Kultur 6 Cole Grisham

After the last few Kultur assignments, I found these article a little dry. The obsessive and sometimes tedious nature of the Germans came out again in the form of the garbage-sorting article. The stern yet confident nature appeared in the door-etiquette article. Otherwise the other pieces were supplementary, but rather lacking.

The Brennpunkt Kultur pieces were much more enjoyable. The article on student housing in German universities made some interesting points. They talked about how few universities offer campus housing or dorms to their students, and instead students must find off-campus housing in most cases. I wonder if that is am institutional norm, or whether it’s due to the urban settings of most campuses? In the US, when one attends an urban college (University of Washington in Seattle, any school in Boston…), it’s fairly common for the majority of the student body to live off-campus, mainly due to limited land available for dormitories. Is that the same case for Germany?

Finally, the piece on Gastarbeiter(en?) was also interesting. I have been studying the Gastarbeiter groups in my Turkish class as well, so it’s nice to see the issue from both sides. As it turns out, their peers generally still consider those who immigrate to Germany “Turks” when they return to visit Turkey, whereas those who move to the US are considered Americans when they return. The reason for this, it seems, has to due with Germany’s, as well as other European states, inability to assimilate new minorities, as the textbook article also suggested. While this is unfortunate to those living abroad, it would appear it is easier to maintain a closer connection to their roots than Americanized Turks.