Cash or Credit?

America, how I love you. Germany, how I love you too. The theme hasn't changed over the seven odd months I've been here but there's one thing--that I noticed from the very beginning of all this adventuring thing--that hasn't sat well with me about Germany.

What is up with this cash flow economy?

It seems like a holistically European thing from what I gather but since my experiences are made up 99% of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland I'm gonna talk about it for 99% of the time.

*Cue some awkward completely irrelevant "we are the 99%" Occupy movement in 3...2...*

All I Wanted

...like seriously, I was sitting at work last week (a great experience thus-far) and I wanted to go to the store to buy some gummi/y (which one is it?) bears, because I have a minor obsession with them, when I realized my craving wouldn't be tempered any time soon. Why? Elementary, my Dear Watson (I can guarantee with 100% certainty that no one who reads my blog's name is Watson) I had no cash on me (A second reason might have been because it's still freezing here and I didn't have the guts to go outside in the sub-freezing temperatures [I'm really abusing parentheses this blog post]).

Big no-no Germany. You lost my patronage all because I was terrified of the look I'd get from the cashier if I walked to the register, whipped out a card and proceeded to pay with it. Like throwing a 2 Euro purchase on a credit/debit card is the sin of all sins. Do they not understand that they are LOSING my money because I literally feared the cashier's glare.

Literally. Feared. Paying. With. A. Card.

I seriously and not just for dramatic blogging effect, seriously just cringed typing that sentence. That's how foreign it is to me. I'm an American! I have the RIGHT to pay with a credit/debit card whenever/wherever and for as little or as much as I want. So WHAT if I have $4,000,000 of debt on my Black Card, swipe that baby one more time at the Chick-fil-A drive through. It'll get paid back--somehow. The true American Dream is the ability to shovel out as much money as you want (according to your credit limit) without a second thought. This whole "spending what you have" nonsense has worn off on me. At first I thought it was cool, you know, having money and spending it, but now I'm annoyed.

You ever been to a bar? If you're in my peer group, the assumption's going to be yes. This is only because of a certain necessity within our age bracket not because you're a raging alcoholic. If you haven't been to a bar...then you should give yourself a pat on the back for whatever you've been doing with your free time since you hit 21. I've been to a bar, a few actually, and one thing I can tell you about bars in America is that credit cards are an amazing commodity. "Put it on my tab" is the most ridiculous, brilliant, thing ever and it forces people into silly decisions with money and alcohol. I  wouldn't even brave putting something on a tab here, I'd probably get kicked out for even mentioning such a thing. I'm kidding, I am sure there's some places you can use a credit card to pay in a bar...but they're probably owned by Americans, frequented by Americans and happen to be in...well, you get the picture. When I go out in Germany, it's already expensive so it's only natural that I want to ball so hard.

Bands will make her dance; traveler's checks won't.

I guarantee half of you didn't get the urban reference, whatever...I tried.

I am half kidding about this; of course I definitely see the benefit of the way Germany's cash economy works; brief aside: this is not to say that people don't have credit/debit cards on hand, it's just that the frequency of someone using one--of someone using one for, let's say, gummy/i bears-- is drastically decreased. I actually respect the idea behind it, I just don't understand and can't quite get behind the aversion to plastic. Maybe this isn't a problem for everyone who travels to Germany, maybe some people are more used to carrying large amounts of cash on them all the time but it's not really something I'd been accustomed to before this journey which necessarily means it's something I still struggle with now.

I could have vented more but I decided that everything is right in the world, March Madness starts soon and I kind of feel like a boss tossing out 50 euro bills to buy 95 cent gummi/y bears.

But SERIOUSLY where were Jay-Z and Kanye Euro-partying when they were writing Watch the Throne? Or did they just get the Illuminati memo to carry cash with you in Europe? My membership doesn't get renewed until next week; I tried to pay with credit card but it got declined...