Kultur 7

Though I have been to an Aldi's in the United States several times, I have only visited one in Germany once. It honestly wasn't that horrifying as the authors of "Bargain Buys" and "What Discipline?" make Aldi stores out to be. They were correct about the lines and the odd maze of produce throughout the store, as well as the quarter deposit for a shopping cart and no plastic bags, but I still feel like the Aldi's at home and the Aldi's in Germany are very similar, where the Aldi's here isn't that bad. The produce, I did notice, had its good sides and bad sides. But overall I think it's safe to say the authors of these articles exaggerated just a bit.

I think I may or may not have had a small anxiety attack reading the article about driving in Germany. It caused me to experience a flashback to my father driving a stick-shift and forgetting to use the clutch (though he's driven a manual car his entire life) so that we continuously stalled in the middle of the road with cars honking their horns at us and almost hitting us. That being said, I can't even imagine driving on the autobahn, where cars drive extremely fast (as people prefer to) due to the lack of a speed limit. It was very interesting, however, to read about all the little rules Germans adhere to while operating a car. Hopefully when I study abroad my junior year, I won't have to worry about driving!