Kultur 6

So this is it. The last post on this blog (if I do not finish this post it is because my endless tears of lament have destroyed my keyboard). First off is "Sex, Smut, and Shock." I must say, I was pleasantly surprised by the subject matter here, as I was expecting another article about the large amount of sex shops in Germany. It was fun to see how Bild is similar to publications like The National Enquirer, minus the porn. I especially liked the jabs at the English in the final paragraph.

The next article was "German Privacy." Pretty standard stuff here; "You know that thing that's normal in America? Well, it's not like that in Germany! Isn't that weird?!?!"

Moving on to the final online article, "Division Hell." This article reminds me of the waste bins in the basement of the League. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about: in the basement of the League, there are wide trash bins with 5 or 6 different compartments for different types of recyclables. So I guess I didn't find this article as strange, because this is a practice that we seem to be picking up in America. That's it! Goodbye, http://www.spiegel.de/!!! It certainly has been... interesting

The first article in the book was about the very topical shortage of student housing. I say it's topical because the University of Michigan is dealing with a shortage of student housing for next year. But, alas, it seems that we cannot learn from the Germans, because they have not figured out a suitable solution to the problem either. However, as someone who lives off-campus and loves it, I don't see what the problem is.

I'm not going to talk about the second book article, because other than the tidbit about how it has a partnership with Ann Arbor, the article was pretty bland. The final article, however, was much more engaging. From what I have read, not just in this article, it seems like more European countries are fairly xenophobic, and are afraid of the growing Middle Eastern population. I know France has even gone so far as to ban the wearing of Burkas (the head covering Muslim women wear) in public. It is very interesting to read about this when European countries have the reputation of being much more progressive and liberal.