{"id":179,"date":"2016-05-25T17:58:07","date_gmt":"2016-05-25T17:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/adventures-abroad\/?p=179"},"modified":"2016-06-02T18:34:25","modified_gmt":"2016-06-02T18:34:25","slug":"first-look-at-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/adventures-abroad\/2016\/05\/25\/first-look-at-germany\/","title":{"rendered":"First Look at Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Where I had grown up, it was a small town. Not too exciting. Literally nothing ever happened there and (\u201cvfdbggbevfenr\u201d typed by Jeremy) nothing probably ever will. Everything is a 15-30 minute drive away and there is one grocery store. Reallllllly small.<br \/>\nWhen I moved to Akron for school I thought that was a \u2018big\u2019 city. I loved it though because things were within semi walking distance. Want Chinese food? Boom, Panda. Want Mexican? Boom, Chipotle. Want a thin crust pizza to your order? Boom, Pizza Fire. YES! Now I understand that you may be like \u201cbut Emily, you only quoted food.\u201d Yeah, I did. Who doesn\u2019t love food and I didn\u2019t get to where I am without it!<br \/>\nAnyway.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-183\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/adventures-abroad\/files\/2016\/05\/20160518_041539-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"20160518_041539\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" \/><br \/>\nWhen we got to Augsburg I seriously cannot emphasize enough how much I fell in love. It\u2019s like living in a mall with anything you could need. There is a grocery store across the street, food EVERYWHERE and clothing stores just about anywhere you could go. It\u2019s also hard to get lost. I could see myself living here and honestly if it wasn\u2019t for me being a broke college student and my family being so amazing I would probably just\u2026 Stay here.<br \/>\nNow, I love America. Don\u2019t be like \u201cAH! SHE HATES THE USA NOW\u201d *Fire and pitchforks* I would never say I wouldn\u2019t BUT let me just list some of the things that I really admire about Germany so far:<\/p>\n<p>1. The Eco-Friendly promotion.<br \/>\nThey have bio-fuel farms and solar panels EVERYWHERE. And don\u2019t get me started on recycling.<br \/>\nThis is great. Recycling is everywhere and is encouraged; It\u2019s actually super easy to do, too. Whereas in the USA you have to hunt for a recycling bin IF they even have one, and even then you may just get too annoyed and just throw it in the trash. Also you get rewarded for it too! If you have plastic bottles and go to this machine, you\u00a0scan your bottles and it gives you a ticket of .25Euro per bottle. When you go shopping, the\u00a0value of the ticket will be taken off your grocery bill. It\u2019s legit.<\/p>\n<p>2. Public Transportation.<br \/>\nAmerica is built for cars. If you don\u2019t have one, you can\u2019t really get anywhere. It\u2019s that simple.<br \/>\nIn Germany, You could live your life without having a car and still get anywhere. Everything is within walking distance, and if not they have a train and tram system that is honestly stereotypically punctual and fantastic.<br \/>\nAnd the trains are fast. Now I know snapchat is not really an accurate way to calculate speed, BUT when traveling to Munich, my snapchat filter said we were going 140 MPH.<br \/>\nAnyway, the public transportation here is on point.<\/p>\n<p>3. Taxes and Tipping<br \/>\nSeriously, the U.S. needs to get its life together. In Germany, you don\u2019t have to tip because waiters and waitresses have a NORMAL WAGE. It\u2019s not uncommon to just round up to the next euro for a tip, but forget about 15-20%.<br \/>\nALSO.<br \/>\nWHY.<br \/>\nWHY DON\u2019T WE HAVE TAXES JUST INCLUDED IN THE PRICE OF STUFF?<br \/>\nNow I realize how dumb it is to not have the taxes not included in the price of the actual product. Have you ever walked to the store and been like, a nickel short? Story of my life. But here, you don\u2019t have that. The price you see is the price you pay, and that is so nice.<\/p>\n<p>(Just a little fun fact: I did my laundry at 6A and I had to bring my semi dry laundry to class in two grocery bags. Be more prepared than me for the love of God.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Where I had grown up, it was a small town. Not too exciting. Literally nothing ever happened there and (\u201cvfdbggbevfenr\u201d typed by Jeremy) nothing probably ever will. Everything is a 15-30 minute drive away and there is one grocery store. Reallllllly small. When I moved to Akron for school I thought that was a \u2018big\u2019 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2703,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11892],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-germany"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/adventures-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/adventures-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/adventures-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/adventures-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2703"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/adventures-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/adventures-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":515,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/adventures-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/adventures-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/adventures-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/adventures-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}