Kultur 7

Once again, the Kultur articles vindicate my decision to learn German. Yes, the status of German lines and roads may seem horrific to innocent foreigners. But is it really so bad? Imagine: a place where you are free from worrying constantly about social niceties, a place where you can let your id roam free. Where driving 80 miles per hour is considered slow, and driving aggressively is considered standard. Where you can callously shove aside that pretentious guy on the bluetooth cellphone when you see a teller open up. It's a game of you versus the world, all day, every day, and it sounds exhilarating.

In all seriousness, though, these cultural gulfs could be draining on a visitor. As we've learned in the previous Kultur articles, Germans are obsessed with rules and order; their meticulous obedience to traffic laws is quite expected. I can empathize with their indignity toward anyone who skirts the rules. But their disorderly lines seem, at first, quite unusual. Why does a people so fixated on order forget all notion of civility when lining up to a checkout counter? I think the phenomenon can be traced back to a distinctly German sense of no-nonsense expediency, the presence of which I garnered from the previous texts of German 101. Why point out an open spot to a stranger when you can take it for yourself? In any case, the Germans are a strange and fascinating people, though not particularly hospitable toward shyness or innocent ignorance.