AMD #3, Sean Cope

For my AMD #3 I chose to Skype with my fraternity brother, Jordan Blough, who is spending a semester over in Germany. He is currently a sophomore here, and planning on possibly double majoring in German and Neuroscience. The city he is currently living in is Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany.

For most of the time we just talked and caught up about what he was doing in Germany and he told me stories of the adventures that he had while being able to legally drink half way across the world. It was a fun time talking to him, but after that interesting break we got to the partially academic aspect of talking in German.

We went through the normal german greeting “Tag” and asking how each other was doing. After this I asked him where he was staying, apparently he was living in “Horb am Neckar”, and it was quite small. I then asked about what he liked to watch on TV, but he replied he didn’t watch TV in the USA much, so there wasn’t any point to watching it in Germany, but he did still go on Hulu.com once in a while to watch the shows he actually liked.

During the skype call he got hungry and made a sandwich consisting of “der Aufschniitt-specifically die pute, das Brot, das Kase, der salat, und die tomato” he made me name everything in his sandwich for practice because he knew what I was studying in unit three.

After speaking a little more in German, I had worn out my linguistic abilities so we went back to full English and I asked him what he noticed was different from Germany and the United States.  Here are some of the general trends that he had noticed in his time there so far:

• ·       More orderly and structured times during the day in which tasks are completed
• ·       Less personal with strangers (ex. Sie instead of du)
• ·       More interested in intellectual debates that can go on for hours
• ·       Sunday is for leisure time with the family
• ·       Not as patriotic because it's hard to get over their past
• ·       Less processed foods
• ·       More home/local made stuff- like the bakeries, butchers
• ·      Store hours are much less and often have a siesta close in the middle of the day

            After talking about each of these briefly and including my own opinions on how I thought they would be if the culture in America was to try to change to these. And im really glad that we have more leisure time and less structured store hours, but a middle of the day planned nap sure does sound amazing right about now.

            All in all it was a worthwhile discussion that I had with Jordan and it helped me learn a little bit more about the culture while also having the opportunity to catch up with a friend who was living in Germany right now.