UK or Irish with a German boyfriend/DH? Cultural insights needed, please!

[Luftschloss]

I'll be upfront and say this is for a novel, but if anyone had any insights into what it was/is like being a British or Irish woman in a relationship with a German man, I'd be really grateful -- cultural differences, differences in dating etiquette, relationship expectations, anything really?

I've spent time in Germany, but not recently, and have never dated a German. Have combed the internet and got a lot of Youtube videos on dating Germans, but they seem both incredibly stereotyped 'You need to be more forward than usual! They make lists! They don't do small talk! They've very blunt!' and to come at things from a very US perspective, so any further insights would be great.

(In case it matters, this German character is late 20s and a postdoc, an outdoor/climbing type of person, and lives in London when they meet. Tell me what brands of clothing he would be wearing?)

@DinosApple
I’m trying to imagine P shaped steps... can you explain? Thanks

Dinner for One, yes. I don't get it at all but they think it's amazing and it's a traditional "must" for NYE.

They like throwing fireworks around on NYE, too, but I think that may have spread a bit to the UK, too.

They love their bread and hate ours (with good reason, to be fair)

They have decent showers (ours have improved a lot, same for taps)

I remember when I was learning German reading an article saying that they feel they have to account for every day. It's true.

Yes to being blunt though it depends like with everyone - some are quite tactful, others breathtakingly tactless.

Much more neighbourly, eg helping a friend to build a house, having a rota to clean flats rather than employing a cleaner.

Agree with the pp about the kids' books being amazing. I bought some for ds when he was younger, he still has the one about football, it's fabulous for German football vocabulary!

He might ask someone if they could 'kindly' do something, thinking he is being appropriately English and polite and failing utterly to catch the sarcastic edge it has in native English

That's not a German thing, loads of British people use it too and it sounds really rude! That said, the main example I can think of is my son's junior school headteacher, and the other was a British lawyer, but living in Germany. Whereas I would have written "I would be grateful if you could sign the enclosed and send xx back to me" she would have written "kindly sign and return xx to me". So maybe you are right

I think they like wearing Jack Wolfskin clothes.

Oh and in terms of cold, I still laugh about the photo of my ds with my German friend's ds when they were about 6 and 5. My ds has his coat hanging open, no scarf, no gloves, no hat. Friend's ds has his coat done up to the neck, scarf on, gloves on, hat on! Anyone in the know would know the English kid compared with the German kid :)

The factual kids' books are great. The younger children's fiction, not so. (Conni, anyone?) It picks up again with stuff for older children. And picture books tend to be a lot less diverse than ones in English, and often show very traditional images of families etc (with laudable exceptions in recent years).

Breakfast boards! Little wooden chopping boards to eat your breakfast (bread/wurst/cheese) rather than plates. And weekends, esp Sundays, are rolls.

Buying cases of mineral water to drink instead of drinking tap water.

Dinner for One - you need to fit that in somehow.

I have German in-laws. They NEVER dress up - even for quite formal occasions; think jeans and shirt is formal.

They love games - board games with a bit of strategy - not Monopoly!

If they are from a wine growing region they will probably refuse to drink anything other than local wine.

Recycling and shopping locally is really important to them.

OP, just wanted to add that late 20s seems a bit young for a German postdoc. In general the Germans start university a bit later than the british and study for longer. Its not unusual for someone to spend 5 years getting a bachelor degree. You may want to consider upping his age to early 30s to make it a bit more realistic. Unless your character has gone through the british or irish university system in which case he could be late 20s.
Don't know if it is revelvant but the Germans talk about university in semesters. He wouldn't talk about his second year at university but would talk about his 3rd or 4th semester (2 semesters per year)

most importantly though - as a child dud he listen to ??? (drei fragezeichen) or tkkg?

He doesn't drink instant coffee.
He doesn't know what instant coffee is.
He has a very snazzy coffee machine, it cost more than his fridge did.

He looks bewildered when you offer him milk

If you want to make your novel more interesting then make him an older German man of Turkish origin, who still remembers the cramped housing in the Turkish areas of his youth / racism / perhaps he even remembers the day he finally got his German citizen despite having two or three generations of his family living in Germany. Perhaps he has a German ex-wife and kids he can’t relate to.

5 years getting a bachelor degree

You finish with a Diplom which is equivalent to a Masters rather than a bachelor.

He could be a postdoc in his late 20s. He would have been 19 when he finished school and he'd have been one of the first not to have to do military or civil service, he'd have his Diplom by 24 and another 4-5 years for the PhD, so he'd be 28 or 29 by the time he goes off to do a postdoc.
I was a biology postdoc in two different countries (one of them the UK) and I meet a lot of other German, and European/rest of the world , postdocs and grad students and none of them ever comes across like this thread implies. They all speak decent English, they all are well travelled, they are all a bit more "citizens of the World" than they get credit for in this thread.

Hang on, is it still true about the length of degrees in Germany? Germany was one of the original signatories to the Bologna Accords (an initiative to standardise the format of university education across Europe), and I would expect that they have made great process with changing their degree formats to fit that. I am under the impression that other European countries have made the transition fully.

Ah, here is an article from 2012 about the effect of the new 3-year degrees. m.spiegel.de/international/germany/press-review-on-bologna-process-education-reforms-a-850185.html

ime they still are. just that instead of 'diplom' and 'dr' they added bachelor and master. with the bachelor being not quite diplom standard and the master not replacing the dr.

My STBXH is half German and grew up in Germany, so maybe not as relevant as other opinions. However we used to have an shared joke if he was being a bit tight that his German was showing. All of his extended family were extremely adverse to personal debt (except mortgages).

He would normally wear whatever I bought him!

And yes, they love a board game. Risk is a personal favourite!

If my secondary school German teacher is to be believed then the Deutschlanders snigger at the face that we have a liquer called ‘Irish Mist’

*translating as something closer to bowel movement