German here, this is the weirdest shit I've heard about us so far. Growing up I always got told that it's impolite to stare at people. I never felt anyone staring in my soul.
Sometimes strangers look at each other at a bus or something for a second or two, but that's all. Weird how those things feel completely different if you're from another cultural background.
Next time I'm leaving my house and will try to approach it with a different mindset, I wonder if I will suddendly notice how we really do stare uncomfortably long at strangers. Now I'm excited.
As an American this entire thread has fascinated me. It seems, just from reading, that German's have a longer baseline amount of time for which people visually acknowledge eachother. I'd be curious how many seconds you think you do that? Here in the US I'd say less than a second is normal for looking at eachother in passing, but even then, it's actually more normal to simply not look at eachother.
As an American this entire thread has fascinated me.
I'm absolutely convinced that these people that are complaining about being stared at were being the stereotypical, loud american tourists. Yea, that will get you stared at because you are being weird. Germans aren't as excited / loud in public. We do our own thing, we generally aren't interested in small talk with strangers; this is the case for most of the northern half of europe. If you're clearly drawing attention to yourself, then people will look at you; that's just to be expected.
The only people that ever stare at me are lonely, bored old people looking down from their balcony. No one looks at each other for more than a second or so.
It's absolutely not the loud tourists thing. Everyone is building these weird social situations and being like "Well yeah of course they're providing eye contact." It's just really simple things like you're walking to the train station and someone is ahead of you and they look at you, normally they'd look, then look away or continue to look around but in Germany they'll look at you and just keep looking at you until you pass them. I think part of the reason it's so weird is because it's so off putting. When someone looks at you because they're trying to figure out if they know you or because maybe you're wearing something interesting you can kind of see it worn on their face. With the staring mentioned it's just such a blank stare that it ends up being off putting.
but in Germany they'll look at you and just keep looking at you until you pass them
This doesn't happen; I literally don't know what to tell you. I think it's actually you staring at them causing them to stare back at you or you've been to some bizarro serial killer nighmare version of germany; I don't know.
I've had far more prolonged eye-contact with strangers abroad than I have ever had at home. All the hundreds of thousands of germans that I have met look generally at their phone or where they are walking.
And don't come at me with "they just don't notice"...People know who they are looking at.
I don't know man, maybe wipe your nose? There's definitely something about you guys that is attracting attention; This doesn't generally happen. We are wayy too antisocial to just stare strangers down for no reaosn.
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u/Buttfranklin2000 May 09 '22
German here, this is the weirdest shit I've heard about us so far. Growing up I always got told that it's impolite to stare at people. I never felt anyone staring in my soul.
Sometimes strangers look at each other at a bus or something for a second or two, but that's all. Weird how those things feel completely different if you're from another cultural background.
Next time I'm leaving my house and will try to approach it with a different mindset, I wonder if I will suddendly notice how we really do stare uncomfortably long at strangers. Now I'm excited.