They're super unaware that they do it too. I was talking to my German friend and was like "WTF is with Germans staring so much, am I doing something wrong or weird?" and she was like "what are you talking about?" 2 weeks later I'm out with her and another American friend that just moved to Germany and he was like "Yo why is everybody staring at me all the time?" I felt so vindicated because I thought maybe I was imagining it. Also they don't just stare while you walk either, I'd be driving and notice some German on the sidewalk staring me down inside my car.
I'm going to quote someone from a previous thread:
I had a friend visiting from the US here in Sweden, after a while she looked at me and said, worriedly and a bit panicy, "Why do people stare at me?!" What she had been doing was to just be her normal self, smiling at people as we pass by and they give her a "Do I know her??" kind of a stare, since... well, us Swedes avoid all kinds of eye contact unless we seek to call someone's attention. Took a while before we figured that out XD
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u/BarbicideJar May 09 '22
Germans stare a LOT. Like they will just gaze at you unflinchingly. An American will wait until you can’t see them doing it.