8/3 Concept Writing

The very first thing that I’ve noticed about Berliners is how ‘to themselves’ they are. It’s slightly fascinating. My natural instinct is to smile at all passersby, especially to ones who look at me or look particularly attention-grabbing. And in America, it’s the natural reaction to smile back—as Catherine pointed out about the smiling phenomenon: it’s either they smile back or they spend their time trying to figure out how or if they know you. But no one smiles back in Berlin. I’m beginning to wonder, after a conversation with Sally about it, if it’s—this whole no-smiles thing—related to the whole spatial awareness cultural occurrence she’s studying. I know almost for sure it’s in occurrence with the appreciation of silence Germans appear to have; that no one speaks loudly in public places and that you won’t see random strangers speaking with each other on the train as you do on BART is apparently due to this universal (well, Berlin-al) understanding that while a public place is a public place, it’s really just shared private places, that people need to remain in their own spatial area as far as their minds are concerned. I find this highly amusing. This relates to the lack of bubble observation not inversely rather quite simply: it could simply be a caring about oneself happening. This, however, is still under inspection.

A man however did make room next to himself for me on the train today.

Another ‘odd’ (in American terms) however social-cultural difference is the either lack of obtuse pride or existence of the common career. This morning, I spotted two men in uniform (dark blue pants, a tucked in dark blue cotton shirt, and black shoes) walking together and asked Shawn if they were police. “They’re workers,” he said. I feel as if in the states men would never go in public in their worker attire since it’s nearly flaunting their lower class and difficult, thankless work. So it initially perplexed me to think of these two Germen men off to work in quite literally their blues, and to see a man on the train this afternoon in his work (labor) wear-but it occurred to me, once I saw a man on the train in the same type of clothes holding a helmet and a briefcase, that these are these men’s careers. They went to school for this, it’s something to be proud of.

Why is the U.S. not constructed in this way? It seems really smart to me: tax money pays for public vocational higher education for the less bookish of the teenagers (there’s a German word that I’m missing here…) and gives them jobs they would probably end up with anyway, add a dash of pride and actually create happy people and happy endings.

However where’s the American Dream in a German vocational/educational system? This, too, is still under investigation.



I’m immensely blown away with the whole “I’m in Europe” complex. That I’ve seen it in a picture a thousand times but it’s actually right there sort of thing. It’s awesome. Europe Europe Europe.