A friend of mine's son is on an internship at Bosch Power Tools in Germany for the summer. He's an engineering student at the University of Michigan. He's keeping a blog of his adventure (nothing that might interest those that do not know him) but did point me to this which I found amusing. Maybe you will too. Keep in mind that this stuff is from college age kids who found themselves in Germany for a bit.
http://nothingforungood.com/A sample:
"You must constantly try to remember the gender of every noun you want to say, then figure out whether the prepositions you want to use require the accusative, dative, or genitive case. Then you have to match the gender with the case to figure out the needed definite article in a table in your head you learned in German class, and you are almost there. Now you just have to figure out the adjective ending based on the definite article and you have part of the sentence you want to say completed. Now figure out where the verbs go in the sentence, conjugate and you are ready to add your mustard to the conversation. Unfortunately by the time you have your witty sentence about the reality show constructed in your head, the topic has already moved on to the Bundesliga."
Also I've always heard that Germans are very direct, but I had never really seen an example of it. Well, yesterday, one of the dudes told me "If you're going to be in Germany four months, you can't just wear your father's jeans and T-shirts that have your school written on it." Now, I'm known for not having any style back home (I mostly wear exactly what he said and I don't really care) but nobody really says anything about it. Whatever, maybe I do need to get some style. Though I wanted to tell him if you wear what you're wearing in the US you'd be considered a complete tool.
