American stereotypes

Today I'm going to tell you about how Germans (and other foreigners I've met) view our country! Get ready, because it's not all that pretty.

• Without a doubt, the number one question I get asked about America is this: "Is everyone fat in the U.S.?" