Everyone Will Tell”: What you need to know about the traditions of paying for drinks in Germany.
In Germany, even friendly encounters in a bar are subject to unspoken rules. Here they prefer to pay for themselves, and dividing the bill equally or referring to the whole company is the exception and not the rule, says the BBC.
Imagine: you travel around Germany and go out to dinner with new friends. Everyone ate, drank a glass or two and enjoyed themselves. But when the bill comes, no one offers to split it equally.
Instead, everyone names their orders and pays for them separately. One pays for spaghetti and two glasses of beer, the other pays for pizza and a glass of wine. And so in turns until the end of the evening.
In Germany, accuracy is valued even in informal settings. The habit of dividing the joint account equally has not taken root here. The tradition of buying drinks by order for the whole company is not very common.
For tourists, this approach may seem too formal. Especially considering the country's strong beer culture. Why are the Germans in no hurry to treat their friends?
This rule also applies in a relaxed atmosphere. For example, in the summer in Berlin, young people often meet in Späti - small shops that open late - instead of going from bar to bar. But even if someone goes out to buy drinks for everyone, that doesn't mean everyone stops counting the expenses.
"People will definitely tell who paid for the drinks and how many times," says Julian Berger, a bartender at the Orania Hotel in Berlin.
Austrian consumer trends researcher Harald Peters, married to a German woman, associates this quality with the desire for fairness and the desire to control costs.
"Two of my best friends are German, and on joint trips somewhere it has always become a point of contention. They didn't like taking turns buying drinks because no one knew how long we would be together or how many times we would order.