Actually, my grandmother is pretty much all those things (including the part about traffic ;). She probably would wish everybody would still be like that, too. And to a certain extent (mostly excepting the rule abiding thing) I'd agree.
Nowadays... I don't know about reasonable... There's some pretty unreasonable people around all over the place.
Rule abiding, maybe. Although the other side of the "rule abiding" coin, "unflexible", is also very true. Which has a lot to do with the next point: The amount of bureaucracy we have is insane. Which, incidently, makes German efficiency highly overrated. After you're finally done with the form-filling, stamp-gathering and running from office to office, you might start being efficent, but until you get to that point, others will be way ahead already.
Although from what I've seen of Sweden (spend 1 year studying there. well, pretending to study anyway :), they have more of that rule abiding... While in Italy, they seem to have less of it. But that might just be my impression (and it's not ment as either a negative or positive judgement, either, just an observation).
Although I guess those last three things are what my parent's generation would've wanted ours to be like, if you look at German tourists in places like Mallorca, you'd take them back. But then again, hordes of tourists don't count much for getting to know a people. Sometimes you could get the impression that mass tourism is mainly an international idiocy exchange.
Well, that was rather long (still convinced of German efficency? :) However, one surprising thing I found is that as a local, maybe I'm not in such a good position to comment as I thought. I might lack a certain distance. Which makes for a rather confused post... But good thing you brought it up, made me think.
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Tars, Holder of Opinons and Views. |
