Communicating is difficult. Not only do you have to mind what you say and how you say it - it is also what you do NOT say and how you do that. I just realized that when I got somebody mad at me for not replying to his text message. The problem was I didn’t think he wanted me to reply because if I was in his shoes, I would not have expected it. However, I was taught better: Equating your own communication standards with those of others is not a good idea. Even more so if you originate from different cultures – which was the case in that story. I could have used that as an excuse, actually… why didn’t I think of it earlier?! In order for you to avoid inter-cultural communication clashes, I came up with the idea to list a few things that made me wonder about the American way of communicating. Not only that, I will also explain shortly why Germans would do it differently. So to say, I’ll try to improve the German-American communication so it gets more efficient… which is very German ...