Meet Hannes

German Characteristics....I think that this post is going to be short because it’s really hard for me to articulate who people are and what they’re all about, on a personal or demographic level. From what I’ve read or know about Germans: they come off as unemotional, their humor is unintelligible to many other Western cultures, they take pride in their engineering, and they listen to a lot of hard rock and electronic music. Oh yeah, and recently, in a class I’m taking I learned that Germans hate debt more than anything and that’s why they take credit cards absolutely no where in Berlin. I’ll say more about the whole credit cards thing in my advice post that’s soon to come.

Anyway, working from these stereotypes of German people, let me introduce Hannes. Hannes, a friend of a friend of mine on the program, is a 21 year old full time student at the Humboldt, the university that we NYUers are currently studying at/using the facilities of. The way Hannes and my friend became friends, though, is interesting: Hannes decided that he wanted to go to school at NYU for a year, and so he enrolled and dropped out as planned, and returned to Berlin, and has no regrets whatsoever. He’s a really easy going guy, he likes to play jazz music, and he drinks pretty heavily.

So what’s German about Hannes? I mean, his name is Hannes, he speaks German, and was born in Berlin. But how does Hannes act like a stereotypic German? I really don’t know if I can say. If I had to list a central, German quality to Hannes, it would be his straight-forwardness. He doesn’t smile that often, and he says what he means. There’s no crowd-pleasing with him. If you’re doing something that’s weird, he’ll tell you that what you’re doing is weird. One time a few months ago, I scratched my chest through two buttons in my shirt. He still comments on it to this day.

Hannes also rides his bike a lot.
Hannes also eats Turkish food a lot.
Hannes also likes rock bands like Led Zepplin.
Hannes also plays the jazz saxophone.
Hannes also likes to go to elektroclubs.
Hannes also has blond hair and blue eyes, a deep voice, and is more than six feet tall.

I’m at a loss now. I really don’t have much more I can say about Hannes. Hopefully the lengths of some of my other posts will make up for the abbreviated length on this one.