Are Germans intolerant, petty, anally retentive

I NEVER generalize.

Just curious if anyone has similar experience and can explain the psychology?

The only explanation I can find so far that would make them so "verstopft" is that their inner frustrations with having to obey so many rules. Just look at all the rules in the language.

Any more ideas?

Is anally retentive when you just don't give a shit?

I like zee germans.

Alles in Ordnung!!!

No more so than anyone else i would guess?

It's complicated. In some ways and not in others. So about even with other cultures...just in different ways.

I just hate Germans in Fuessen. All others are fine.

Yes, they all are, and I advise you to leave the country schnell, schnell!

Easy. Sit and look at people from other cultures and you will almost always see this.

Are Brits/Americans Intolerant, petty...

My impression was similar when I first came here. I found people offhand at best and downright rude at worst. Have got used to it now and realise that it doesn't help if you come from a culture where people constantly apologise, are self-deprecating and ready to draw attention to their own failings and where people who don't do this are automatically perceived as arrogant. But why should people explain their own mistakes? The "never apologise, never explain" philosophy seems to work quite well for some. Politicians everywhere do it all the time.

I think the psychology here has a lot to do with a very conformist society in which people who are perceived as stepping out of line in even the most trivial way are quickly told what's what by anyone who feels like it.

From another thread:






Americans, Brits, Canadian, Australians, etc. do not normally act this way.

Given the amount of dog crap on the pavements in the UK we really should wipe our feet more.

I like Redstripe's examples. Funny, but true.

I know a cheap-ass German (actually the official mascot of SchwäbischesAlbe) that actually drives 5 clicks out of his way to save 8 cents on Petrol (then again, there are ludicrous people in every country). ridiculous. I wonder if Germans have logical reasoning? They are very high functioning and intelligent in some fields, but logic and common sense arent them. I guess with the geniuses, there is always small details, otherwise, they have their strengths.

It's their compartmentalized way of thinking that has frustrated and challenged me over the last ten years of my living in Germany. That's what boxes are for to think outside of.

I agree with Lorelei. It is a conformist culture. I still have problems for not dawning a mullet or a pink shirt. I grew up on a skateboard so I'm used to that attitude from just about everybody. Just give it 20 years and they'll all think you're really cool!

No idea what that is but I'll bet it's a long wait for sundown.

In German, a mullet is a Vokuhila or a Ossispoiler.

http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/mullet.html

What exactly is a mullet? When I was a boy they used to be very shy Estuary fish and hard to catch,

I'M pretty sure everyone Jewel's ever dated has sported a mullet.

[img]http://www.rudecactus.com/archives/mullet-thumb.jpg[/img]

The mullet wouldn't bother me but the "I am attempting to guess a woodwind nstrument by analy retaining it" look would unsettle me after a while.

I would have to suggest www.mulletsgalore.com to help shed some light on the subject.

Yep but a few are quite cute.


I did sad...sad.

But you're coming back. And I did not tell you to leave!

Anglo-American worldview: Allowed unless specificlly prohibited. German worldview: Prohibitied unless specifically allowed.

I recently had to pick up a refill gas bottle for my grill. I received a receipt for my empty from the front desk lady, who told me to take the empty to a cage out back. I got there and there was a combination lock on it, presumably for insurance reasons what with kids running around and all. I remember reading somewhere that some ridiculous percentage of combination locks combinations are "0-0-0" because people never change the factory default. I spun up "0-0-0" and bingo, it opened right up. I switched bottles, but whilst doing so some old fart customer started yelling at me! I seriously thought of hanging out in the parking lot to critique his driving! It had nothing to do with safety (one still had to schlepp the thing to the checkout onesself, and then run the little bomb back home wedged in the trunk) ... it had to do with control freakishness and submission (or expectations that others will submit) to petty "authority." Germans will freeze in place while the Assistant to The Guy Who Winds The Town Clock reprimands them for some laughably minor infraction.

I can't seem to find it on google now, but if someone can dig up the lists of most respected professions in Germany vs. the U.S. and/or U.K. it might be illuminating. I seem to remember that politicians and other assorted bureaucrats make the top 10, while business managers and/or entrepreneurs were somewhere around 98th or 99th. I also once saw a chart in Focus where they asked people around the world "how much of your life is under your direct control and how much by forces beyond your control?" U.S./U.K.? Two-thirds, one-third, respectively. Germany? Flipped.

That's why Anglo-American economies work better than this one, which is rapidly turning into a theme park for grumpy old unreconstructed socialist retirees.

P.S. I was receiving a typical tirade from a German re: the low U.S. and U.K. savings rates, and I struck him with a bolt of lightning that shut him right up: "People who borrow and invest believe in the future; those who don't don't ... and that includes having children, which y'all seem to have forgotten how to do."

What he said

How is it that the UK economy is so head and shoulders above the German?

Well according to the BBC (so they must be right) it is polite for a German to burp and fart. So I guess they are not blind to their mistakes:


Source: BBC International Dining Etiquette

Yes und jawohl!

Das ist vhy I larf ziss cantry!!

yes germans are intolerant: even at the state level, especially in the former east.

petty? sure, they havent nothing else going on for them...easy to focus on the small, insignificant details.

anally retentive? not as much as you would think. look around at all the 3rd world living conditions, litter, poorly maintained cities, crime and vandalism.

I call it the `traffic-light´mentality. In a 70 kilometer stretch between here and Frankfurt there is ( remakably) only one roundabout, and God can tell you there are at least 7 places where a `Kreisel´would be of enormous benefit. The `kreisel´in question was implanted as a test at first and caused the most amazing mayhem because the inexperienced German really could not cope with having to make a `self judgment´. After a years trial and at huge cost the `Kreisel´ was eventualy built. A launch day was planned and the local dignitaries invited. It was duly opened and the first bus which came along got stuck in the middle because the inner circle was far too big! Says it all really.

I don't even want to know what happens in revolving doors.

I'm in a bad mood today so this really wound me up... get onto the U-Bahn and sit in an empty row (the facing row also vacant) and open the window. Ten minutes later the woman across the aisle gets up, walks over and closes the window without saying a word and then returns to her seat without even looking at me. WTF - her own bloody window was closed so what business does she have closing one I chose to open!

This almost happened to me once, and I said (auf Deustch) "the only reason I opened it because you stank so badly ... like a skunk getting a permanent wave in the cesspool of a slaughterhouse*"

*credit to Dennis Miller.

P.S. I had no problem remembering the vocabulary word for Skunk: Stinktier!

Oh man, that's brilliant.