Differences between Germany and England – by Kristina Kanne

Kristina Kanne’s guest blog

The time is running so fast. I can’t believe that I’m already here for a month. In the beginning of my internship I had the feeling there were so many differences between the German work life and the English one and that I would never get use to it. And I don’t just speak about you driving on the wrong side of the road. There are a lot more differences.

I mean it would never happen in Germany that you call a manger by his first name, especially not if you’re younger and just an intern. So it was really weird for me that all the people introduced themselves with their first names to me. That felt really odd. In Germany people normally introduce themselves as Mr. XY and nobody would dare to call a manager or a director by his first name. This would be totally disrespectfully and inappropriate.

But now that I got use to it I kind of like it. I think it’s more personal and I already adapted it. I can just hope that when I’m going back to Germany I will not call my boss accidentally by his first name.

 

But the way to talk to each other is not the only difference. There are also a lot of small things that usually nobody would notice. For example the numbers. In England people use decimal points within a number, in the rest of Europe people use ordinary points. A decimal point has a total different meaning. In Germany £13,000 would be 13 pounds and not 13 thousand pounds and people would wonder why there are 3 zeros after the decimal point. So when Claire asked me yesterday to add some numbers I was pretty sure that I did it in the right way. So I got really confused when she told me that the number that I calculated was far too little. Of course it was. And I didn’t get what I’ve done wrong. Until Aimee explained to us that there is a difference how to write down numbers within Europe.

 

But besides me wondering about all the differences between England and Germany I also work. At the moment I organize the party for Kinetic 5th^th birthday next Thursday.

It’s really exciting for me especially because we sent out the invitation only Monday because we had an IT problem.

So I’m busy to organise the decoration and music for Thursday. We will have an arch and clusters to beautify the office.  Furthermore I organise the food and the drinks that nobody has to leave the office thirsty.

What would stop German people going to work? by Kristina Kanne

Kristina Kanne’s guest blog

After my first night in Birmingham I opened the curtains in the morning and everythink I saw was white.  It was wondeful and it looked magical.  So I decided to leave the house 10 minutes earlier because I would need to drive slower. 

Than I put on the radio and I heart the news: “It’s a nightmare”… I thought: Oh my god something terrible must have happened in the night,but I couldn’t imagine what it could be. It took me another minute to realise that they really meant the snow.

My first thought was that is has to a joke. Five minutes later Angela called me and asked if I could make it to the office. -So they really were serious. – How ridiculous!Why shouldn’t I make it to the office? It’s just snow.

So I drove to the office and the snow turned out perfect for me: Usually it takes me about 20 minutes from my house to the office because there is a lot of traffic in the morning. In the last days it only took my 10 minutes because there was nobody on the streets and the streets were perfectly fine.

I think for the most people the snow was just a great excuse to have a day off. And I was thinking: What would German people stop going to work? I couldn’t think of anything besides serious illnesses.

Two years ago there fell a lot of snow in one region in Germany. Usually they don’t have so much snow in this are. So nobody was prepared and it was a nightmare. In some houses they have had no electricity for almost a week- but they still went to work…

So I would suggest: Put on the snow tires and drive to work!