Kapitel 5 Kultur

Excerpts from "Women in Germany" -

There is very little surprise in this article. As with in America, there is the issue of women earning considerably less than men for equal work. This seems to be a global issue, at least in the developed world. It is also nearly impossible to account for all of the variables that may have an impact on this difference between genders. It's good to hear that this gap is shrinking in the younger generation. It's also really good that they actually acknowledge the issues that go along with prostitution as a profession, instead of sweeping it under the rug like the American government is inclined to do.

German Erotica

This was good for a couple laughs, but was not very substantial. The image in the article was especially entertaining.

Rules of the Street

Again, nothing too insightful in the article. Obviously this is referring to large cities where there are generally large groups of people. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the population density in German cities is higher than in almost any American city, so this makes sense. If New York City was even more overcrowded than it already is, one can imagine that people would generally be even more pushy in crowded areas.

Flirting in Germany -

The article hit this subject right on the head for me. I wish I would have read this before I spent considerable time flirting with German girls, because it probably would have helped me avoid all of the issues I ran into. I really like the idea of the male not having to initiate the encounter; it's a welcome relief from American customs. One thing not mentioned in the article is how friendly German girls are (at least those in University). On multiple occasions I found myself riding bikes with a girl that I had just met the previous night, or having breakfast after a long night of dancing. Because clubs don't close down until the morning, it is possible to spend a whole night dancing and hanging out with someone without "going home with them". This was an interesting concept for me, and it's one of the things I really wish we had here. Luckily for the visitors to Germany, one line says it all...

" And often as a foreigner, you have the advantage of being different and intriguing."

Sidewalks and Strasses

Most of the discussion in "Stay off the Bike Path!" and "Crossing the Strasse" centered around the general German stiffness for rules and regulations. It seems from the articles that many things that would seem overly stringent in America (tickets being given for crossing the empty street at 3:00 AM, the concept of the 'honor code' used on public transportation) are commonplace in Germany due to their cultural acceptance of the rules.

During my time in Germany i noticed many of the observations presented in the readings. I was especially enamored with the bike lanes on the sidewalks. I would occasionally wander into the lane while walking down the sidewalk, only to be instantly grabbed and pulled back into the pedestrian zone by one of my native friends. It didn't take me very long to realize that if I was going to be in their town, I had to play by their rules. The same was true of crossing the street. People do drive very fast, and crossings can often be dangerous, but I was still shocked when we would be waiting for that little man to turn white with not a car in sight. It was especially incredible because many of the people I had met in Germany were so much like me (and like American college students) in so many ways.

I'll only comment on the nudity articles by saying that it is 100% different in Europe, and that it's almost impossible to explain to someone who hasn't been across the Atlantic. I can't quite understand where the stigma came from, but it is incredibly strong throughout the entire US. And it's too bad too, because Spring Break could have been so much more fun...

Kapitel 3 Kultur-Texte

Drinking

There's not a chance the citizens of Germany will allow any sort of law infringing upon their right to drink beer. Germans like their beer like Americans like their open web. If the English Wikipedia went dark to oppose SOPA, the entire German web would revolt against a government even considering the tightening of the public drinking laws.

However, I have a strong stance on public intoxication laws and public alcohol consumption in general; especially in Germany. One of the most awesome parts about the country is how well the general populace functions with such lax alcohol rules. Americans in general are raised to believe that alcohol (no matter the quantity or type) should be kept far away from productive life. Even the casual mention of having a beer during work elicits alcoholic jokes and can get many-a-employee fired. From the article and from my experience in the Country, this is the exact opposite Germany. High School kids would grab a six-pack on the way home from Friday classes and drink them in the park. College parties were held in the student unions, complete with students throwing up in the bushes and falling asleep on the dance floor. Hostels provided free beers for staying the night.

The American aversion to mixing alcohol with normal life tends to break down quickly, and with minimal warning. Oft understated is the importance of alcohol in business and casual meetings, which tend to get neglected in the typical American upbringing until it is too late. There is a fine line between having a beer or two over lunch with a potential client and getting drunk as a skunk. Many of my friends (and many college age Americans in general) see alcohol as a way to get drunk and act stupid, not as the casual social lubricant that it is to many young Germans. I'm sure this stems from the differing of cultures, where underage drinking is punishable by hundreds of dollars in fines and random drug screenings in America and is greeted by a couple friends and a 6 pack in Germany. By teaching our youth only to stay away from alcohol and showing gristly scenes of drunk driving accidents when they inquire about it, we impose upon our young adults the viewpoint that alcohol is best either avoided or abused. And we have far too many of both in our population. The uber-moderate German stance towards alcohol (especially beer) could benefit our young people more than we think (especially those on college campuses, where driving is rarely, if ever, required).


Doner
Great, cheap food. I'm personally offended that the writer didn't metion the Doner Durum, which is wrapped in flatbread and then stuffed with cole slaw and french fries.

