Many Americans put in between 10 and 12 hours a day on weekdays and sometimes work on weekends as well. They just don't exist. Business hours there generally run from 8 a.m. to about 5 p.m. for shops and they all take long breaks for the main meal of the day at about 2 p.m. And on many Sunday afternoons the family I stayed with would gather with friends to drink tea and eat cake. If I had been at home, I would have been doing yard work.
School is also very different.
It goes longer into the summer but the school days are shorter and they also have more holidays. They have less homework and more tests. Germans also take more subjects such as languages, arts and music every year but to accommodate all of these extra subjects they have to go into less detail in all subjects. While I was there I had a great chance to improve my German, but the fact is that I could have gotten by with just English. In Germany, students begin studying English in kindergarten, and are able to carry on a conversation by the time American junior high and high school students are just starting a foreign language.