American reacts to German Cuckoo Clocks
2024 ж. 11 Сәу.
13 732 Рет қаралды
Thank you for watching me, a humble American, react to German Cuckoo Clocks and how they are made
Original video: • How Are Traditional Ge...
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Germans may have invented the cuckoo clock, but Americans invented the stereotypical German with a cuckoo clock in his living room.
A German here. My grandparents had a cuckoo clock 60 years ago when I was a little boy, and I can only remember one other family with such a clock in their house. But since then, I have not seen house with a cuckoo clock on the wall. I would not like to have one either, even though I like to remember those times.
Not my grandparents, my great-grandmother actually had a cuckoo clock that she had inherited from her Bavarian in-laws. My paternal grandparents had a large grandfather clock, my maternal grandparents had a large clock with a chime on the living room cabinet. I don't know where the cuckoo clock ended up back then. My great-grandmother died in 1970, when I was 5 years old. I never saw the watch again at any relative's. Nowadays, you can only see something like this in traditional restaurants and holiday apartments or houses in the Black Forest itself, or historical clocks in antique shops and museums. I estimate that 95% have been taken by tourists to their home countries in recent years. With us, the stuff is considered kitschy, or at best old-fashioned for historical watches. 🤷🏼♀️
My Family had one when I was a kid (1990s). But it was only for show, and probably was not running most of the time, because you had to change the weights running it very often and once you forgot you had to reset it to the correct time again.
@@Ace-Of-Spades--- My parents had a grandfather clock. With big ben sound every 15 minutes plus strike sounds ro count every hour. So you see a crime film on TV at 22:00 ist goes Ding ding ding dong Ding ding ding dong Ding ding ding dong Ding ding ding dong Gong!!! Gong!!!Gong!!!Gong!!!Gong!!! Gong!!!Gong!!!Gong!!!Gong!!! Gong!!!Gong!!!Gong!!! Gong!!!Gong!!!Gong!!! Gong!!!Gong!!!Gong!!!Gong!!! Gong!!!Gong!!!Gong!!! About 5 minutes you hear nothing from the TV. You saw about 80 minutes of the film and then you cannot hear whodidit, why he did it, how the inspector found out. It ruined almost every film. Same with talking in the living room. At lot of 'wait a moment...' It is like a dictator of time.
@@MiaMerkur Cheers to TV from the internet and the possibility to rewind the show. 🤣 My grandmother's watch was just as annoying, and extremely loud.
You are not allowed to open a craft business in Germany if you are not a master craftsman.
Not entirely true. You can open a craft business as a journeyman in that craft, but you will not be allowed to train new craftsman unless you employ a master or become a master yourself.
@@yanishaaares8390It depends on the business. As a hairdresser, you are not even allowed to open a salon unless you are a master yourself or have hired one from the start. It doesn't matter whether you train there or not. The operation alone requires a master. And that counts for some other business too.
And "master craftsman" doesn't just define someone who is very good at the job, but an official definition. Apprentice, journeyman, master. (And the english word journeyman very fittingly describes the traditional journey many journeymen do. Especially in trades like carpentry. It's becoming rarer nowadays, but occasionally I see some, even in the traditional outfit.)
and 2022 alone there were 20500 people who passed their Meisterprüfung (exam)
There is just one problem with Cuckoo clocks... except for the odd collector, pretty much no-one in Germany actually has one or wants one. They seem nice and fancy on first glance, but quickly become annoying and fiddly to maintain. The craftsmen who create them predominately work in tourist locations and sell almost exclusively to non-Germans.
Die sind ja auch hässlich 😂😂😂
My parents and grandparents all have some at home, so I'm pretty used to it and actually find the sound comforting
I disagree, we have one in the living room, and we barely notice it as it's not that loud, and if you only hear it when you are actually in the living room. You wind it up by pulling the weight down when you go to bed at night (and maybe readjust the time if it goes a bit fast) and then runs for 24 hours, it takes only a few seconds and isn't fiddley. Obviously we'be got a traditional one, not one from a souvenir shop. We are not even in the Black Forest but in Bavaria, but I know quite a few people who have one.
a few anecdotes don't change the overall reality. In 2 days, 34 people liked this post, while only 2 people replied negatively. Pretty one sided...
Yes, because they are out of date. It's something my grandmother would have in her living room, but for younger people it's just old-fashioned stuff that nobody wants anymore xD pretty ugly amongst all the modern furniture.
