A Story About Cultural Differences And The Secret Of Cultural Sunglasses

Intercultural dating often feels like you are traveling internationally every day. Your mind gets expanded in ways you would have never expected... frequently out of your comfort zone. 

When I came to the U.S. for the first time at the age of 19, I had just finished high school in northern Germany. Like many 19 year olds in Germany, I had spent my free-time ballroom dancing, working part-time at a club on the weekends and often spent the night at a friend‘s house - no matter if they were a male or female friend of mine. 

When I moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to study at Calvin College (a Private Christian school) I was confronted with a very different everyday life: suddenly I was not allowed to serve or even drink alcohol, I had to differentiate between girl and guy friendships and obey open-hours (allotted dorm times for opposite genders to be in each other’s rooms). Somehow, even ballroom dancing seemed to be a luxurious hobby that people my age couldn’t afford - therefore I started teaching it on the side so I could go out dancing with my friends. 

During my years at the American college, I formed my German and my American personality; some of the personality traits and habits mixed, others I had to turn on or off every time I boarded a plane to go from one country to the other. It was a bit like how wearing a different outfit may cause you to act somewhat differently: when I wear a business suit I naturally act more professional and serious, but when I wear a dance skirt I’m ready to let loose and dance: I’m the same person, but different personalities and actions come out in each context. In either case I had fully adapted to the differing “outfits” and liked myself in each. 

Now that I live back in Germany, I am usually wearing my „German outfit“ of habits and personality while Jon is being his American self in the U.S. - This gives way to many funny and enlightening experiences as well as heated discussions. Here is a small selection...

Sharing a tent and open relationships 

The other day, I told Jon, I was planning on going to a music festival where I would share a tent with a friend. Nothing unusual, I thought, but when I mentioned that this friend was a guy, Jon and I ended up in an unforeseen argument. He brought up an article he had just read that explained young German people prefer to be in open, non-exclusive relationships (which I found very funny and not at all close to the truth).

After hours of talking, we learned from this situation that even though an action might not mean anything to you (like sharing a tent with a male friend of mine), it might throw your partner off because of his/her personal or cultural beliefs. The key to not beating yourself or your partner up over concerns that might turn into misunderstandings, is to talk about them openly, and to keep in mind that one is interpreting actions from their own culture. We have to remember that we not only have different experiences but also look through a different cultural lens for interpreting the same event, which naturally causes us to see it differently. 

The topic of public nudity

The first time I stripped completely naked in a sauna in the U.S., my American friends were shocked and I was confused. In Germany, they yell at you if you keep your bathing suit on in a sauna and often make you take it off in front of everyone else- or they ask you to leave. Somehow, nudity is a normal part of German culture. Most beaches here have a “FKK-Bereich”: a section of the beach that is designated to the “free body culture.” And even when you are in the “clothed” section of the beach, it is normal that you will change your suit in public or, as Jon puts  it, “for all to see”. Most people in Germany do not feel more exhibitionistic or inclined to engage in open-relationship than in any other western cultures. We are simply more comfortable with public nudity than, for example, Americans. You should have seen Jon the first time he changed “for all to see” at a public beach. He must have asked me 10 times if I was sure it was ok, and if he could possibly get into legal trouble for doing such a thing. I simply had to point at the 10 other people, male and female, all around us changing in the nude. 

I actually think that the reason nudity is so sexually charged in the heads of Americans is because American society makes it such a taboo. Why do we in the States see killing other people in detail in a very realistic looking ego-shooter video game a normal passing-time but get offended when we see someone naked (even our own parents)? I at least got a huge kick out of taking Jon to his first German sauna. Here is a guy who always looks for the dressing room at a swimming park in America, but now he is swimming with both genders in the nude! It was also a real treat to observe him for the first time relieving himself at a public park against a tree. He said, and I was surprised to learn that, “In America, you can be charged with a felony for indecent exposure if you pee in public.” In Germany - even though not technically legal - its quite a normal thing to observe men peeing on a tree off to the side, especially in Berlin. 

Strange foods

One of the strangest things I was introduced to in the U.S. was the fact that Americans don’t just eat the wrong part of celery (for some reason, they eat the green stems and throw away the delicious white root), but they also strangely enough put peanut butter on everything: bread, apples, milk shakes, ice cream, marinades and yes - even celery. Seriously?? And then there is the topic of pumpkins and Thanksgiving. Are Americans aware that a pumpkin is a VEGETABLE? Yet there they are dumping sugar on pumpkins, then mashing them into pies, ice cream and even cappuccino. 

Jon, on the other hand, was just as shocked  when we were invited to my parents for dinner and they served the typical “Zwiebelmett,” which to him was nothing but raw groundbeef infused with onions that you spread on bread with salt and pepper. He looked at me as if to say, “Is there something else, anything else, I can do to prove my love to you?” There was also the time I had him try my favorite candy "Lakritz." Lakritz is a black licorice that is rather salty. To Jon, it was the poison that nearly killed him, and put the most hilarious uncontrollable looks of disgust on his face 😉

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A little while ago, I read a great analogy for understanding the mixing of cultures: When you get to experience a new culture, it gives you the opportunity to try out a new set of cultural sunglasses. 

Imagine that all the people from the culture you grew up in always wears yellow sunglasses. The thing that is strange about this isn’t  that everyone wears yellow sunglasses, but that nobody knows that they are wearing sunglasses, let alone that there are other color options. Everything this culture experiences comes with a yellow tint. In their eyes, this is how the world works and looks all the time. 

Another culture however wears blue sunglasses. Nobody in the ‘blue sunglasses’ culture could imagine the world otherwise. They don’t even know that they see everything with a blue hue. Nobody questions that others are wearing sunglasses because everyone has always worn them.  

Now, imagine a girl from the yellow-sunglasses culture travels to the blue-sunglasses culture. In order to fit in, in order to understand the new culture, she must try on blue sunglasses. The thing is, she is not able to take her yellow ones off, but will have to wear the blue sunglasses over top of the yellow sunglasses. Now she neither sees the world in yellow or blue, but with a green tint 😎😍