I’ve been watching a YouTube vlog called “Kelly Does Her Thing” —Kelly does her thing - YouTube —whose focus is to contrast what it’s like living in Germany as compared to the United States. She lived in Germany for a while and when she returned to the United States, her German boyfriend came with her.
She has pointed out some unexpected differences between housing in Germany and the United States. Some of the most surprising to me:
When you rent an apartment in Germany, generally the previous renter will have removed all the overhead light fixtures and kitchen appliances. As a renter, you’re responsible for providing your own light fixtures and equipping the kitchen. This seems like it would be really annoying.
The front door can’t be left unlocked. It always locks behind you. In fact, you need a key to operate it from the inside. The craziest thing—you can get locked inside your residence if you don’t have the key. Why would you want such a feature?
Germans use cash for a lot of things that say Americans and British people use cards. I rarely carry cash. I often encounter beggars on the streets that I would like to help, but I can’t because I just don’t carry cash. In fact, I avoid businesses that insist on cash payments. Yes, I know there are privacy and security concerns, but the time and trouble it takes to obtain and keep cash is not worth it to me.
Beds are really low.
You pay an estimated fee for your utilities in advance every month, instead of actual use at the end of the month.
But the most baffling thing to me is—why do German (and I believe other European) residences have so many doors and corridors? It seems like a tremendous waste of space. In large cities, and in Europe specifically, as opposed to America, space is at a premium. Why would you waste so much of that space on doors and corridors?
Why does a kitchen need a door? A door that locks? Why does a kitchen need to open onto a corridor? It’s so much more efficient to have a kitchen, living room, and dining area share one big common space with no corridors and doors between them.
Can Europeans explain their views to me on this? Why would you prefer this arrangement and use of resources?
Oh, here’s another one that’s true in a lot of places outside of the United States and Canada—people dress nicely just to run errands or go to the store. I just go out in whatever I wear that’s comfortable at home. Why would you bother?
My cousin lived in Germany in the 80s & 90s and every time she moved to a new apartment, she had to install kitchen cabinets, as the prior tenant took those with him/her. I thought that practice was insane!
Could it be relative age? Do newer German residences still have these? Most of the pre-1965-ish residences I’ve stayed at in America for quite some time have had large corridors, whereas the ones built later have smaller or nonexistent corridors.
I’m not sure about the doors, that indeed does seem to be a difference as only bedrooms and bathrooms seem to have inside doors in America.
I don’t know if, or how, this would apply, but the Spanish (and it wouldn’t surprise me if other European economies, as well) had a room tax. Closets were considered rooms and you paid a tax for it (accounts for armoire-type cabinets), stairwells were considered rooms and many stairs were outside the house. “Washrooms” were outside. The cynic in me says the many doors are so you can’t claim the entire inside is one big room and pay only one tax.
The grain of salt you should take this with is mighty big.
Yes and yes. Divided spaces are easier to heat or cool, and this matters if central heating/cooling is not available, or is not standard.
Plus, different social attitudes and expectations. The OP asks why all houses don’t have a common kitchen, dining and living area and the answer is because the kitchen is a workspace, dining is a formal activity and the living area is for recreation, and each of these uses has their own requirements and in at least some cases it was seen as simply inappropriate not to separate them - even if you often ate informally in the kitchen, you would still need a formal dining area and that would need to be a separate space from the kitchen.
My impression is that the climate in much of Europe is much less variable than in most of the United States, so they don’t spend as much on heating and cooling as we do. Maybe I’m wrong about that.
Okay, grant that is the reason. Why does the door need a lock?
The apartment Kelly was showing looked quite modern to me.
Do Europeans still feel this way?
Okay, grant that is the reason. Why do these rooms all need to open onto corridors? Why not have, say, the kitchen and the dining room open directly into the living room?
Less so than in the past. New houses are more open-plan/interconnected than older ones.
They often do. Partly its a matter of what’s optimal given the layout of the site. But partly it’s also because of the sense that the living area or the dining-room shouldn’t be a thoroughfare. People going from, e.g., the front door to the kitchen should have to pass through the dining room or the living room, which may disturb people who are dining, or reading, or watching television, or whatever.
Generally the more formal the house, the greater the degree of separation bewteen spaces. But a pretty standard arrangement is for a front door opening into a hallway, which contains the staircase to the upper floors, and off which the kitchen, the dining room and the living room open. There’s often direct access from the kitchen to the dining room (for service) and sometimes from the dining room to the living room.
I read something about German sitcoms copying the US style with front doors opening directly into the living room. I’ve never seen any myself, so I don’t know if that’s true.
Japanese houses are more similar to the European style, with doors between rooms and an entry hall.
I would guess that up until the 1940s or 1950s, American house design was much more likely to involve separate rooms connected by doors, and to involve a central hall or corridor. Open-plan and interconnected house design then became fashionable, but it was a generation or more before the fashion was taken up in Europe and, even then, not to anything like the same extent.
Front doors opening directly into living rooms may be convenient for dramatic purposes, or simply for ease of set design/construction. But where do you hang up your wet coat and leave your dirty boots and dripping umbrella?
I’ve lived in Germany all my life, and I don’t recall ever seeing that. Sure, you’re generally able to lock a door from the inside, but you don’t have to, and if you don’t, operating the handle is all you need to open it. The door generally can’t be opened from the outside without a key, though.
Lots of houses are pretty old; building large open spaces simply wasn’t practical with the building materials of the day. For newer houses, I’d WAG that it’s just the way houses are ‘supposed’ to look, by now.
A part of it is a dislike for thoroughfares and efficiency of heating, as has already been mentioned. However, in the case of the kitchen, another part is to keep cooking smells out of the living space.
In my experience, in the suburban homes where these open plans are most common, the front door is not necessarily the door most commonly used by the residents.
It’s not insane. It’s just considered “furniture”. In American, we take our couch, TV, curtains, lamps, and beds with us when we move. The washer and dryer are often owned by the tenant as well. In Germany, in addutuon to those things previously mentioned, cabinets and light fixtures are also considered furniture and our owned by the tenant. You wouldnt expect the previous tenant to leave behind a tv and dressers. Same with kitchen appliances and cabinets.
Your cousin would not have been buying a new kitchen everytime she moved. Rather, she should have been taking her old kitchen with her and installing it in the new apartment.
Also consider that in Germany, and probably much of Europe, renting a house is usually a long term thing. Leases are often 10 or 20 year deals.
In Japan, the kitchens have cabinets but appliances such as refrigerators are the tenants’. Also, since AC is done with room units, that is also supplied by the tenants.
Taiwanese apartments come with more furniture, including —sometimes — an odd bed or such.
Are you sure you can’t open it from inside without a key? I’ve had doors that lock automatically in the UK, but they always had 2 different settings- if you just pull it closed, it can’t be opened from outside, but can be opened with just the handle/knob thing from inside. You also can lock it from the inside (‘deadlock it’), which might mean you need two keys from outside, and one from inside. We never actually used that feature.
My flat in the UK requires a key to open the door from the inside, but it doesn’t lock behind me automatically. I’m not especially a fan, but it does mean you can’t go out forgetting your keys (unlike the place with auto locking doors).
I’ve been thinking about this, and I wonder if the space being at a premium actually cuts the other way in some cases. It’s all well and good to have one big common space if you have enough private space elsewhere, but what if you don’t? If the bedrooms aren’t large enough to be much more than bedrooms, couldn’t the house feel smaller if the only other place to go was the combined room containing the combined living, cooking, and dining space?