Me as an austrian, I always thought Cuckoo Clocks were American, because I've never seen one in real life, only in cartoons
I think more Americans own a cuckoo clock than Germans.
@@Lisa-xn9xc Yep. I lived in Australia as a kid and we had one in the living room. Now I live in Europe never seen one anywhere !
The cuckoo clock per capita ratio is much higher in the US for sure.
If I owned a clock shop, I would hate those 2 times in the year, having to adjust all the clocks to winter/summer time!
Your wife would divorce you, if you buy one. 😂
Oh yes, the good old cuckoo clocks. At the age of 14 I began my apprenticeship as a watchmaker. In the first year I "only" got alarm clocks and wall clocks to repair, and therefore also cuckoo clocks. The cuckoo clock really wasn't my favorite work. I have no idea how many of the things I took apart, cleaned, repaired, reassembled, oiled and then put back into operation. But there were also more complicated cuckoo clocks with melodic mechanisms or dancing figures. However, they were mostly antique, and if something was broken or missing it had to be made by hand. After three and a half years of training and a really difficult exam, I finally had my skilled worker's certificate in my pocket and could call myself a watchmaker. Greetings from the Black Forest.
My guess is that a lot more cuckoo clocks hang in rooms outside of Germany than within. I don‘t know a single person who owns one. Tourists buy them or people with a country/hunting estate maybe… But in private homes, you NEVER see any!
I haven't heard more German joke than "You can use your finger to test😃" 😂😂😂
I really cringed there, seeing them laugh like they cracked the joke of the century and at the same time watching Ryan's facial expression.😅
Oh boy, I can tell you enjoyed that video a lot. Multiple times, for over 1 minute, not a single word 😂😂😂
As someone who is from the Black Forest, let me tell you something: They are pretty annoying, and if you forget to stop the cuckoo clock in the evening, you will get a heart attack in the middle of the night.
My parents had a cuckoo clock all their life. It didn't seem to bother them and I can't remember it ever annoyed me in my childhood years. People get used to it, I guess. However, after I moved out that clock always annoyed me when I visited my parents 😀
@@AlexGys9 😂
Either you never had a cuckoo clock or you live in a one bedroom flat. They are not very loud and you can only hear them if you are in the room where the clock is. Unless you put yours above your bed?
Its so strange.. Coocoo clocks are such a southern german thing.. ive never actually seen them here in the north. entirely different culture
Cuckoo clocks are really only a thing in the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) region of Baden-Würtemburg. Associating the whole of Germany with these items is akin to associating all of the US with grits. Much more quintessentially German are Mercedes cars, football, and great roads.
my grandma had a 2 cuckoo clocks in her house; one in the kitchen and one in the guest room. they were quite old and from her own parents and grandparents. and as much as i loved them as a kid, whenever i slept over, she had to “pause them” cause i wasnt used to the constant noises they were doing xD. trying to sleep with a cuckooclok in your room is a nightmare 😂😂😂
back in the day people working in agriculture had a lot of free time in winter, so they started doing woodcarvings, painting buildings (Lüftlmalerei) and things like that, that's also a reason why especially in bavaria a have such intricately decorated baroque churches. basically regional traditions started and some went viral and now people do it to keep the traditions alive.
Me as a german talking english a lot, always thought CooKoo clock sounds sooo similar to the bad clan with the white robes, so i always avoided talking about that in english :D
...genau wie ich, hehe....grüsse aus Köln
I have to avoid talking in english too , so i try in german : weiße Kraft ! 😁
The 10th year anniversary .. I think Ryan is finally going big with this😂
In my grandparents had this. As a Child it was Wow. Never seen those after that
My grandmother had one and I loved it as a child 😄 even though she usually forgot to turn it off at night
7:55 Well, I am about to hit 40 next year, was born and have spend my whole life in Germany and have never seen a Cuckoo clock in person, either.💀 To be honest, this video felt like the type of thing my 80yo grandfather might watch on tv (though in this video they kept the cringy German humour at least, the stuff you see on tv here about these types of things might be a bit more dry). Although even my grandparents have a clock they had as long as I can remember, that plays the Big Ben melody at every full hour and parts of the melody at every quarter and half hours. I think this might actually be more common in Germany. I heard our city hall's chimes do that. My guess is that the manufacturers from the video do a lot of shipping outside of Germany. No idea who would really want to buy such a clock in Germany. Maybe it's more of a (probably very traditional) thing in the Black Forest, I don't know. Maybe some people in Germany would buy a clock like this for nostalgic reasons, or as a joke, or to put an interesting contrast to their other stuff in their home, no idea. Frankly, I actually enjoyed the ad that played for me somewhere in the middle, because it was so modern and fresh in contrast to the video that felt kind of like having entered a dark and dusty place. I mean, it's cool you were fascinated by the video, but I kind of felt every German watching it doing an irritated sigh along with me in perfect synchronicity because you really managed to dig out a huge clichee there. I think I actually watched the whole thing with some kind of a frown.😅
I used to love building things out of Meccano when I was a kid
The one and only cuckoo clock I have seen during the 62 years of my life was hanging in the kitchen of the parents of a classmaid, that was in..... well about 1981 or 1982. It really isn't and has never been a "all German typical thingy"! Back in the days they invented it, it may have been common at the black forest region, but never in all of Germany. Today it is just a very touristic souvenir bestseller because US People and Asians admire it.
