Are you married?

Here are a few ways you can tell which guys in Germany are married or not.

Married guys eat cold food at lunch, but single guys eat the hot stuff at the Cantine. This is because folks in Germany typically only eat one hot meal each day. It's not a rule, but it's pretty common. So since there's no wife at home to prepare the hot meal in the evening, the single guys eat heat at work.

Germans wear their wedding ring on their right hand, which seems odd to me because I had been told that we wear the ring on our left ring finger because it's the only finger with a vein that goes straight to the heart. Was I lied to? Or maybe that's the vein that has the least distance to travel to the heart? Who knows!

Also, women don't always get engagement rings in Germany. I hear it's becoming more popular now (due to the American culture creeping in), but typically the women get the ring and puts in on their left hands first. At the wedding, she then switches it over the right hand.

Some of my German guy friends heard about the American jewelry store's mantra that men should spend "two-month's salary" on a ring and they nearly lost their minds! They are so fearful that "rule" will trickle into Germany where men typically spend 500 to 1000 euros on their loved one's precious ring no matter how much they make at the office. One guy's quick response when he heard about the two-month's salary idea was, "is that gross or net?" That makes a big difference in Germany since they pay nearly 50% income tax in many places.