Kultur 2 - Liz Sherzer

For my taste of Deutchland Kultur, I decided to read 2 of the articles given: "The Germanic Stare Down" and "Brutally Honest 'Have you gained weight?'".

"The Germanic Stare Down":
   I have stared at people a few times. Usually, they are doing something stupid or interesting, so they warrent me staring. Usually, if they notice, I stop or at least try to be sneaker about it. In the few times that I haven't, I felt like a scientist blinding watching the mice move around, not doing anything about it, just watching.
   I have seen people stare, and it is a very uncomfortable feeling at times. Am I doing something wrong? Are they laughing at me? Do I have something on my face or clothes? All my insecurities come to light in a most uncomfortable way.
    I think the fact that German people do this has something to do with their language. I talked about this in my AMD2, but to summarize: the German language has 1 way of asking someone to do something while English has more than 10, each of which has subtleties to be more polite or more forceful. The literal German-to-Englsih translation is always the forceful word that is very to the point and not very polite. While Americans would find it weird and unsubtle, Germany is not subtle and feels not awkwardness in the stare.
   Having a person watch everything you do wrong and report it to the police without telling you is considered rude in America. (not that it stopped the people in my apartment building from reporting a noise violation at 10:30pm on a Saturday night and bringing the cops to my friends room.) Why make them pay the expensive parking ticket when you can just tell them not to do it again.

"Brutally Honest 'Have you gained weight?'"
    Again, I think the brutally honestness comes from the language. When Max, the Austrian boy my family hosted last summer, came to visit, we went over to my boyfriends house. They had waited for us to arrive before getting food. When we finally arrived, they asked if we wanted to get food with them, Max said "No. I don't want to go.". I quickly added that we had just ate at my house before coming over. While talking with some friends yesterday, that story got brought up and I learned that one of my friends was angry with Max. They had were polite and waited and he answered in, what he considered, a rude way. After he ate, he was in a better mood and wasn't mean to Max, but it was the first shocking adventure with the honest and direct answer.
    Having to describe every honest thing will be a challenge for me. Usually, I pick the polite answer that doesn't hurt anyone's feelings. I would hate to go completely honest in Germany or Austria and offend someone.