Kultur 2

Guten Tag!

I read a few rather short articles in Kultur 2 assignment. They are about the Germanic whining and staredown,and their brutal honesty and obsession with statistics. 

I lived in Berlin for 2 months and traveled around for a few days in Germany, and I've honestly experienced quite a lot of the Germanic staredown described by the material. I am quite a staring type of person myself but somehow in Germany I was always the one to stare back a bit and look away. However I'm impressed by the idea in the material that there's actually a historical reason which can explain the sense of constant alert in the senior citizens dating back to the cold war. That makes a lot of sense. But staring you down for like 10 whole minutes at the U-Bahn and throwing out a start line of "Ich liebe dich"? Seriously?

Another thing that rings a bell with my experience is the Germanic brutal honesty. The material mentioned that in English speaking countries being brutally honest might be considered extremely sarcastic and teasing. In China this is not acceptable neither.But I've actually said "Have you gained weight" to a bunch of my girl friends before and those stories never ended well. I'm just glad there's a place where not telling white lies would not be considered rude.

Ich bin gespannt auf die naechste Kultur! Auf Wiendersehen!