KAPITEL 1 KULTUR, Zach Ruch

First and foremost, I was intrigued by the idea that German immigrants didn't create so-called, "little Germanies."  When you think of most other immigrant peoples you think of the small isolationalist bubble communities that they built.  My roommate this past year was a first-generation immigrant (came over in second grade) from Albania to the Detroit area.  Even his community was isolated enough that he grew up learning and speaking his native language. I never realized just how quickly most of these German subcommunities died out and assimilated in comparison and I just assumed I didn't know where any of the were located, not that they were gone.
When the article was disscussing the city of New Glaus and how it was "rediscovering" its Swiss ancetry I found myself with some conflicting feelings about it.  On the one hand, it's great that they're introducing aspects of another culture, no matter how skewed, to more people and that it helps support them through tourism.  On the other hand, they are claiming to be part somthing they aren't and almost never were and may only be continuing to do so for the profit it brings them.  I agree with the spread of culture but I'm not sure about their reasons behind it.
Last but not least, I found that the portion at the end of the article on the sharing of words and phrases between English and German to be fascinating.  Being a native English speaker of the United States I find it very common and consider it normal for language to rapidly change and incorporate aspects from many other languages but I'd never considered it the other way around for places that are more established.  The idea that words from one language are unwelcome in another, in this case English to German, was very  new and foreign to me.