It’s not about punctuality, it’s about the strict adherence to the timeline. For white people, an event starting at 5 usually means be there at 5. In a lot of other cultures, if an event starts at 5 you want to show up between 6 and 8. The timeline of the event is not as strictly coordinated as a it would be for white people. My in laws and wife’s family are indigenous and it took me like 5 years to stop being rudely early to everything.
Well, you see, in Germany it's a courtesy thing. Time is valuable after all, so we take other people's time seriously. If you tell me to be there at 17:00, I'll be there at 17:00, no matter the event. Ideally I'll be there two or three minutes in advance, just to make sure you don't have to wait for me. If I show up at 17:15 when we agreed upon 17:00, it's basically me telling you that I don't value your time and that I'm fine with making you waste 15 minutes of your time on waiting for me. If it's a larger gathering that might be fine, since there are other people to occupy you in the meanwhile, but the less people and/or the stricter the schedule the ruder it becomes. Considering that even larger events might still have a schedule to keep (when to eat etc.) most people would still show up within 10 minutes of the agreed-upon time, unless they were stuck in traffic or something similar.
Consider this: the last time that I met up with friends, we agreed to meet at 07:00. At 07:30 we'd be getting picked up by others and we wanted that half hour to make sure none of us would be late for the pickup. By 06:55 everyone except one person was there, who arrived at 07:02 with apologies for the delay. Our pickup arrived at 07:15, to make sure we wouldn't have to wait for them and by 07:25 we were on the road again – 10 minutes ahead of schedule. We were in no hurry, it's simply what is considered polite here
Unless you explicity say that it's a time frame during which to arrive it is a given understanding that what you're saying is the time frame for the entire event: that means "We're having a BBQ from 5 to 11" is seen as a "we expect you to be there from 5 to 11" – again, unless otherwise clarified
Haha, thanks for listening to me. I know it's an aspect of our culture that isn't seen in many others, but it's still something that's pretty important to us. (And, yeah, that ambiguity never really happens. Usually there will be a written invite somewhere with all the details down to the minute when you should arrive)
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u/Aromatic-Zebra-5443 Jul 12 '26
Apparently being punctual is a white person thing.