Today in our German Language and Culture class we did a lot of comparisons between the German, European, and American ways of life. (We also learned about the past tense!) Frau Pillartz gave us vast amounts of statistics regarding differences in the amounts of patriotism in Germany and the United States. We already knew that Germans do not feel a lot of national pride when asked about their country. This is due to the guilt surrounding World War II and the Holocaust. It seems that it has been carried through the generations, even to the children. What was more surprising about the ranking of patriotic countries was that Italy was ranked even below Germany! When we asked about why that is so, we learned that the Italian government has changes 63 times in the past 60 years... that's enough to make anyone feel exasperated with their country!
Another topic that we discussed was the nnumber of hours of work that the average person put in each year from different countries. It wasn't surprising that the United States lead the race, followed closely by Japan. The countries that logged the least amount of hours at work were Norway and Sweden. What was surprising about these numbers was that the countries that worked the most had the worst dispersion on money throughout their counties. Japan and the US were at the top of the list when it came to inequality among the social classes.
Our favorite topis that we discussed was the amount of vacation time allowed to the average person in the US and Germany. In Germany, it is common to get 6 weeks vacation time!! In the US, only 12 days is customary... makes me want to move to Germany! haha... overall this was a very interesting class, and my eyes are opened wider with every ounce of culture that I am soaking in. I love it!
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