What's up with "ze Germans" is a question I hear quite often, usually accompanied by weary shaking of heads. I am a German, but I am hard-pressed to explain what Germans are, exactly, and why they do things they way they do them. Sometimes I don't even know they do them the way people tell me they do.
Germans are surely a strange people. Good thing Der Spiegel has started to compile a survival guide/manual about Germany consisting of short articles mostly written by foreigners who live in the country or Germans who don't anymore. It is quite an instructive read and funny as well. I recognize myself in many of the pages. I have never taken aspirin, I think there are only two ways of doing things (exactly right or not at all), and when you tell me we should have tea some time, I'll be in your living room faster than you can brew some fine Elam. The one thing I got away from quickly when moving to the US, though, was shopping when I'm supposed to.
As it turns out, Germans are not the only strange folk out there. I am ready to assert to anyone who's not sure yet that the French are even weirder. Bonne soirée.
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