Volunteering
You've probably volunteered in the U.S. before, and in many different ways. US Americans love volunteering, and they make it easy to do. After all, who doesn't love free labor? The Germans, that's who. Okay so maybe that's dramatic. But! It really is drastically different in the Vaterland. As part of the CBYX program year, we were all required to do 40 hours of Ehrenamt (volunteer service) during the university phase of the program. This didn't mean "show up and volunteer," this meant find places that accept volunteers, figure out who to contact, schedule an introductory meeting, figure out if there are issues with insurance, then show up and volunteer. I recall hearing discussions about how difficult it was to find volunteer work, but I figured that there would be plenty of opportunities in Hamburg due to the size of the city. In large part, I was right. My friends and I in Hamburg really had no issues finding places to volunteer--they worked a...