Wild Pigs in Germany

Today we had an orientation for German culture. We spoke about the stereotypes that all Germans are very punctual, which they said was true to an extend.... however they gave us examples of where that may not be the case. Overall, they thought that Germans respect authority more than Americans. Especially in the university, they told us it was very important to be very formal with the professor, and always be 5 minutes early. Also from this discussion I found out that Prostitution was legal here, which I did not know, and later from my roommate I found out that prostitutes have to pay a 6 Euro tax for every night they work for it to be legal (I found this very amusing). Afterwords I got lunch at a small bakery where I got a Metzbroetchen, which was a sandwich with very rare meat and onions. It was quite delicious and very inexpensive. Afterwords I had to go back to the university, and they taught us a game called like dodgeball that all german students play. My team won the who tournament. Also I had mostly Spanish people on my team and they taught me a game that they play called Mallee (sp?) In which 4 people huddle with eachother and the others try to jump over them and hold onto their legs without touching anything else on the ground besides their feet. It was very humorous, but we attracted a lot of stares. Afterwords I went to a Cafe with a large group. There I met a girl who plays for a soccer team that is a couple of tiers down from the Bundesliega. I was very excited to hear this and she gave me her phone number and is going to arrange a tryout. Stay tuned. Germans sit and talk for a very long time, so after a couple of hours I made my way home. At the Studentwohnheim, my roommate had a couple of friends over and was sitting on the porch. He invited me over and we had a big conversation for about 3 hours over many topics, most of which were political. His friends were Alexa from Russia and Francis from Ivory Coast. They were very nice, Francis continued to ask me about the IMF Chef Strauss Kahn, because he could not understand why the Americans showed him handcuffed on television even though he was not found guilty. Alexa told me that he thinks that Americans are very easily swayed by propaganda and he believes that we are very controlled. I told him that many Americans would say that we think of Russia as being very controlling. He disagreed 100% and said that eastern Europe has more freedom that anywhere else. I thought this was a very interesting mindset. Then my roommate told me that there are wild pigs in the area. This was especially amusing to me because my Grandpa had warned me about this. He said that there is a park nearby in which you can always see pigs running around. They even saw one eating part of the soccer field. Lustig. Alexa likes to make fun of Germans. So he spoke a little bit of English, and then before continuing in German he said "Aber jetzt sprechen wir Deutsch, die Sprache des Luftwaffes" and he loves to make fun of Germans and their military background. Sehr stark. It is fun and interesting to learn different aspects of German culture with literally everything I do here. Bis Spaeter!