Pendulum clocks are so common here like every grandma has several of them xD
We have a cuckoo clock,we took it as a loving memory of our Oma when she passed.
The history of the socalled Black-Forrest-Clock, either with Cuckoos or harp music, is very comprehensively displayed in the horological museum in the old Abbey of St.Märgen just 10 km up from Freiburg im Breisgau in the Black Forrest. While the Cuckoo Clock was 't invented there, it certainly became a cottage industry for the poor mountain farmers, who filled their wintertime productively with the building and fretworking of elaborate clocks, explicitly for the export to Britain, France and Italy, and later on to the British colonies like the British Raj. The clockmakers created distinctive designs for the various markets and quite quickly adapted to changing demands of the markets from the middle of the 18th century on. The clocks were made by the farmers, assembled by clockmakers in central locations like Furtwangen, St. Peter and St.Märgen, packaged and carried by porters on foot over the mountain passages to the Rhine valley, where they were shipped to their destinations on the Rhine and often via the Netherlands. It was an early industry with interchangable parts, sometimes even the clockworks were made of wood for the cheaper products. It is interesting to note that for that area, the mechanics and mathematics of clocks and various wind-up mechanisms like cuckoos, dancing figures and harpworks were a common skillset of the local peasantry. To support that, the Grand Duke of Baden created a clockmaker school in Furtwangen in 1850, tasked with giving clockmakers a comprehensive training and furthering and improving designs.
just the way little kids react to cookoo clocks is reason enough to call it one of the best inventions in human history!
I live in that area, but I don't know anybody who owns such a clock 😂
When I was a child my parents often crossed the black forrest to visit relatives. As soon as we entered the Kinzigtal there were cookoo clock shops everywhere. We have never visited such a shop and we do not know anybody possessing such a thing. This is no thing here even when you live closely to black forrest. In the 80s and 90s electric clocks with melodies like from Big Ben became popular.
Hey there. I am from Munich and when I was a teenager my parents used to have a cuckoo clock. These clocks look beautiful and in the beginning it was funny to wait for the cuckoo coming out. But definitely soon it started to become annoying especially at night. At that time my Mom had two little parrots in care/nursery and they both got mad about the clock. Sometimes they were allowed to leave the bird cage to fly around and the first item on their agenda was attacking and damaging the clock. Never again!
I thought that there was a central Chiming clock in Munich above the town hall or is my memory wrong?
People say swiss watches are objects of perfect precision. But we clearly can compete with them.
If you ever visit Germany, you have to go to Wiesbaden, there ist the biggest "Kuckucksuhr" in the World!
Cuckoo clock kits are available online, if you’re handy, and they’re not that expensive 😊
When we moved to Germany from Southern California (for me it was a move back home), my born and raised Californian husband apparently didn’t realize that cuckoos making that characteristic “cuckoo clock” sound are quite real, existing birds in Europe … He came home from work after a few days and told me: somebody in the village has a really LOUD cuckoo clock, and it’s not properly set either, it cuckooed like 10 minutes after the full hour … At first I was speechless, then I about fell down laughing. It took me a while to convince him it wasn’t a clock but the real deal. And we do have a lot of cuckoos in our area of Germany, just around the corner from the Black Forest. I think I’ve actually seen cuckoo clocks in 5 or 6 houses altogether. I find them quite annoying.
