Culture Shock part 1 -the house

So this is America.

The hubby and I moved here in early May -and I got the classic Culture shock. I still have it.
And it isn't nice.

We moved into a row home. Americans call this an apartment, Germans call this a house.
When I saw it for the first time, i wasn't that impressed, but it was OK.
The hubby was ecstatic (which I was, too, after I saw what South Philly homes usually look like -we went to a little house sale 2 blocks down, brrr).

The good thing is, US apartments have a full kitchen and a bathroom with shower/tub or both.
In Germany you get an empty room with tubes sticking out of the walls so you can attach your own electric fixtures, sink, cabinets etc (basically, run to IKEA and start buying a whole damn kitchen) and usually a bathroom with a standard toilet (doesn't have to have a lid), a sink and a tub (you can attach your own shower curtain if you think it's necessary, deal with it), shower booths are a luxury.
If there's a kitchen already there, you rent it from your landlord or the former renter sells it to you.
Oh, and washers and dryers? If you don't bring your own, you're fucked and have to look for a not so cheap laundromat in your area (haha, I think I found 2 in my city, with over 300,000 people, the student dormitories host app. 300 students each with one washroom -about 4washers and 2 dryers).
And you have to bring your own light fixtures unless the former renters left theirs behind or the landlord put up naked bulbs.

The bad thing -US walls are made of cardboard. All of them.
We went to a BBQ at friends' house and someone drunk(who weights less than me) put their elbow through the wall while trying to get up the stairs.
The wall. Has a huuuuuge hole. Because of a little elbow.
If you want to hang something on the wall -like a mirror, you can only do it in the places where the
2x4s hold the cardboard wall in the vertical, if you're lucky (I know the walls aren't really cardboard but plaster boards that are as thin as cardboard, but I'm German and we are all about cynical humor by nature, so there).

Our home doesn't a have a single 90degree angle anywhere or anything even. Not the walls to the floors, not the walls to each other, not the floor by itself, the window sills -oh, wait,the doors do.
I bet if you removed the houses next door it'd fall like a house of cards.

The locks on the outside doors would be the bathroom stall locks in a German club.
It's pretty hilarious if you don't think about people trying to break in to steal your stuff. While you're in your bed sleeping.
We Germans are all about security even if no one owns a gun. Here they have guns cause even my 14year old niece could break our door if she wanted (or the sliding windows, but don't let me get into that *g*).

This all sounds pretty bad but I start getting used to our little home. I even made the 'half-room' in the middle without any windows into my walk-in closet, so far none of the rods fell on me, but it's still not all the way done. Still thinking about what color I should paint the dresser we bought at a thrift store (the US has a-maaazing thrift stores) and how I should store my makeup and hair stuff.
Half of my book collection has found a home in the living room and I start to get used to a gas stove (fiiiirrrrre! yes, I burnt the potholders right away, doesn't everyone?)