Unfair stereotypes of Germans

I have heard a billion times about:

Germans being cheap
Germans being unfriendly
Germans hating fresh air

and have found most of these generalizations to be unsubstantiated.

so here are some generalizations to counter those generalizations:

• Germans will pay twice the market price for anything as long as it is Bio or fair trade (even my man who is cheap beyond belief) so you can't call em cheap
  
• Germans know the life stories of everyone in their building, at their local spätie and and their local pub and are always shaking hands and guffawing and gossiping like there's no tomorrow so you can't call them unfriendly
  
• Germans love air!!! Why are people always yelling about them yelling about the draft? Seriously, someone enlighten me... I have never had so much air in my life.
  

What other German stereotypes baffle you?

Punctuality, I have not experienced this supposed german trait - although maybe I deal with too many young ones..

yup and here I am freezing every day at my 22nd floor desk coz there's ALWAYS a German who wants the windows open. Seriously, SOMEBODY (else) from TT tell them how to behave like 'good Germans'

I guess Germans are willing to spend for themselves. Like to show off. The problem arises when they ignore the give-and-take transactions in social groups, the ones I know tend to interpret it as take-and-take Then we start calling them cheap!

You wouldn't call them generous, would you?

Germans don't have a sense of humour. Our German friends from Munich definitely do. We've had some excellent nights with them.

Germans definitely love fresh air, they are the first to complain if there is an A/C in the room and the windows can't be opened.

That it's a well-educated "Land of Goethe and Schiller" as the result of a world-class egalitarian need-blind educational system. One soon learns that it's actually a pretty low-brow, lower-middle class society where children are sorted out Brave New World style, down to the wardrobe.

That's pretty much the local economy, Oktoberfest and TT described in one fell swoop. There's nothing like Have I Got News For You on TV, just a lot of blooper reel shows and fart jokes.

German efficiency. It takes about a week to discover that this is without a doubt the world's biggest oxymoron.

German stoicimsm/toughness. They're all a bunch of wimps who get two-week doctor's notes for hangnails and think you'll get bubonic plague if you run out to the mailbox for 30 seconds without dressing as if you're going on a polar expedition ... in June.

They may love fresh air, but would rather swelter inside the U-bahn with nobody bothering to open the windows.

I agree with this one, too. My sons father cracked me up all the damn time. Even his parents gets all my corny jokes. My german friends loved that I have a sense of humor.

Another one is that they do not like small-talk. But I found that some do. I've had conversations with germans in lines, at the park, etc.

..to be put down to plain laziness?

another one i can't get (thank God!) is their so-called indifference in public places. Standing at the train station on my first week in Germany, I spilt coffee all over my suit. Seconds into scrambling for a tissue, I hear a Schuldigung Schuldigung (which I couldn't translate yet ) and a young man reaching over with a packet of tissues. Aw, i thought, dem sweet German boys! Not an isolated incident, i might add - have seen numerous helpful samaritans in my few months here.

Expat': that's one of the best posts i've read in ages, I don't necessarily agree with your point of view, but you make a pretty convincing argument..

10/10

@ lilplatinum: we don't even want to start on how many Germans I have found myself waiting on...

well, I guess like people from anywhere, it depends on how well they know you. In general I would say no, generosity is not one of their outstanding national traits but I have definitely been treated very decently and dare I say even showered with gifts, food and money by German people who love me and/or know me well.

HA. All one has to do is ask one question not on the cheat-sheet at an Amt to see the level of efficiency maintained here. Most of class/educational stuff you said was too smurt for me to follow , but it did break my heart one time to see a 15-year-old boy bragging about his döner cutting skills. He said he was a professional and when we, thinking he was joking, laughed, he even got up to show us how he puts a bit of wrist action into the knife. It was 4 in the morning and he was finished with school. Comepletely agree with the doctor's notes and dressing warmly... you wouldn't believe how many people thought I was nuts for wearing flip-flops in autumn here. That was in 2006, I can't take the tsk-tsking anymore so my feet just have to boil.

well, but U-Bahn air isn't really all that fresh now is it? cooler, but probably more toxic than the air in the train.

WOW. I've seen people nearly stabbed at Schöneweide and no one wanted to step in and tell those guys to cut it out... but to be sure, if there is anyone within a five-block radius of where you've fallen off your bike, they will all help you up and ask if you're OK.

Not toxic compared to smelling other people's body odour.

@ hams: i was on a bus once in my hometown of Seattle and the buses don't smell nice there in the summertime, even when ALL the windows are open. But one guy in particular was noticeably offensive. He was a bear, very proud of his hair and his masculinity and was wearing a wifebeater. At the time I must have been only 19 or so and actually opened my mouth and said "You need a shower," and gave him my best disgusted face. He raised his arm over his head and sniffed deeply, then bragged, "I LOVE it." I was fit. to. puke.

In retrospect, I realize that I:

1. was an asshole and an idiot that day, who got pwned by a bear in a beater reeking of armpit and rightfully so

2. am grateful that people here are at least only inadvertently stinky