Give me back mine 1 cent!

I moved to Germany in the year 2013. Before this immigration move I never had gone so far from home for so long time. Although I’m a big fan of travel books, documentaries I still suffered (even now sometimes) a culture shock. One of the things that I can’t understand is the relationship the people here have with money.

I live in the south of German,”the hard workers area”, in Baden-Württemberg.

In all Germany this zone is knowned as a zone where the people are really found of their money and save, save, save, save… Sparen, sparen, sparen, sparen…

That happens also with change. When you go to a place and the bill is something like 9.99€ and you pay with a 10€ the probability you never see your 0.01€ back is enormous.

The thing is that for years I can say that I paid many times vacations trips with canes that took complete year to field up with little coins.

Is not a very big deal because I’m also a little bit like that but what I can’t understand is their relation with little money.

0.05€, 0.02€ 0.01€ have a very low importance for them (I’m generalizing). I saw many times people giving back the coins to the cashier  because they didn’t want them.

That happen to me for the first time in a big international restaurant company, I can’t reveal the name for obvious reasons, but there I bought a cookie for 0.99€. I payed with 1€ coin she said “Danke schoen!” And went away… I was quite confused. I didn’t knew how to speak German very well so I couldn’t ask for it and my Portuguese mind was only thinking 

“Where is my 1cent??”!

Was a completely outrageous situation for me and I have a very good logical explanation why.

I always learned that money is money no matter how little it is. Although in Portugal sometimes when the cashier doesn’t have change we also say it’s ok  but that doesn’t happen very often.

I call it vacation can! During a period of a year, starting from the moment of the last vacation day, I would start feeling up a can with all the change I could get. In the end of that, more or less, year period the vacation that I would make would have the budget value of the quantity inside the can. And guaranty that big percentage of the money came from little, low value, money!

Oh well… first world problems