As an American temporarily working in Germany, it drives me absolutely insane.
Crosswalks here stay red for ages, and nobody crosses even the smallest roads when there's absolutely no traffic in sight. You'll be at a one-lane road with a 20 mph speed limit, and just see large groups of people on each side waiting several minutes for the green walk sign. If you cross the road without waiting, they look at you with these scornful looks like you're a turd that happened to wash up.
And the noise laws, jesus. You cannot make any audible noise from your apartment past 10pm on weekdays, and all day on Sundays since it's holy and the lawmakers are super religious. What kind of sounds aren't permitted, you might ask? All of them. You cannot vacuum your own home on Sundays because the average 30+ year old German has a pine tree up their ass and will call their landlord to complain if they can even barely, barely hear it. Nein, das isst not allowed! Too much noise ruins our quiet Jesus time!
In my last apartment, the laundry room was locked on Sundays even though it was in the basement and nobody could hear the machines, just on principle alone. It isst unholy to do vork on a Sunday!
I once had a lady yell down at me from her balcony for taking a bag of glass bottles to the recycling bin outside on a Sunday. Too much noise!!
People here just fucking love to bitch and scold. It's like a treasured pastime to just point out what other people are doing wrong.
I was getting home by bike one day and my light burnt out, so I rode on the sidewalk to avoid being run over. Two minutes later, I see a guy up ahead walking down the sidewalk so I moved onto the grass to give him room; as I approach, the dude steps off the sidewalk and into my way, puts his arm out and yells for me to stop, and then starts to lecture me about how riding on the sidewalk and riding without a bike light isn't allowed. I'm in my late twenties and was coming home business casual after a meeting, dude had his voice raised as if I were some punk teenager who had just shit on his front steps. Like man, fuck off and mind your own shit.
Another time, I got on a completely empty bus, and kindly asked the bus driver to let me know when he hit the street I was looking for. All good. I sat right up front so I could hear him. A stop later, a lady gets on the bus and makes it two paces in before spotting me, walking over while huffing and puffing, and telling me how rude it is to sit in the elderly person seats and how I'm being disrespectful. The bus is entirely empty and there's 8 of these disabled/elderly seats. She didn't even sit in one---just saw a nice opportunity to bitch and immediately seized it.
Yet another time, I threw an empty can of Red Bull in a garbage can by a bus stop while walking down the sidewalk; had my hands full, and didn't want to keep carrying it. An older guy waiting for the bus gets up and tells me to stop, reaches his hand elbow-deep into the fucking garbage can slot, fishes around and pulls out the Red Bull, hands it back to me and bitches that it's not garbage, it's recycling and that's not where recycling goes. Dude was counting off recyclable things on his fingers, like "Metals, no! Plastics, no! Paper, no! You do not put this into garbage! Why you don't care about this?!" Jesus fuck.
And speaking of recycling, there's like 4 different non-garbage bins that you have to use at home. One for glass, one for paper, one for one type of plastic, and another for a different type of plastic. To obtain recycling bags, you have to register your address online, at which point they mail you a receipt to confirm your address, and then you take this slip of paper to one of a few gas stations/stores in town that supply the special-colored bags and exchange your ticket for some. Christ. Then you have to do this whole process again when you run out. Even when you have empty glass bottles/jars to dump into the bottle bin, there's different slots for clear glass, brown glass, green glass, and "other" glass.
I'm losing my fucking mind.