Oh yes, how could I forget that difference. In Europe WW1 and WW2 are generally regarded as ancient history that people really don’t care about very much anymore, whereas nearly everyone in the US is a WW2 veteran and feels the need to incessantly remind everyone of how much “they” saved the world.
Yes, that’s another difference. Americans think that sort of stuff is funny.
You should try having relatives who starved to death because the occupation troops confiscated all the food, or who spent time in a German slave labour camp. You might not find it so funny when people born 30 years after the fact start flapping their mouths off about what a big contribution they made.
Do you just type things without actually reading what others are saying? Yes, **those **are traffic lights. Exactly. That is exactly what people have been saying.
And those traffic lights are not the “Walk/Don’t Walk” “Red hand/White walking man” pictograms. The “Walk/Don’t Walk” pictograms are never called traffic lights.
After two weeks with this student, I find myself wondering how much of what I’m seeing is a cultural difference and what’s just the nuances of this one student.
For example, she doesn’t pickup after herself at all. Twice she was eating a lollipop in my daughter’s room, and apparently didn’t want to finish it. So she just put it down on the dresser, no wrapper, so naturally it stuck to the dresser. She had a bad cold for a few days, and left her tissues all over the floor. They stopped at the grocery store the other day after picking up the kids from school, and both my kids helped carry the groceries in, while she just walked a head of them looking at her phone. After eating, she just walks away from the table, leaving her plates etc.
Are German teens expected to pick up after themselves or help out with the chores?
If you want to debate or rant about your perceived problem with American attitudes on this subject take it to the Pit or GD (depending on your tone). If you have a problem with a particular poster using an old joke take him to the Pit. Anything further here will be a thread hijack.
And since it inevitably happens in threads I give instructions in, just because I singled out slaphead doesn’t mean anyone else has the opportunity to get the last word in. Drop it.
I agree with Dorjän. Although most of my interactions were with German adults that does not seem to be a particularly German attitude. Just a shitty teenage attitude. Du bist nicht der Chef von mir .
Yeah, I’d call that a teenage attitude–and probably one that would get her in big trouble at home. She may be thinking “Hey, Americans are messy types–I can get away with this!”
I read an interesting blog post yesterday from a guy living in Germany. His relative was having an operation at the hospital, and he explained that Germans (esp. in the east) do not want you hanging around the hospital while your wife/mom/dad is in surgery. You go away, and you do not expect any updates.
Are her parents wealthy? She may be under the assumption that there is someone whose job is to clean that up. Hopefully you’ve already let her know that would be her!
It doesn’t fit with any of the German folks I have known. To a man they were extremely clean and tidy people.
You may have heard that Germans drink beer (and most other drinks) warm. That’s just not true.
There’s the Family Guy skit that pokes fun at the lack of education about WWII in Germany and I wonder how true that is. I have several friends in Germany, but never really wanted to dive into the topic. I just wonder how that history is handled in school.
Hah, hereabouts in the NE Corridor of the U.S., if you’re in the left lane and SIGNAL a change to move right, it’s at least 50% odds that a driver one or two car lengths behind you to the right will speed up to make sure you merge behind instead of ahead of him.
Ah yes, how did that Simpsons quote go, something like, “Ugh, I can’t take one more lecture from a German backpacker about how we don’t appreciate the national park system!”
So my daughter is in Germany and is finding this this true…the family she’s with only drinks seltzer and think she’s crazy asking for regular water. And the tap water she said tastes awful. Is there a brand of water she should be looking for at the store? This family seems to think there is no plain water but that seems hard to believe.
My mom would sometimes insist I talk to the son of a German cousin, every single time years apart he would start a lecture about how horrible Bush was. Literally hi…so how do you feel about president Bush, did you know…
:rolleyes:
I couldn’t imagine how out of touch he was if he thought I was a Bush supporter, or the average American young person was.
Do you just type things without actually reading what others are saying? Yes, **those **are traffic lights. Exactly. That is exactly what people have been saying.
