Jan 06 2008
4+1 Fun Facts About Germany
1. Education is free. Including college. But, all things must come to an end, and some German universities began charging course fees in 2005, which would not surpass 1,000 euros (1,474.06 dollars) per year. Sounds like chump change to us, but some 10,000 students in five cities protested the new fees anyway.
2. Prostitution is legal. And widespread, and it’s taxed. However, every city has the right to zone off certain areas where prostitution is not allowed, which could include virtually the entire city (Munich). I’m not sure what to think about this.
3. Anti-smoking bans were just implemented on January 1. They bar smoking in bars, restaurants and cafes. This is in a country where a third of the population smokes, compared to the U.S., where 20 percent of people smoke. Not surprisingly, there has been and will be a lot of opposition to this law. Personally, I’m rooting for it; I couldn’t even stand waiting in front of the DMV Friday for my mom to pick me up. It seemed that every time one smoker left, another one appeared. Yuck!
4. Germans are two inches taller than Americans on average. Not good for a 5′4” Vietnamese girl, though it does create the interesting possibility of taking a picture of me with a bunch of tall white guys titled “Sarah’s Harem” (credit to Tiffany Chen).
|
|
Male |
Female |
Age |
|
Germany |
5 ft 11 in |
5 ft 6 in |
18-19 |
|
United States |
5 ft 9.2 in |
5 ft 3.77 in |
20+ |
+1. 1 out of 1,000 citizens are Vietnamese. I wasn’t able to find the percentage of Asian citizens in general, but I figure a 1 out of 900 figure would be safe. Thus, a school the size of Lynbrook (about 1,800 students) would have a grand total of two Asians.
Sources:
http://www.radio-d.com/dw/article/0,2144,1604308,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23002336-663,00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Germany
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height
http://www.inwat.org/eurfactsheetgerman.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Vietnamese
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/gm.html
http://www.lungusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=dvLUK9O0E&b=39868
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4559
Cheap college? Maybe I should study over seas…
That statistic about the Vietnamese is close to the entire ASIAN population at Gina’s high school :P. There will be other Asians in Germany too, so the statistic should be higher when accounting for all Asians.
Many university students in Germany also tried to boycott the newly introduced fees. There were organized boycotts where the students paid the fees to a separate account instead directly to the university. But since there weren’t enough who joined, the boycotts failed and the money had to be transferred to the university finally. The slogan at my university for the whole campaign was “Wir kaufen nicht, was uns gehört” -> “We don’t buy what’s ours” meaning education which is a human right.
Whoa, remind me to move to Germany if the college thing doesn’t look like it’s going to work out in the U.S.
Besides, it will add another language to my arsenal, ja? Yay for wannabe-polyglot-ism!
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