Kultur Neun - Ryen

I can understand Germany's patriotism aversion. It's exactly the opposite of America's zealous patriotism : we are proud of being the first modern free nation, and they are ashamed of World War II.

Germany's paperwork obsession seems a bit hypocritical for a nation also obsessed with recycling and environmentalism. I wonder if they would be willing to increasingly convert their resumes and certificates into electronic form with the rise of the iPad and smartphone technology. Of course, essential documents would still need hard copies, but much paperwork could be reduced using well-protected digitized documents.

We here in America seem to get along just fine without so much paperwork. I wonder if there are any advantages to the German system over ours - and I wonder which system works better over all. Of course, as the article pointed out, Germans are forced to be extremely organized, which is an argument in their favor. They are probably much more experienced filling out forms than Americans. But in the end, I think that most of their paperwork is unnecessary and makes things needlessly difficult. And if someone's documents were ever destroyed in a fire, that person would be screwed.

The article about German neighbor-neighbor interaction is not particularly surprising, given all the previous articles we have read in der Deutsch Klasse. Having lived most of my life in the country, I have never had these neighbor problems myself. But I imagine that even in American cities this sort of interaction goes on, even if to a lesser degree. Still, some of their rules are quite excessive.