Most Germans don’t understand tipping in America, and most Americans don’t understand tipping in Germany.

In America, your waiter is dependent on tips to survive, because their minimum wage is just over $2/hour, and the US dollar doesn’t go too far anymore. That’s why we have the standard guideline of 15% which we adjust up or down based on whether the waiter squatted down to eye level with us, wore enough pieces of flare, drew a smiley face on the check, or let our food get cold by taking a smoke break out back. Germans often don’t know that they are supposed to add 3% whenever the waiter makes physical contact with them.

Americans try to tip nonchalantly by saying either “keep the change”, or leaving money on the table for them to pick up later. Most of the time we pay with a credit card while dining out, which baffles Germans that they run our transaction through the credit system and give us a receipt, and then we change the amount of transaction while signing. What happens here is that the restaurant will adjust the transaction amount by the tip amount at the end of the day. This is generally done under the supervision of the manager, so that waiters don’t steal from you. If you do pay by credit card, it is a good idea to check a few days later that the amount charged matches up, which it does 99% of the time.

If you are a typical German, you will drink 5 Budweisers and explain to everyone around you that it is not real Budweiser and that it tastes like water. After that, you may not be able to add numbers anymore so if you pay by credit card, the amount you actually tip is number you write down as the tip not the sum you wrote down. If you add it up wrong, your lack of math skills will be ignored.

If you really like the waiter, the best is to tip them with cash, because then they aren’t forced to pay taxes, if they don’t want to.

In Germany the waitresses aren’t so dependent on the tips, because they make a higher wage. But that doesn’t mean people don’t tip in Germany; they just don’t tip as much. It seems to be a rumor that you don’t have to tip in Europe at all, so many tourists insist on showing they are savy by never tipping, but the majority of Germans give a small tip, usually by rounding up the check to the next whole Euro or adding a few more to it for parties larger than 1 (Splitting the check is the norm in Germany, which makes it convenient to dine with friends). While paying your waitress just tell her how much the bill should be with the tip included, and she’ll give you the rest as change, and you don’t have to worry about leaving it on the table.

Bottom line on tipping in Germany, if the service was terrible, don’t tip anything. If the service was good, show some appreciation, you just don’t need to throw down 20%, because you’ll make an awkward situation where the waitress thinks you don’t know what you’re doing.

We Americans know we have a pretty lousy stigma at the moment throughout the world, and in Germany its not much different. That’s why we sew Canadian flags on our backpacks to try to be more accepted abroad.

Another way to try to slip under the radar is to make sure you leave your white socks at home. While its not really cool in America, it is an absolute no no in Germany.

One baffling thing about Germans is that 90% of them honestly wonder why Americans immediately think of Bavaria as soon as Germany is mentioned. The remaining 10% are all Bavarian.

Germans, try this experiment with me: Picture a stereotypical Bavarian. OK, done? Let me guess, you thought of either a girl wearing a dirndl or some dude with a huge mustache wearing lederhosen. Now think of a stereotypical German from Hessen. You can’t and neither can we.

Americans are not the least bit ashamed to ignore the rest of Germany, because Bavaria is exactly what we are looking for. We come to Europe to see old stuff. In Munich we can see buildings that are nearly 60 years old. We read the same fairy tales as you growing up (ok, well our fairy tales edit out all the really creepy stuff you’ve got) and we want see a real castle that makes us think those fairy tales could have really happened. Neuschwanstein gives us that hope.

But most importantly, we don’t have the time to learn the culture and pick up on subtleties, because we only get two weeks of vacation per year. We want stuff that is big and obvious, and Bavaria is pretty much the only place that delivers for us. Americans love big stuff and that’s what Bavaria gives us, beer in one liter mugs, huge pretzels, haxn, and the Alps.

We love Bavaria, because its Germany’s version of Texas: They’re big. They’re mostly rural. Despite being rural, they’re hotbeds for industry and high tech companies. They’re way down south. People talk with a funny accent there. They remember when they were their own countries and wish they would become their own country again. The rest of the country doesn’t really like them, and the people there don’t really like the rest of the country.

