Kapital 2 - Ashley Britt

The staring article was very interesting to me. In our culture, staring is considered very rude. When someone catches you staring at them, intentionally or not, your general reaction would be to quickly look away, and you might feel guilty about being caught doing something socially unacceptable. It seems, however, that there would be no reason to feel guilty about it in Germany. It is quite common, in fact, to have neighbors and other people watch you and "know your business" in a sense.

I never realized that complaining was such a big part of German culture either. Also interesting was the fact that they prefer brutal honesty as opposed to the little "white lies" that Americans tell all the time to be polite. In all honesty, I like the idea of being honest about things like, whether or not you like a certain meal. If you don't like it, you shouldn't have to eat it! I may find it slightly bothersome if people were asking me about my weight. I guess I'm just used to questions like that generally being a social faux pau in the US.