Kultur 9 - Ben Oztalay

I suppose nothing was particularly surprising in this set of articles, mainly because they more or less follow a German stereotype. With the certificates, everything is by the book, on paper, and you need to be able to prove it with paper. When I read that, though, I could only think of the fiasco involving paperwork when I tried to get my driver's license. No matter what I did, I simply didn't have the right set of paperwork when I went to the Secretary of State. I can imagine that having to keep track of even more paperwork would make something similar significantly more difficult in Germany.

As far as the laws about neighbors goes, I thought it was interesting that the entire country observes quiet hours. That's something that I'm used to in other settings, but not as something that's applied everywhere. I suppose that cities in the US have laws about disturbing the peace, but I get the feeling that they're not nearly as strict when it comes to enforcement. Timing how long your dog has barked for the day would certainly be stressful.

The taboo against German national pride, at least expressing it, makes sense, in a way. If being strongly aligned with your nation was associated with something as horrific as World War II, it would be tough to forget that. I remember that one of the notable parts of the World Cup in Germany was that everyone in Germany could rally together around being German, which was novel. The person that I saw on TV talking about it made specific references to foreigners using the term "Nazi" to poke fun at Germans, so it's even more difficult when the rest of the world won't let you forget about it.