Kultur 6

I used to be embarrassed by the celebrity magazines you see when checking out at the grocery store. Now I can be confident in knowing that it isn't a uniquely American trait to be obsessed with the less than finer things in life. In fact, I think that Bild probably out smuts and nuts the best our mainstream American publishing industry could throw at them. They say that print is dieing but maybe if we could convince the New York Times to print pictures of naked ladies circulation would increase. I'm sure that such a strategy would work on 15 year old boys! The other articles were also enjoyable, however if that is really the door knocking protocol  then I am amazed. I would never just knock and then enter someones office. It seems like such a invasion of privacy. The article on recycling was interesting, but not all that hard to believe. I mean here at the university of Michigan until recently we had separate bins for bottles, paper, and waste. So really what is a couple more? And if not following the recycling rules is one of the societal rules rebellious German's don't follow then how rigid of a system can it really be? In Volsprung my favorite fact was that Ann Arbor had a sister city in Germany! After finding out that fact I had to find out where all the authors were from. I believe one was from the University of Indiana, University of Wisconsin and the last seemed to be a high school German teacher, but none of them were from Ann Arbor so that must just be a happy coincidence!

AMD 6

Oh, my, god, who knew that the Simpsons had a version in Germany!!? And that the voices were so hilarious? This was a great episode, I think I remember it vaguely from my childhood. I understood way more then I thought I would. Some parts were universal like when Homer try's to hitchhike without a thumb. Homer's day was very funny but I found how his voice was distinct and yet still Homer-esque. I found him the easiest to understand oddly. Some parts I don't understand at all, like why did the German guy go crazy on the Simpsons car with golf clubs? I liked Lisa's story, although I found it much harder to understand. Except she was in the wrong school I guess? Anyways it had a lot more "Lola" in jokes like the music and almost being hit by Krusty. Third part is Bart's day, and can I just say that I need his alarm clock! By the third time around any repeating dialogue was much easier to understand. My favorite joke would be that "123 fake street", the 'fake' address Marge gives the police from the first story, is where Bart chooses to hide from the cops. Altogether the whole story ties together nicely (from what I could tell). I never realized how much physical humor the Simpsons employs but I thought it was much more enjoyable because of it. (By the way I was able to find links to the other sections from the related videos on the side bar (Of varying quality))

Lisas' Tag: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vye3gYhN_Qk&feature=related

Kultur 5!

The writers for this site are hilarious! They must have so much fun picking apart German culture and writing about its more, shall we say odd aspects. Germans will run over you to get on a train but apparently when it comes to flirting they are much more reserved. And yet sex shops are no big deal! If the point of the articles is to draw a diverse and unconventional picture of German culture then I would say that they succeeded. I must admit after reading the article on how to pick up women in Germany I am terrified. I think I would rather go to an Airport sex shop then attempt to pick up a German woman at a bar. But I guess this is how German men act so maybe I would fit right in! My favorite article is about the Klofrau, while American's only get bathroom attendants in the movies and at fancy restaurants, Germans get them everywhere! How cool is that, and to be honest I don't think I would mind paying some pocket change if I knew I would have a friendly German to keep the restroom spick and span! I just hope I get to Germany before they are all replaced by the way less cool automatic toilets. I found the statistics in the Women in Germany article interesting. Somethings were the same as here, women make less money, difficult to rise to positions of power etc. Some were different like the social systems in place to support German prostitutes, very cool. The more I learn about Germany the more I find that in a lot of strange ways it is a country that gets things right!

Kultur 4

Okay, the German people need to decide what I can expect when I get their because all this conflicting Kultur is getting pretty confusing. Should I expect the rule obsessed Germany that has a transit system that features no jaywalking and an honor system train (really I can't believe that)? Or should I expect the Woodstock era naked Germans who want everyone to just go buff to the beach? Germany to me seems to be a contradiction wrapped in a metaphor for the difficulty of understanding a foreign culture. That being said I liked a lot of what I learned in these articles particularly the bike one. I think if we had dedicated bike paths in the US a lot more people would bike as their mode of transportation. I would bike more now if I wasn't so afraid of being run off the road or the occasional driver side door swinging open. Leave it to the Germans to just put bikes in their place and leave it at that. I however did not like how specific I will have to be when ordering train tickets. If the German idea of customer service is selling me the wrong ticket I am going to have to stay on my toes. After reading these articles (like all the others we have read so far) I am excited to someday plan my own trip to Germany some day soon and experience it for myself. I especially am interested in trying to find more differences between the former Eastern and Western parts of Germany as the reunification of the country is a fascinating topic to me.

