Blogabroad
by Mary Pinckney Waters

December 6 , 2005 - Stereotypical Garbage?

I'm thinking about sneaking my trash out at 3 tomorrow morning.

I just learned that in Bamberg if you don't separate your waste to be recycled, the city won't clear it away. Supposedly, each time the trash at my residence hall isn't separated correctly, the university pays a fine, so the rule is that if a student is caught dumping unseparated waste, he will be charged the fine and then must sort through all five of the dorm's trash dumpsters himself. Three in the morning doesn't sound so crazy, anymore, does it?

In the conversation courses I teach, German students are learning English, and I'm learning how to throw away my garbage, among other things. Here's a taste of the topics we've discussed in the course.

We spent one of the first days getting all the toe-stepping out the way by talking about typical stereotypes of Americans and Germans. Most of the cliches about Americans weren't very surprising; here are a few:

-- Americans wear sandals whenever possible, even in the winter.

-- The first question Americans ask one another is "What do you do for a living?"

-- Americans do not know and do not care to know about the rest of the world.

-- Americans are very rude. They put their feet on tables and talk as if they are always chewing gum.

At this point in class, I tried to inconspicuously slide my sandaled feet off the empty chair in front of me. Since being here, I have unavoidably noticed that Germans do not dress or behave in a manner quite as relaxed as I'm used to. I have been scolded by old ladies for propping my feet up in my seat on the bus, and I've been asked if I was training for a particular sport when wearing Adidas warm-up pants in public. It's not like the Germans dress up every day for class, but I had to tell my students three times before they would believe me that plenty of college classrooms in the United States contain students wearing flannel pajama pants, increasing exponentially the earlier the class.

Another interesting discussion spawned from the stereotype about Americans' "What do you do for a living?" obsession. I explained that there were probably two reasons that we place so much value on this piece of information. First -- let's not be idealistic here -- a person's job connotes his social status and how many digits are in his bank account balance. But secondly, our jobs define who we are; if we've (hopefully) chosen this career to occupy the majority of our time, it's something we're passionate about, and, therefore, asking about someone's occupation is a quick glance into his or her identity.

"Don't you think?" I asked the students in my class. Not so much. To them, occupation is not a predominant defining characteristic of an individual by any means, and when I asked about the job-passion relationship, their voices became hesitant at best. Germans seem to truly prize the time they spend not working, and this is apparent by the number of hours they devote outside the workplace. For example, after 7 p.m., almost everything in Bamberg closes except for, of course, bars and some restaurants. No 24-hour Wal-Marts, not even open-til-10 Targets. Forgot to buy lightbulbs today? Looks like you're going shopping tomorrow. And on Sundays? You can eat, and ... well, eat because restaurants are about the only businesses open.

Besides discussing stereotypes in the courses, we have tried to compare German and American culture on a more legitimate level. We spent one class period talking about the differences in legal restrictions on various activities such as drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco and driving. As I was preparing for this session, I was surprised to learn how few countries have 21 as their legal drinking age. The large majority have an age of 16 or 18, and some have no limit whatsoever. In Germany, beer and wine may be purchased at 16 and liquor at 18. My students explained that their parents introduced "soft" alcohol to them as teenagers, and it was not treated as a forbidden evil. In fact, if you head out to a nightclub in Germany on a weekend night, you're likely to see just as many teenagers as 20-somethings.

Obtaining a driver's license in Germany is also extremely different than in the States. Don't ever complain about that inexorable DMV worker who measured your parallel-parking job. That was nothing. The minimum driving age in Germany is 18, and the driver's test consists of 25 to 45 hours of instruction and costs more than 1,000 euros. (You're lucky if it's your graduation gift, according to my students.) Many students also criticized the American legal system for allowing kids to drive at such a young age, yet not drink until they're 21. They said they think the driving-under-the-influence situation is helped in Germany by the fact that people learn how to handle alcohol first, then learn how to handle a vehicle.

Also: don't expect to see those red-and-yellow "We Card" signs on the quick-shop doors in Germany. Even though the legal minimum age to purchase tobacco is 16, the countless outdoor cigarette vending machines make the law nearly impossible to enforce.

Finally, we spent a session discussing the drastically different role of environmentalism in Germany and America. It's often been said that Germany is the most environmentally conscious country in the world. I remember the first night I entered my dorm, I walked into absolute darkness and heard the door click shut behind me. I thought there must be some type of emergency going on and started to panic, clutching empty space in the pitch-black hallway. Nope -- no emergency. Just the fact that when nobody is using the hall, there's no need for it to be lit. Funny how something so logical seemed so strange. Most of the time Americans equate being earth-friendly with a lot of work, but how hard is flipping on a light switch?

Some students in my class said that younger people are more likely to recycle than older ones because the youth were the first generation whose families emphasized the need to protect the environment. They said the cause for this emphasis was their families' experiencing the severe damage that can be done to the Earth through war.

I hope you've gotten a feel for the topics I discuss twice a week with the 40 or so "Anglistik" students in my English conversation courses. Generalizing about entire countries is impossible, of course, but I think the students and I have arrived at some interesting insights that will hopefully budge us a little farther away from ethnocentrism.

Mary Pinckney Waters welcomes your comments and feedback: marypwaters@yahoo.com