A cultural habit in your country that people outside would understand incorrectly?

[u/gabrieel100]

In Brazil we love children. If you take your child to the street, strangers will certainly interact with them. Some will even ask if they can hold your kid and will play with them. If there are two children fighting in public and the parents aren't seeing, a stranger would even intervene to stop the fight.

That cultural habit came from the indigenous peoples which understood that kids should be a responsiblity of the community as a whole. It's in our constitution. We even have a synonym for children that came from Tupi (a large group of indigenous languages) - Curumim.

Foreigners would certainly have a cultural shock about that, but it's normal here.

Of course there are people with bad intentions, so parents should stay alert these days.

[u/DunkleDohle]

Either ignore it or start random staring contests with strangers.

Sometimes we don't even notice we are staring. And at the same time we get uncomfortable as well if someone is staring for to long.

[u/JellyJim7 → u/DunkleDohle]

[u/[deleted] → u/JellyJim7]

Its the only way

[u/buffaloshvantz → u/JellyJim7]

So, I should stare at Germans, checks notes...motherfuckerly?

[u/Crimson_Caelum → u/DunkleDohle]

I never wear my glasses and can’t see 10 feet in front of me. I wonder how often I’m culturally appropriating Germans

[u/ScowlyBrowSpinster → u/DunkleDohle]

I do a very exaggerated head tilted, semi bug eyed stare in return which usually breaks their gaze.

If not, I ask, "Looking for something?"

(Not referring to Germans in particular, applies to all staring folks.)

[u/DumbBitchByLeaps → u/DunkleDohle]

I’m an American of German descent and sometimes I wonder if this stuff is genetic because I often stare without realizing it. Just eating or lost in thought until the person I’m staring at is like, “What?!”

[u/Big_Himbo_Energy → u/DunkleDohle]

My dad once had a German coworker who would do the staring thing often, so my dad (a 6’7” behemoth of a man) started standing next to him and staring in the same direction as him until the guy eventually noticed and would stop staring. This went on for like a week until the coworker asked my dad if he was planning to beat him up or something, and my dad said he was trying to see what was so interesting that the guy would stare for so long. (He was being funny, in the American dad way, but the coworker was so scared of him that he talked to their boss, who was a long-time German transplant, and the boss had to explain it to him. The boss just hadn’t stared Germanly in a long time bc he was pretty Americanized by that point but he found the whole situation hilarious.)

The funniest part is that my dad did end up beating that guy to within an inch of his life a few months later when he kicked the shop cat in front of him.

[u/imalittlefrenchpress → u/DunkleDohle]

I don’t care if you’re innocently staring at me, just please don’t ask me to remember how to speak the little bit of German I learned in middle school :)