And the best part is that in both Texas and Bavaria, the locals still play dress up in outdated clothing now and then.

When you travel to Germany, you are on a mission to accomplish the following tasks:

1. Go to the Hofbräuhaus: If you are female, to get a picture of yourself dancing to polka music with a guy wearing lederhosen with a huge mustache. If you are male, to get a guy wearing lederhosen with a huge mustache to share their schnupftabak with you. Both males and females must buy either a Hofbräuhaus sweatshirt or t-shirt to indicate their success.
2. Drink a beer out of a 1-liter glass, which you can steal as a cool souvenir. Extra points if this is stolen from a beer garden. Also gives you the chance to say things like, “I don’t like beer, but in Germany I do,” to further propagate the idea that mixing water, hops, and barley produces a delicious concoction only when it is done in Belgium, Ireland, or Germany.
3. Visit the castle Neuschwanstein, take a picture, and exclaim, “It looks just like Disneyland!!!”.
4. See really old stuff.
5. Tell everyone you meet how everything is bigger in America.

Unfortunately, German culture might get in the way of you happily carrying out your tasks, and since you have probably only alloted 1 day of your trip to Europe for Germany, you’ve got to be quick, and more importantly you need to plan ahead. Here are some tips:

1. Don’t give up on coffee. You don’t have to suffer through European coffee anymore in Germany, now they have Starbucks in Germany, too. Try to go to the inner city of any major town to get your daily tall skinny double decaf latte. Germans will try to tell you to try a cafe macchiato or something. Don’t listen to them.
2. Bring your own nonperishables. If you don’t have American snacks with you, you might be forced to sample local products. You might not enjoy these local treats as much as the ones you are used to, so don’t take any chances. (Snickers is available if you run out and need to buy some good chocolate.)
3. Use the Embassy. Travel by car, not by train, so that you can tour the country at your own pace, and you can stop at the golden arches along the highway to compare the Big Macs to Big Mäcs.
4. Make sure the one day you spend in Germany is not a Sunday. Germany is mostly welcoming to tourists, but there is one thing they aren’t flexible on, and that is letting you do stuff on Sunday. Be prepared for a boring day of museums if you make this mistake.
5. Plan to be in Munich for dinner. There is a Planet Hollywood there, so not only are you going to get some food you actually like, you can also get another cool t-shirt that says “Munich” on it, so that you can let your friends back home know that you have also done the whole Europe thing, too.

The absolute best time in Germany is a summer day when the sun is shining, which doesn’t often happen. Actually, God himself even tried to convince all the atheists in the country of his existence by making the sun shine throughout the entire month Germany hosted the World Cup in 2006, a more impressive feat than parting the Red Sea.

You see, to really enjoy something, you need to endure its opposite. For every sunny day in Germany you have 2 days where the skies are a mix of grays and have this constant drizzle that makes you cold and miserable. And that makes the sunny days that much better. In Germany you never take sunshine for granted; you must cherish every single ray.

On sunny days you can enjoy the lush beautiful green landscapes, from amazing Alpine vistas to yellow rape seed fields sprinkled with giant windmills, working to save our planet through biodiesel and clean electricty. You will see the roads filled with motorcycles and the sidewalks full of families riding bikes or roller blades, all gleefully enjoying their good fortune. Even the guy who normally wouldn’t take the time to grunt at you in passing will offer up a friendly reminder of the beautiful day.

You, of course, will notice things Germans do differently when it is warm and sunny. First of all, Germans don’t own shorts, unless they are for playing soccer in. So when the sun comes out and a German decides to lay out in the park, they will first put on 7 layers of clothing until they reach their tanning destination, at which point they will take off the remaining 6.5 layers.

Our idea that you should run around in the summer time in flip flops, shorts, and a t-shirt is completely foreign to the Germans, they never leave home without long pants and a jacket. Perhaps it is a side effect of all Germans having circulation problems so bad that they have to call in sick from work on such days.