AMD 4

For AMD 4 I finally got around to reading Mark Twain's The Awful German language, and boy am I glad I did. Twain really nailed it when talking about the various bugaboos of the German language from placing the verb at the end to declensions. I think my favorite quote was the one where he knew a man who would rather decline two drinks then one German adjective! While Twain did discuss some things I didn't recognize (the dative case being one) I found the article on the whole to be very accessible and  almost timeless. It really makes me appreciate Twain and his writing, along with how hard some parts of German are. When reading the article I was struck by how much harder it must have been to learn a language back in Twain's day. When he was talking about what a chore it would be to look up the gender for the word rain I felt a touch guilty. I grumble to myself when I have to pop a word into Google and that poor man had to probably thumb through a huge dictionary. While I appreciated Twain's suggestions for 'fixing' the language I must disagree with him. Yes, some parts of German are frustrating, but really I enjoy some of its idiosyncrasies. I like the idea of the separable and just kicking one part of the verb to the end of the sentence regardless. While Twain was right more then he was wrong I think imposing his changes would really kill some of freshness of the language and would make it too much like English. It's rules and exceptions may be quirky but figuring them out is really some of the fun of learning the 'awful German Language'!

AMD 3

For this AMD I decided to watch the German language channel that is on the campus cable. I had noticed the channel while flipping through channels a few weeks ago and decided why not try watching it for AMD? This turned out to be an excellent use of my time.
I tuned in about half way through a cooking program. The host was comparing different types of pizzas and I was surprised at how much I could understand of what he was saying. The host was pretty eccentric and kept pointing to what I can only guess was the sauce to cheese ratio. I think I was right in my assumption as in the end he had ranked the three pizzas and the one (I thought) had the best ratio was crowned best.
After the cooking show was some sort of German comedy show. This little blonde man walked out on to the stage and started telling jokes. He must have been very funny because they kept showing German men laughing so hard they had tears in their eyes. This reminded me of the reading we had to for our last Kultur post, and if I had to guess this show was most likely a take off on the new comedy clubs. While I enjoyed watching grown men reduced to laughing puddles of tears, I must admit most of the jokes shot right over my head.
Of the two shows I watched I enjoyed the cooking one more, mostly because I understood more of what was going on. That being said I will definitely be watching more German TV as I think I learned a lot and it was a pretty good time!

Kultur 3

Germans are becoming harder and harder to define with each article I read. This makes a certain amount of sense I suppose. I mean we are talking about a culture of nearly 80 million people. The first articles I read focused on German drinking, specifically in public and beers. The relationship between the two does seem a little twisted and odd. On one hand no one wants public drunkenness, on the other hand it is socially acceptable to drink beer to quench your thirst. As a 21 year old can I just mention that if I were to order a beer in half the places they are available my friends would probably stage an intervention. Not so in Germany where apparently even offices have a nice stash of brew. The fact that Germany has rooms specifically for those who overindulge (in a way to combat public drunkenness) to me seems like they are kind of missing the point. The other article I read was about German fast food none of which sounded to appealing to me. I guess I would have some sort of wurst but the raw minced pork sounded..... unappetizing. The last two articles I read were my favorites, the one about how Germans hate life and yet sometimes enjoy a good laugh. At first I found the sad world view Germans have to be depressing but now I think its just kind of cute. Maybe they have just been disappointed one to many times and don't want to get their hopes up, who knows? The article on German humor I did not believe as much at first. How could a sense of humor change so drastically from region to region? But obviously these can't be hard rules but more of guides. In that way I think there are many similarities to American humor. The eastern and western parts of the country have a varied type of humor then the American heartland.  For example half the country finds Two and a Half Men hilarious and I've never even seen the show (then again I also never saw Paul Blart: Mall Cop so maybe I'm not the target audience)

AMD 2

For my second cultural post I decided to cruise the Deutsche Welle website. Deutsche Welle is like the German BBC and it was full of interesting content. After checking out a few articles about the German reunification (the anniversary is coming up) I decided to watch some videos. The site has programs in both English and German. I watched the show Discover Germany, which was focused on the city of Leipzig. It was pretty entertaining my favorite part was when they had a local student show us her 'favorite secret spots'. After watching about twenty minutes I found the German version (Hin & Weg), I was surprised at how much I understood. This was most likely due to the fact that I had just watched the English version and the two are more or less identical. However I did find it funny that the German presenter was much more graceful sounding in her native German than in her accented English. All in all I found the activity very enjoyable and would certainly do it again. By the way my football club Borussia Dortmund is currently in 6th in the Bundesligua with 13 points. They killed FC Augsburg 4-0 on the 1st and don't play again until the 14th. Tschuss!