Kapitel 2 Blog

The first article on complaining is something I have completely oblivious to in my three trips to Germany. Perhaps because I only spoke English at the time and the people I was with would switch back to speaking German before beginning to complain. Regardless, I like how it says that a German person will ration their complaining when challenged with a logical argument, because that has always been the reaction I have received when questioning a German person about something they said. But, it is probably some good advice to ignore it and order another delicious beer.

The "Germanic Stare Down" from the next article is something I am all too familiar with. When I have traveled to Germany it has been with a large group, always with one "obnoxious American". He is loud, has a dirty mouth, and is extremely animated. That attracts even the younger groups to give us the "Germanic Stare Down". But, nobody has ever confronted us. They just watch, and probably complain now that I read the first article.

I love how "zero bullshit" at brutally honest Germans are. In America, you have to second-guess everything anybody says to you. You have to read their body language and read their tone of voice, or else you may misunderstand them. Where, as if people just used their words, I could tell exactly what someone was thinking so I could just move on with my life instead of wasting my time thinking about if they actually wanted to do something or not. If somebody asks you for a reason after being brutally honest, then you can still feed them bullshit instead of giving them a bullshit yes or no.

The last article about statistics is why all engineers love German culture. Everything is straight to the point (as the brutally honest article) and based off of facts. Their are no social cue errors (a large flaw of most engineers) and their is no bullshit to sort through. But, I do like how it mentions that Germans think all Americans carry guns because at the racing competition at Michigan, all of the Germans that stay with people on our team immediately ask if they can see our guns (none of us have guns) and if we can go shooting. So, we usually take people to the shooting range every year because that and going to Las Vegas are the two best things they can think of. I think they would be ashamed if they told us they wanted us to take them to McDonalds for a double bacon cheeseburger!

Besides German restaurants, I can only think of one place name "Germantown". I can't think of any other places near me that have German names. But, fittingly, Germantown was the name of the really nice soccer complex I used to play at in high school.

It sounds like in Germany, all of the Universities are less broad. UofM has every major I have ever heard of and more, where it sounds like individual colleges at UofM like engineering, art, and LSA would be split into separate Universities.