Cultural differences, part 1

My wife and I grew up app. 1.500km from each other. While she was born in a Hungarian speaking family in Transylvania (please enter a random Dracula joke here, she has never heard any of them), I grew up 200km north of Berlin in the GDR (“East Germany”). Since we met, we discovered a lot of similar things we love, enjoy or dislike. Very rarely there are occasions, were we notice how different the circumstances were we grew up in.

This Easter for example it took me half an hour to convince my wife that many Germans do not consider a cake as a dessert after a dinner. chocolate pudding – yes, chocolate ice cream – yes, chocolate cake – OMG, no! Simply no!

Another situation is the daily dish washing. When we were a young couple I could never imagine that my amazing housekeeping skills could course heart attacks. What did I do? I did what I always did since my childhood to clean the dishes: I took fresh water, added some soap, washed the dishes and immediately dried them with a towel. My wife nearly yelled at me as she notice that I did not rinse them. Since then I pretend (like any good husband would do) to rinse our plates and cups and I started to believe that her phobia comes from the fact the Romanians used hydraulic liquids of soviet nuclear submarines instead of soap. But this is only a theory.

Another habit that endangered our relationship was the tendency of my family-in-law to congratulate to birthdays BEFORE they actually happen. In my ,believe’ this brings bad luck…

But beside this, we are all fine. 😉