezer. Or a Refrigerator without Freezer compartment. Reason is, that Germans mainly do not use crushed ice. And you can by two stand alones: Refrigerator and Freezer as seperated stand alone devices. This is nice for "Frozen goods" in larger quantities, to be stored for a longer period of time. In Germany we are very flexible at this point.
The main entrance door usually snaps shut like he just showed, but people - especially in rural areas - leave side doors open so friends can enter through the garden. Or they leave a spare key with their neighbor's like my family does. Most refrigerators are instead integrated into the kitchen cabinets, but most families I know have one with a additional small freezer units integrated into them which usually fit some pizzas or something. Plus often - when they got a house not just a flat in one - additional chest freezers or upright ones often situated in the cellar. Oh, and the thing about the ACs: especially older residential buildings don't have any, but modern often got HVACs installed to e sure they meet the criteria of the "Gebäudeenergiegesetz" by optimizing heating and cooling the building and therefore not spending so much money - that also means, though, that German HVACs generally aren't blasting on full - in the best cases they are so well calculated that the air temps are comfortable and you don't even feel that an additional system is pumping cool/ warm air into your rooms.
Oh and, you can totally.get screens here, we don't live on the dark side of the moon after all ;), they just don't come or installed ^^'
for the closet thing: its actually nice for renters/new buyers to have freedom in the layout of the house, some want a bigger bedroom, others a bigger living room, others a big dining room etc.
each room basicially can become the bedroom since generally all rooms have windows and everybody owns wardrobes they bring when they move.
My father worked for IBM throughout the 50s 60s and 70s, and at one point in the 1970s we lived in Germany. Our kitchen had a mini fridge that didn’t hold very much. But it did have a tiny freezer. It was a small dorm size fridge, actually. But the way Germans got away with that was they went shopping every day for food. Shopped in the morning, fixed supper that night & there was no need to store food for very long. It took us a while to get used to it, but eventually we converted as we didn’t have a choice!
The metal shutters (roldadens) were cool & one of the things I miss most about German houses. The house we rented was made of cinderblock, not timber frame & that kept the inside cool in the summer (mostly). But the shutters could be lowered with tension on the rope to allow the perforations to stay open & let some light in. Or you could lower them completely & the shutters would close down tightly from their own weight. If I remember correctly, it was invented during WWII as a way to still have lights on in your house during blackouts from bombing raids. And they can get away w/no screens because they don’t have very many mosquitos & black flies like we do here in the states. Or, at least they didn’t when I was there in the ‘70s.
A lot of the Germany stuff goes for us in the Netherlands too, the absence of closets, the front door locking, the handles everywhere, the clever windows and the rolling shutters, etc, but we do have mosquito screens and freezers. Another big difference is that houses are generally made of concrete and bricks, no wooden skeletons, and hitting a an indoor wall, will break something of your body, not the wall.
German houses also have freezers and many also install mosquito screens, since having flies or mosquitos inside is just really annoying. The video generalized too much on these parts from very limited experience.
This was something that confused my whole psychology/pedagogy class, including the teacher, in 2004: We watched a film about serotonin deficiency in which a teenager punched a wall, resulting in a whole in the wall. I sat there, thinking that that young man had to be really strong and really angry due to his health issue to be driven and able to do that. I didn't consider that no matter how strong he was, in my own bedroom at the time he just would have broken his hand in several places.
what always baffles me as a german about many dutch houses is the lack of curtains. i'm not sure if this is (still) true, but wasn't there something about a tax (or something similar) for curtains in the netherlands? super weird for me as a 'privacy loving german'.
i am german never seen a hous without a freezer
Yes we have a freezer too
door handles are becoming more popular in the US, a few months ago i exchanged all my exterior doors to handles instead of knobs and my parents did so over 20 yrs ago. i believe in Canada, possibly in British Columbia there is regulation that all new houses have to build with door handles, one reason it is easier for older people dealing with arthritis, also cats too (i am told some cats are learning to open the handles)
My cat was reading this over my shoulder, and just gave me a "Ha! Told you if cats could open doors we'd rule the world!!" look....
@@Kayenne54 your cat is absolutely correct, cats do rule most of the world already
@@stpaley 🤣🤣
You can also open the door during a fire since you can press down the handle with an object if its too hot.
@@jalifritz8033 Or with wet hands or when carrying things.
Depending on the lock you can leave your front door open by flipping a tiny lever that's been built into the frame, then you'd just need to push the door open. My parents have that kind of door. Or you simply hand a spare key to your neighbor/friend. I managed to lock myself out several times and I'm afraid it'll happen again 😅
I know that feeling! I've locked myself out so many times, I figured out alternative ways in. We had a cat door in one of our basement windows at the back of the house, where I could reach in, grab the handle of the window next to it to open that and climb in through that window.
