[ti]leaf[/ti]AMA - Culture in and anything on germany

Beautiful pictures!

Your average german in his 20-30s actually has a differentiated view on the USA.

The general liberal mindset of our populace kind of excludes the government since Bush Jr. from any kind of sympathies. 

You will find a lot of patriots even, who think that the invasion of the middle-east had nothing to do with the interest of US-american citizens.

But let me try to be objective and refering to the people I personally know, the average Joe, your usual american, is actually well liked among my peers.

That is partly due to the tens of thousands of american troops stationed all over germany. I've met some, been visiting a friend who went to school with us in a settlement called Patrick-Henry-Village. 

The people stationed and living there were very friendly, we had bi-anual "culture"-feasts. I remember them very good, lot's of american food, BBQ, brownies, candy that looked like straight up poison and like 2-litre soda cups. The germans from the surrounding villages had your typical Bratwurst stands and served a variety of german classics. They even built up a ferry-wheel.

This exchange of culture led to a lot of mutual understanding within the people that were fortunate enough to live nearby such settlements / Barracks they were called. We do like the american people, really do.

The sentiment against the foreign policy of the US stems not only from years of liberal governance in germany, there is a lot of mistrust in politics in general. There are polls indicating that almost 90% of the participants do not believe the official account of 9/11 for example.

What differentiates us from other countries is our school-system. It is ranked into three systems after you pass elemtary school. There is the Hauptschule (basic-school) which will give you a very simple degree according to your mental capacity. People who go through this school usually end up in the lower-middle working class, doing simple jobs, but still earning wages which are enough to support themselves - if they go through apprenticeships for example or make a skilled worker letter.

Then there is the Realschule which sets the children on the course for middle-class jobs. Bluecollar work.

The highest and most challenging form is the Gymnasium. If you finish it, you are allowed to attend any university and any field of study you want.

The thing that makes this system effective is the Schulpflicht / Requirement to attend school until you're 18 years old. 

But Hauptschule and Realschule only go on for 5 and 6 years after elementary school, kids go into elemtary with 6 years and finish it with 10.

This means that the kids who attended these both forms of school will be 15 and 16 years old after they finish, due to the Schulpflicht they are forced to learn some skilled job / apprenticeship which usually takes 3 years. Or they can try to get a higher degree in the Gymnasium. 

This way it is guaranteed that the "working-class" never runs dry.

Of course there are a lot more issues coming with this and it is not all peachy here either, Jobs require a higher IQ than 40 years ago where you didn't have to work on the computer in almost every profession or your people-skills were not being forced as much as today - germany has become a service-sector nation. I believe some 70 % of all jobs in germany nowadays are in the services.

Due to the higher requirements, companies want higher degrees too for their jobs. This, nearly every year, leads to tens of thousands of jobs to not be filled. 

That in turn lead to a very poor situation where the government has to create basically useless jobs to keep the populace of the street. True story.

But I suspect that it were lobbyists who got that particular ball rolling in the first place, a (for companies) nice side-effect is the artificial abundance of people who are not employable to their actual fitting jobs, those people often reside to working jobs with lower standards or taking a lot less payment for finished work.

Bla, economy is a big scam. /rant

This school-system is actually pretty brutal in it's selection, no excuses are made. But it is never closed off to anyone wanting to try to climb higher. You can get your degree with 40years etc.

Here is a nice link comparing the american vs the german systems:

www.ivpressonline.com/ivhigh/holtville/american-school-vs-german-school-from-an-inside-perspective/article_7ba60508-6c33-11e4-8607-c3a086fc3766.html

Ze Fernsehturm / Telespargel in fog as of 25.10, a communist signpost that was the most high thing in Germany some time. Good thing for orientation, especially in former east Berlin.