The cuckoo whistle after some time drives me crazy. I hate the clocks - and I'm German.
1730... That was when america was still a colony
These trash clocks are really nerving...🙄 But thank you dear Ryan for bringing up a new video every day. I appreciate it very much. 💖🙂
Thats why there is a Museum for everything in germany, probally also for kuckuckclocks.
something funny, a friend of mine (the Frank BS Show) has a cuckoo clock with a cow coming out of it, the thing makes moo. He stuck a photo of his wife on the cow's head.
i live in the black forrest. i dunno anyone who owns a coo coo clock and the places where they're sold are all just for tourists.
Just be sure: LEGO (esp. L. Technik) IS for adults
Master in Germany means studying, exams and an official certificate (Meisterbrief).
Yes. Of course. Most intelligent invention of the entire mankind. Just imagine you go to sleep at night and at 12pm the horrible, annoying and embarrassing sound starts. TWELVE TIMES. Optimal present for a 10th anniversary. 😂😂😂😂😂
In south Germany you don´t need a cuckoo clock. The job to annoy you every 15 minutes is already done by the churches. Sometimes even at night.
I'm glad you knew they're a German thing, so many people attribute them to Switzerland. Whilst the black forest is on the border to Switzerland, cuckoo clocks are pretty much unheard of south of the Rhine (manufacturing them that is, obviously we know what they are and even own some)
Sometimes they are also attributed to bavaria, like in the most famous KZhead video about Germany.
I had a cuckoo clock when I was a child. My grandparents brought it as a gift from a vacation in the Black Forrest - of course. But as others wrote, it's a nice clock to watch, admire the details and run it just for the fun - but you really don't want it in your every day life or else you "fly over the cuckoo nest" (if you know the old movie then you know now, why it's set in a psychiatric hospital/mental institution) 🎵🐦🤪
I live in Northern Germany in lower saxony. I never saw such a clock. Maybe it is a southern thing? The culture is really different
They’re only made for tourists today.. I‘ve seen them only in terrible souvenir shops… never ever in any German household in the last 54 years of my life..
I've seen several. But with the cuckoo disabled!
@@gluteusmaximus1657 same same. some people have them, but most disable the cuckoo other then once in a while to scare people heh
They were maybe made a lot black then and hanged in households but today definitly not.This is something that maybe some grandparents used to have. But now they are basically nonexistant
Barely anyone in Germany has such a clock. Also, a real German one is expensive. In the tourist traps they sell Chinese crap for cheap. A real one costs hundreds of Euros. Also, FYI, this kind of craftsmanship was done in the past in the winter when the forest workers couldn't work outside.
Similar to the stereotypical association of Germany with Bavaria the cuckoo clock should not regarded as beeing typically German. It a regional product from the black forst region. Nowadays none sane German owns one. They are predominantly made for tourist from Asia und North America.
You would go crazy if you had one, believe me!
I am german, but I have never seen such a clock, and I certainly don't want to own one.
Of course we have more mast craftsmen because here not everybody has to go to college / university to end up doing a job he has no clue of at all, while here people go to school for 9-10 years and then start learning their craft. But i guess USAians didn't saw that as a good way to press money out of young people and literally enslave them with their dept for the rest of their life. So sent everyone just to college and let them pay 100.000s of dollars works way better for you.
Nice video
first :P thank you, ryan...
The most german thing we invented was the V2
I rembember my grandparents had a cuckoo clock in the 1980s. I would go mad with this f* bird coming out every hour... 🙄
I don't know anybody, who has a cuckcoo clock.
I think I would go crazy if I had one in my house , hearing that CooKoo would drive me nuts !!!!!
really? not the car or the computer? not to mention the beer lol
invented 1740 it was mentioned earlier in the video???
Cuckoo Clocks? Thats ridicules tourist trap, no one in Germany has one. The real German watches are like the "Lange & Söhne Grand Complication" wich has a price tag of 3 Million. Currently any investmen banker or top manger in NYC has a Lange & Söhne watch as visible sign that he made it. The Grand Complicatio has also a build in bell, if you are in a restaurant and want to get everyone knew at the table, that you have the 3 million model, you just set the alarm clock at this time.
Hey man, I was wondering if you considered getting more hands on with the content as opposed to just react. Maybe cooking some recipes or exploring German stuff you can access in your area. I feel like it'd elevate your and our experience and make for good episodes. Just a thought.
