Being a native Texan and living in Germany, your blog really hit home. I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked “where are your boots and your Cowboy hat?”

But after being in Germany for more than 20 years you tend to come up with your own stereotypes for both Germans and Americans e.g. white socks and tennis shoes (A) any type of sock and Birkenstocks (G).

The party is usually over when I ask them who the political leaders of China or India are. Can you name any regions of India, the world’s second most populated country? What language is spoken in Indonesia? I’ve yet to have a German accurately name a prefecture of Japan. All of these nations are at least as significant as Germany on the global stage. I guess the German concept of geography and general knowledge of the world ends with Europe and the USA.

I like to end most of these exchanges with reminding them that Germany and the USA produce nearly identical scores on international education exams like the PISA Study or TIMSS. Once Americans obtain a bachelor’s degree they actually score significantly higher than German university graduates on the few exams given internationally to university graduates. One is the UN’s intern acceptance exam. The results are online if you care to Google them.

I spent a year in Germany as an exchange student in 1985 and can tell you that I too have a great store of ‘ignorant German’ anecdotes that I bring out at parties. I guarantee you that Americans are certainly not any more ignorant than the average German student. In fact, I’d say that once all the intelligent kids are separated into Gymnasium the remaining mass of kids is considerably less educated than the average American high school student. In Germany it seems they don’t even make the pretense of teaching anything academic to anyone other than Gymnasium students.

I live in Colorado. We are the fittest state in the USA. I run 5K daily and have never been fat. I don’t work with any fat people nor am I related to anyone who I’d even remotely call overweight. I’ve eaten at a McDonald’s only once in my life; at the Frankfurt Airport while my kids played in the smoke filled play area. That I don’t fit their American stereotype seems to bother many Germans I meet. Perhaps the stereotype of Lederhosen and cowbells isn’t as bad as it seems compared with what I have to deal with.

Btw. many people who have the Bavarian citizenship (yes, Bavarians have a second citizenship besides the German citizenship!) don’t consider themself Bavarians (e.g. Franken)

If you deduct those from the 12.5 millions, 10% might be pretty close to the real number

Peterskirche (build 1368)

Let me google that for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter%27s_Church,_M%C3%BCnchen

keep on writing

Population of Germany: 82millions
Population of Bavaria:12millions

And you wanna tell me that 12millions are 10% of 82millions!

I have always wondered what can be considered the Tracht of my home region, the Ruhr area. Perhaps the traditional outfits of the miners?