Differences
Today, I will write more about stuff that I think are a different to Europe, especially Germany. Therefore, I picked two topics:
Cars
There isn't a single american car that I would buy. There is this great lack of attention to the detail in combination with really cheap and hideous looking materials. In general, a good design at so many things not only cars seems to be not important at all. All consumer articles produced in the US just look terrible (well, except for Apple's products)! On the other hand, there actually are companies that do nothing but industrial design and do a very good job, despite Apple there are a lot of design studios from car companies in California that do produce good work.
And there are quite a number of respected design schools, colleges and universities. So, how comes? I can just assume that it might be connected to the American's self-conception of quality.
3rd world leaf springs I think Americans are a lot more pragmatic when it comes to either buying a product or not: "Hi Mr. car salesman, I need a car, big engine, safety, air conditioning, cruise control, large to huge loading space." - "Here you go, buy this Ford pickup truck, it's only $24,990 and you will get this nice baseball cap for free when you decide to buy it now!" - "You are a hell of a salesman, you got yourself a deal!". That's how you end up buying a pick-up truck or some huge SUV. They don't care how it looks like, how the levers feel to be switched, how it actually drives (Flo's Ford is a '94 and has leave springs as a rear suspension).
Maybe that is the very single thing what my parents and Americans have in common :-)
Supermarkets
There is a wide variety of supermarkets in Germany. When I think of an Aldi I saying to myself: "You know, for a supermarket, you are not so super." These places are just terrible, Lidl is almost as rubbish.
But there are decent supermarkets as well. Like REWE or Kupsch (in Franconia). They have fresh vegetables and fruit, a well sorted range of good products, friendly personell (for German means) and look clean and convenient. So what I thought was that we cover a wide range of grocery stores and supermarkets between really bad and great. Thing again, Georg!
Need some kitchen roll? Yesterday, I went to a 24/7 store called Food 4 Less, and it is rubbish. It's big (actually more like huge), cheap, and dirty. The vegetables and fruits section was huge though and everything looked kind of fresh. And the people are still friendly and will help you if you ask for something, plus you get pretty much everything possible. And that would be the worst supermarket over here (that I have seen) and it still is a lot better than our Aldi and Lidl stores.
How about some paper plates? But there are stores like Farmer Joe's as well (they even have a fan page). What a great store: Free samples at each corner, great, fresh, beautiful vegetables (organic in parts), clean corridors, helpful personel, no comparison to any german supermarket! You know, what's crazy about that? Theo Albrecht, one of the two "Aldi" brothers, owns a majority of the Trader Joe's shares.
So that's it for today, I didn't do anything but thinking about these two things :-)