Optimists
I didn't see much of this while I was there. Perhaps it was because I was around mostly young people who had as many hopes and dreams and as bright of an outlook on the future as I do.

Kapitel 2

I love Statistics. I think it's incredible to be able to get a grasp of what's happening on a large scale just from analyzing some numbers. As an engineer, I feel compelled to agree with the article written by Prachi Kadam that 10 million people in a city is an unimaginable number. I think that more important than the sheer number of people living in a city or the physical size of that city is the population density, or the number of people per square kilometer (or meter, or foot, etc.). Although Long Island has 5042 people per square mile, the USA has no cities in the top 80 in the world in terms of population density. Berlin, Munich, Koln, Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Dusseldorf all have higher population densities than any city in the USA(Here
) Perhaps next time a German is swept off their feet by our huge cities, we should remind them that we tend to spread out our living spaces a little bit more.



Staring Down -
"It's really pretty innocuous albeit annoying. Perhaps German mothers don't do the "It's not polite to stare" routine with their kids. Or maybe the perpetrators have just never lived in New York, where prolonged eye contact can result in a messy homicide." (link)
- Perhaps this is the reason why Germans are so enthralled by the fact that Americans live in cities of more than 10m people; they're suprised that we're LIVING (not messily murdered) in a city of 10m people!

"Have You Gained Weight?"-
- I love the concept of having to discuss your actions and statements that would otherwise be glossed over in a more western setting. I think this kind of brutal honesty needs to be seen more in the States. The directness of the German cultures is really neat, and it's something I really loved when i was there travelling. It made it quite easy to know if someone liked me and wanted me to keep talking to them in my broken German or English or if I should just walk away. Luckily I didn't have to just walk away much.

AMD 2

For AMD 2 my coworkers and I drank beer over lunch and attempted to speak in German while reminiscing about our travels to Germany. Our company does automotive manufacturing quality testing all around the world, and as Germany is a huge automotive supplier so we do quite a bit of business there. The people that I spoke with had spent most of their time in Frankfurt and Dusseldorf, while I spent most of my time in Hamburg and Berlin, so we got to learn a good bit about the respective places. Although none of us were very fluent in German, it was fun to attempt to converse over lunch. It was interesting to learn how densely populated the western part of Germany is, and how much manufacturing is done there.

My favorite story from the afternoon was from a younger employee who arrived in Dusseldorf at a time when all of the hotels were full and was put up in the hotel owner's girlfriend's parent's house. Lucky for him they were nice people and the older woman spoke a good deal of English. On his last day in the "hotel" they even cooked him dinner and gave him a quarter barrel of their home brewed beer, which he had shipped back to America.

I'm looking forward to improving my verbal skills so that I can have experiences like this when I get shipped out to help the Germans improve their automotive manufacturing processes.

Kapitel 1 Kultur

When I was younger I was always curious why there was not more German tradition in the midwest USA, but as I grew I slowly came to realize that it is not visible because it is everywhere. The midwest embodies many German traditions to the core, such as a strong manufacturing base (not quite as much as when I was younger), hard, blue collar work, and a strong sense of independence and loyalty to where one grows up.

Although the underlying German traditions are well defined in the northern Midwestern USA, as the reading states "The diversity of religious expression among German-speaking immigrants was paralleled by a high degree of heterogeneity stemming from differences in regional and linguistic origins." (pg 21) Because of the Germans in the Midwest came from many different parts of Germany over long periods of time, German Americans don't typically have as strong of a German identity as that of Italian Americans or Irish Americans. This has also had the unique effect of allowing German Americans to blend into the prototypical American over time, allowing German ancestry to spread out across the country. It seems as though Germans tended to gravitate more towards a common culture than a common homeland while in America.

The pinnacle of the German tradition becoming that of America as a whole is in food and drink selections. The prototypical food for a 4th of July as well as a baseball game consists of hot dogs and beer (both of which can be traced to Germany). Beer drinking is this country's alcohol of choice, also something most likely brought over from Germany, as Germans drink the most beer per capita of any country in the world by far.

"Over time, as German Americans defined themselves less according to ethnicity, aspects of their heritage became part of the community as a whole. Today Milwaukee is known for its “beer and brats,” symbols of local culture that cut across ethnic lines and transcend their origins in the foodways of German-speaking immigrants.Perhaps we can say that Milwaukee is now “the most unconsciously German city in America." (pg 25)

Although it can be hard for me to see specific instances of Germany in America, I get the sense that it is all around me.

AMD 1

Agguire, the Wrath of God -

I took a world cinema class last year in which we were reqired to view this film. I was out of town during the viewing of it, so this weekend one of my friends and I sat down to see Warner Herzog's film. I'll attempt to describe it below.

Der Film war heiß Agguire, the Wrath of God. Agguire war der Spanisch und verrückt. Er war nicht freundlich. Der Film ist aus neunzehn zweiundsiebzig. Agguire wanderte in Brazil zu finden El Dorado. Er nicht trinkt oder essen oder schlafen und stribt from the monkeys that overrun his raft.