The cuckoo clock isn't the most german thing. Like, nobody in northern germany has one.
In the field of mental health, there are three sure signs by which you can tell whether a German is still capable of participating in social life and in full possession of his or her mental powers: - Does he have a cuckoo clock? - Does he have a garden gnome? - Does he have a Wackeldackel? If any of the symptoms apply, get help! Even if it looks very serious at first glance, the patient may still be able to be saved. Thank you for your cooperation.
The Cuckoo Clocks are a dying tradition decades. Another video that just shows a wrong picture. I know so many people from all over germany because of my job or because friends and some of my big family moved there and made new friends and none of them (or lets say their grandparents) has one. Some say they are still common in the Southwest, where the Black Forrest is, but i have no verification for that and the people down there are kind of known to be glued to the old things.
I object to the insinuation that “we (down here) are glued to the old things” 😠 And want to point out that for example Mercedes Benz, Porsche, Robert Bosch Companies are all from “down here”. Carl Benz created his “patent motorcar” in Mannheim, and his wife Bertha undertook the first long trip in a motorcar from Mannheim to Pforzheim, at the northern end of the Black Forest. One of the first inventions by Robert Bosch GmbH was the sparkplug … The first bicycle (albeit without pedals) was invented “down here” in Karlsruhe (south of Mannheim and just a bit north of the northwestern end of the Black Forest) by Freiherr von Drais, one of his first longer trips took him from Karlsruhe down south to Gernsbach in the western part of the Black Forest.
@@christinehorsley to be glued to the old things is nothing bad. We "up here" in the Ruhrpott still have many people who talking and still living "Kohle, Stahl und Bier", though there is almost nothing left of it. ;-)
Ryan
Off the Topic, but is Tyler Walker Your twinbrother? You look just Same To me.
Yes he is, and Tyler Bucket and Rumple... They both have several channels.
CUCKOO CLOCK IS FROM AUSTRIA NOT GERMANY !!!
No please never seen in austria only Kullimus (Cow)😂😂😂
And alpine skiing was invented in Egypt.
Yeah, very likely. And what's next? Telling us that Wiener Schnitzel is an Austrian invention as well? 🤪
Im starting to see why these 2 brothers don't get anything... The video begins with.. We've made these clocks here since the 1700... 5 min later.. I wonder when they started making these clocks.. Wow, just wow.. Attention span of a stuffed newt.. 😅
Had one in the 70's as a kid. Stopped it within a month.. Too annoying to listen to..
YOUR VOICE IS GETTING QUIETER AND QUIETER !!! i really wonder whats the problem? is the mic too far away?
Continental drift. America moves away 2.5cm per year... Soon Ryan will drop down the edge...
@@alidemirbas6566 There is no edge. Just because earth is flat doesn't mean it has to end somewhere. 😁
Wtf are u thinking about Germany? We are in 2024 and you are talking about cuckoo clocks? Get away from the stereotypes, i dont know anyone WHO posseses such a clock......
I do you hater. Get out of the town and go to the Real germany .
was fürn erbärmlich dämlicher Kommentar.....geht doch nich um stereotypes...ich würd dir empfehlen Get away from being woke, schmock
Offended much? My grandparents used to own one until a couple years ago when they passed. A lot of people in our region own a clock? How can you be offended by such a lighthearted video? Even though it's a tourist attraction and sold to tourists, people still buy them and amongst younger generations cheap cuckoo clocks have a renaissance.
@@BlueFlash215well, I was annoyed, too. Not offended, but annoyed by the fact that Cuckoo clocks are a clichee especially Americans might have in mind. My problem with this and his previous video is that he calls things 'so German' that are actually 'so German' mostly in the heads of people outside of Germany. Yes, some Germans might or might have owned such a clock, yes, versions of these clocks might be kind of popular with some people (I didn't know they have gotten more popular among young people, that's interesting). But it's still a huge stereotype about Germany you can annoy a lot of people with. It won't hurt to let Ryan know, as he apparently wants to attract a German audience.
It's only for Americans who think it's a German thing , it isn't, not now anyway ,maybe 80 years ago !
Such poor acting, but I guess ryan knows can make money off youtube doing these stupid videos on youtube. Please don't click on the them or watch them. Maybe these youtubers will be force to stop doing them. If the money stops coming in to them.
Look for the biggest cocoon clock in Germany in the village of gutach. That’s also amazing. 😊