German Culture and Transition?

The first week was pretty tough for me because I had jet lag for several days. In terms of cultural shock, I don't really have a strong feeling about that. Perhaps it's because that I work with people from all over the world. In fact, none of my colleague is German. Also, Berlin is really multicultural and international. I am surprised by how universal English is in Berlin. Literally, everyone from the passenger on the street to the cashier at local market can speak English. I really enjoy working with people having international background. There are always topics to talk about with them and to share our experience in different countries.

The biggest cultural shock to me is perhaps that knowing on the spectrum of making eye-contact, German are really on the top of it. People make eye contact in a way that they are literally staring at you. I have lived in the U.S. for 4 years and I thought I am used to making eye contact until I came to Germany.

I have worked for nearly 2 weeks. The company I worked for is a NGO whose main goal is to develop a algorithm to predict when the climate change will hit the hottest. My role on the team is visualizing data collected from different database. So far, I really enjoyed working as a data analyst. I learned a lot of new stuffs that I have never come across previously. The biggest difference in an actual job comparing to studying on campus is that there is more responsibility fall on my shoulder. Since the organization is fairly small and one of the data analyst is leaving in few weeks. He needs to transfer the knowledge to me and it is really overwhelming at the beginning. It's really challenging for me to digest all the knowledge in such short time period. On one hand, I'm kinda still in the learning process of getting familiar with the software and programming language. On the other hand, time management and self discipline have never been so important for me and I really need to work on that.

My ideal life in Germany is that work as hard as I can and do my best to explore Berlin and Germany even other countries in the EU zone.

#CultureShock #Transition #SecondWeekInBerlin