Ich bin zurück!

This week is a great week to talk about what I have been experiencing with the German culture! I have been experiencing many different aspects of it over the last 4 weeks now, so I feel like I have a pretty good grasp at what the culture is like.

This past week the European Championship finally started and I could not be more excited. On Wednesday, there was a concert to celebrate the beginning of the tournament, so myself and a few others from the group decided to go. The headliner was a rapper named Luciano. I was familiar with a few of his songs, but nobody else really knew who he was. We still had a great time and it was a once in a lifetime experience, as the concert occurred right in front of the Brandenburger Tor.

Then on Friday, the first game of the tournament was played – Germany vs Scotland. The gang suited up in our (mostly borrowed from me) best German soccer outfits and headed to the Fan Mile at the Brandenburger Tor. We had an incredible time as we were able to meet some native Germans and celebrate as Germany demolished Scotland 5-1.

I was then able to go meet a friend from highschool in Dresden on Saturday. It was so nice to do some independent traveling and catch up with a good friend. Dresden had some super cool architecture and was overall just a really good time!

This past week, my supervisor finally returned from Munich, and I was able to have some meetings with the CEO, Spencer. In these meetings, I was able to gain some new projects that were not necessarily marketing related, as I have found that some of the marketing tasks I have been doing are not really as interesting to me as I thought. I am still doing marketing related tasks, but I have picked up the task of determining what the product should be sold at and how many in order to reach a certain goal in the first year on the market. I also presented my competitor analysis to both Spencer and Severin, which I had been working on for around a week.

Speaking of the workplace, adapting to the overall culture has been fairly easy with only a few question marks. The culture is very work focused, but definitely not to the point of burning yourself out. At our collaborative space, there is a ping pong table that many people utilize in order to take a quick break from work. Another thing that has been a bit difficult to work with is that people will not make an effort to try and talk to you, unless you make that first effort. I normally struggle with conversation starters, so this has been difficult for me in the workplace. As a result of this, I don’t really see or talk to other people in the coworking space except for a select few.

I think one of the biggest cultural differences about the workplace has been the dress code. The dress code is a lot more casual here, so sometimes I wonder if what I am putting on in the morning is either too casual or too much. Some days, even wearing a polo shirt and khakis feels like too much. This may be more related to the culture of the space I am in compared to Germany overall. I have gotten a better gauge recently of what people typically wear in our specific environment, but this has definitely been a struggle to figure out initially.

Overall, I don’t think the culture has been a huge problem to assimilate within the workplace. I am mostly on my own or with one other person, so the culture is what I make it – which is actually a lesson I try to take with me anywhere I go here.

Being in a foreign country is what you make of it. I am blessed to have known what the culture is like beforehand, but I still experience things that surprise me every day. I also try to follow this culture every day in order to get the most out of my experience, but sometimes it’s hard because people recognize someone who is not fully integrated into the culture. I am very glad I have the language skills to get around as well.

This upcoming week in my life is going to be super interesting so stay tuned folks!

Until next week!