Kultur 8 Amanda Victory

I normally enjoy reading the kultur articles because they are useful if you planned to visit Germany. However, it is usually obvious that they exaggerate, sometimes more than others. In the first article titled Draftophobia they talked about how Germans hate feeling a draft from the window being open. In fact they fear them because they are convinced drafts cause serious illness, and some not so serious. This sounds absolutely absurd until you continue reading into the next article called You Have What? Mysterious Illness in Germany and learn that it is common for Germans to suffer from circulatory collapse. This is especially odd because any other person in another country would die from this, which is why I am not sure whether or not this kultur text is exaggerating or not. It was also said that Germans tend to be diagnosed with illnesses that don't exist anywhere else. Considering Germany is not North Korea and interacts with the rest of the world, I'm not entirely convinced that this isn't just paranoia.
The last article was about their obsession with saunas. I find this ironic because they think that a breeze will give them pneumonia but when it comes to sitting naked in a sweaty room full of strangers and their germs they are all for it. I guess that's just my germophobic-american side showing. On the contrary I do agree that saunas offer stress relief to some extent. The fact that Finland culture so strongly influenced this trend is sehr interessant to me! A lot of my classes this semester focus on cultural influences so to see an example were it is so apparent is useful. After reading these articles I'm very curious to experience this for myself and see just how popular the phrase "Es zieht" really is.