The most shocking thing about living in Germany is just how German it is!
Such as restrictions on when you are allowed to mow your lawn in order to protect the peace and quiet of your neighbours.
Or, since a lot of Germans live in apartment buildings, rotas for when each household in the building is responsible for cleaning the common parts of the building – rotas that people actually stick to.
Or church taxes that are collected by the state with the rest of your income tax.
Or taxis that are all Mercedes Benz.
Germany is just so damn German.
…One slightly surprising thing about Germany is how few people have credit cards. This is changing, but even now it is actually quite hard to get one compared to most other western countries. As a result quite a lot of businesses (particularly restaurants) don’t take them. You can get a pretty big shock after your meal when you come to pay and find that you are going to have to find cash to pay for it.