I was going to respond with "Protestantism", but then I realized that I also lived in the US for ~5 years and I had no problem to adapt there. Mind you, I wouldn't go back to live in the US unless you were paying me a lot of money to do so, but at least there I felt integrated.

But honestly I don't have a better answer. Despite all my sincerest efforts, I never got the German idea of humor. I never understood their lack of flexibility in social settings. Their relationships with their family members (especially parents) is completely alien to me. I certainly don't like their "one-size-fits-all" for all sorts of socio-economic policies and how that translates to the EU. I am still annoyed by the fact that I can not find a way to go back to swimming in some structured capacity: it's either the overcrowded public pools or the "you need to be at competition-ready level to join a Schwimmverein". I find it weird that I've been living in the same building for 7 years and I know basically nothing about my neighbors - except the ones living under me who repeatedly complained about us being loud (we were not) and only stopped after taking us to court and losing the case.

> I never got the German idea of humor.

A lot of foreigners say that. Actually mostly english speaking ones. I never heard a turk say this. Perhaps it's linked to the willingness to learn the language, which is often low with english-speaking people?

No idea, but back to the story: my answer to this "I don't get the humor" is: I don't get spanish humor.

And the simple reason is that I don't speak spanish good enough. I get SOME of the british & US humor. But only a bit ... my language skill, albeit perhaps ok if you look at it, is still not good enough to detect the subtle details. IMHO that is the reason why e.g. Mr Bean was easy to export: he doesn't talk :-)

In any case: to get the local humor, you MUST learn the language and even the culture quite good. Otherwise, you simply don't get it.

> I find it weird that I've been living in the same building for 7 years and I know basically nothing about my neighbors

Isn't this just par for the course when living in dense settings?

I've been living in my current apartment for more than three years, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't recognize most of my neighbors if I randomly saw them in the street. We say hello when our paths cross coming and going, but that's it.

Many people come to the cities specifically looking to be more anonymous. You can't have that if everybody knows everybody.