I hadn't really expected to feel much in the way of culture shock. I did know that Germans did things differently, but I knew quite a few Germans, and had been here a few times before. However, it is very different to live somewhere and experience life rather than to just pass through.
As a typical inhibited Brit, I have been amazed by how Germans seem quite happy to speak their mind. They seem quite happy to look into your business and are quick to tell you if you are doing something wrong. Obviously, this is simply my experience. But I have loads of examples.
This all felt particularly painful when I first arrived and was in shell shock, feeling insecure and very exposed. Thus to have another customer come up to my 7 year old in a supermarket and not stand on a child step, persumably meant for slightly smaller children was a surprise. To be told by a German how bad food in Britain is (this from the home of pickled vegetables and boiled potatoes). To be clapped at for sweeping the street alongside our house; to be told off for walking over a road when there are no cars insight; To be shouted at when I hadn't weighed my vegetables in a supermarket (my mistake but the only other supermarket I had been to, weighed them for you, and I simply got it wrong).
The more unpalatable examples have occured on 3 or 4 occasions when older people have decided to try and shove my kids of the pavement, or even in an aisle in a shop. Presumably they just didn't think they should be there. But rather than walking past or even pushing past, they decided to swipe away. Unfortuantely, Ihave stod open mouthed when this has happened. I've also stod open mouthed when I waited at a station to let someone through some double doors (rather than swinging the doors into the face), only to have someone push past me, barge into the doors and thus swinging them back into my face and telling me there are 2 doors you know. I knew, he'd just flung them straight back in my face!
As an immigrant, it's difficult to judge when somepne is simply a horrible person or when it is a cultural attitude that you're up against. In the UK it is easy to meet unacceptable rudeness. Those people are to be avoided etc etc, and here, it could easily be the same, and not knowing how things are done, means that we're more likely to experience difficulties. Although as I didn't know that there was a law against children being on pavements, I find that hard! Still, perhaps I should feel pleased that people are happy to interfer in each others lives or toot if you haven't moved away from a red light the second before it's gone green. People are not afraid to show their feelings - no fear of a litter-lout morphing into a knife-wielder for the sake of thrown wrapper.