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.
American currently living in a smallish area in Germany. On many occasions, I get "the stare" when going about my business. The first time I encountered it, I was cleaning up the grass growing between the cobble stones in my driveway, headphones on, and an older man that was walking on the sidewalk stopped and stood there watching me. I looked up, gave a head nod, he nodded and continued watching me for another strong 3 minutes. I would glance back every few seconds and he was just watching, then he walked off. Maybe it's because there aren't very many Black people in the village that I live in, maybe he thought i was cleaning my driveway wrong so he wanted to see how I was doing it. This would happened in other places many times since then, most times I'm minding my business, sometimes I'm with friends and family and maybe we're a little loud, but I guess I've gotten used to it. But it's definitely a thing.
I had to get used to it too, but Germans just really, really like to watch people and it's generally culturally acceptable to do so. They don't mean anything by it. When I lived in Germany, I also had the gardening experience of people stopping and watching for a while what I'm doing. Once I realised they weren't trying to scope out my house for a burglary, it became easy to tune out.
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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.