Kultur 10 - Jenna Malzahn

For Kultur 10 I started out by reading "'Dinner For Who?': Germany's New Year 'Procedure'" which was focused on the phenomenon of popularity that surrounds the "Dinner For One" skit. Seeing as Germany has a very distinct national language and is a different country in general, I didn't find it that surprising that there would be contrasting trends present in their society. Overall I thought that the popular German television programs and movies would be different from that of Americans and that cross over would be minimum to non-existent because of the language barrier. I found it interesting that Germans didn't think about that possibility and instead thought it was extremely concerning and strange that most of the population outside of Germany hadn't seen it. The lack of a language barrier from the skit does offer a greater possibility for the likelihood of the skit to spread but even without that obstacle to hinder it the differences in cultural preferences are still intimidating obstacles. The "Dinner For One" is such a short and old skit that its lack of transgression into other countries doesn't surprise me at all especially since there are always numerous films and skits being made while only the ones that successfully enter popular culture are able to stick around. The connection that the author made at the end of the article did help me to understand how this misunderstanding could continually exist because to me it seems unlikely that "The Sound of Music" is not located in other countries popular film collections. This also offers another example of the cultural differences that exist between America and Germany. Not only do the differences in languages help to maintain a barrier but the preferences of the citizens also continually perpetuate differences.

I also read the article "Sorry, We're Closed: The Challenge of Spending Money in Germany" which is concerned with the hours of stores and the strict regulation that the government mandates about them. I found the whole article really strange because it differs so vastly from what I'm used to in America which are the 24 hour stores. The fact that the government regulates when a store is allowed to open just seems so restrictive to me and would probably violate one of the amendments of the Constitution if it were to start occurring in America. I think that this difference just underlines the transition between the two cultures and how contrasting the simple ideals of the population are. The strict hours of shops directly correlates with the expectations that Germans have of social conduct like how washing one's car in their driveway is deemed offensive to neighbors. While some store hours are changing in order to accommodate the changing times of the working class this idea hasn't made it on a widespread scale which I think directly correlates with the differences found in the German culture. Overall it seems that the seemingly smallest differences offer the biggest reflection of societal changes between the American and German culture.