One time I forgot to close that window after climbing in, damn was my mom pissed as she found out a few days later... how often do people go in all their basement rooms after all?
if you have this windows type, you will never miss this ;) regards from germany ;)
The screens thing is actually easy to explain. Because it's usually cold in Germany from october to late april/ early may, you don't need screens most of the year. If bugs and stuff really do bother you in the approximately 4,5 months of the year there even are any flying around, you can easily buy screens.
I live in England in a house which is nearly 200 years old in the middle of the countryside which was originally 3 barns on three sides of a square mwhich were part of a farm. The outer walls are 15 inches thick! It was converted into a single house in 1972. It is quite a large house with lots of windows. And a large garden. There are lots of birds both small (robins, blackbirds, blue tits etc) and also pheasants, partridges and the inevitable pigeons wondering and flying around in the garden which I enjoy and have several bird feeders for them. Some of them are quite tame and don’t panic and fly away when I go out and although I leave a couple of the patio doors open quite often I only once had a bird fly into the house (s little robin) and the poor thing was so panick stricken trying to find its way out again. But it is lovely having all these birds wondering all over the place. Last week when I opened my curtains first thing in the morning there were 3 pheasants wandering around the garden. It is such a joy to see them and makes one happy to be alive. I also have lots of bees and butterflies in the summer. It is all so nice to have all these b irds. There are also some squirrels in my garden but I am not so keen on them because they dig up my flower beds which is very annoying but overall it is a lovely existence. We don’t have screens on any windows because we don’t have bugs. Definitely no mosquitoes!
Advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - that Rolläden fall into that category is new though. 😃
European housedoors usually can only be opened with a key from the outside, the handle from the inside, or remotely with the buzzer (electric opener).
Though the latch usually has a switch which - if engaged allows the door to be pushed open from the outside, though this is rarely used.
I live on an Austrian farm and like 99,99% of the community is the separated from us through fields and forests. The 00,01% is our neighbor who is a farmer aswell and my grandma who live one floor above her garage.
And grandma's house once upon a time was supposed to be a chickenbarn.
Besides the "no door knob"-thing. Some building do have those door but I seen more door handles on both sides the door in my entire life than those doors.
The freezer thing
I personal have 1 fridge, 1 fridge which has a freezer attached below, 1 fridge-alike-looking freezer, on top a mini freezer in which we put our self made breed, and another freezer. But that's only my farmer household.
The closet thing is true, we have wardrobes instead of closet rooms
The windows show in the video aren't common in old building like my and the neighbors house, we still have only curtains. But I do see them often. Other than the roll shutter windows, the windows are identical to old building.
The Insect net/screen we had to install it extra on our own (in my case, but other than that I haven't been in another building with a screen yet).
The thing with the "diagonal roof" part (
That moment he was so schocked with the "Rolladen" reminded me so much of me being a little kid and just pulling it up and then down again a few times to figure out what happens. xD
1.) There are separated houses in Germany of course, and some are even hundrets of meters apart. Especially some farmers houses.
2.}Germans have strong security needs, so they try to keep it easy to leave (in case of fire) and difficult to enter the house.
3) EVERY house (apartment) has a freezer. Either a separat part of the fridge or a separate device outside the kitchen.
4.) Most of my windows have a screen. You can buy them everywhere (Grocery store, Online) to keep the bugs out.
5.) No closet - 100% true.
6) No AC - true. Energy in Germany is quite expensive.
The Freezer Part is a little off😅, I am German and I never saw a house without freezer😳😳🤷🏼♀️
But if People have much to freeze they could have a separate freezer unit in the cellar...🤷🏼♀️
But mostly we have combined Units in the kitchen. The Freezer is either a smal part on Top, or a little bigger underneath the fridge.
An I was missing one of the biggest differences: German Houses are allways built of stone! (That's by the way, one reason you don't need AC in the summer if you close the shudders of your windows to the sunny side during the day☝🏼🕵🏼♀️
If there is a wooden house, it is very insulated and built very massive.
We do have freezers they are just a separate thing from the fridge with an individual door most of the time over or under the fridge
There are also many apartments where the toilet cisterns are in the room and the bedrooms are 2.46 meters high. The bedrooms are often designed to face the street. But there are some special windows that reduce street noise significantly or even completely.
Through your reactions i learned a lot about America. Very interesting and entertaining.