Sep 2, 2022
Yes! I experienced that too when I lived in Berlin as an American. And it's often the little insignificant things that add up to big cultural misunderstanding.
I lived in Berlin from 1985 until 1990, and one of the first things I learned is that if I wanted to be taken seriously, I needed to smile less, or at least to limit smiling to appropriate circumstances that were different to what I was used to.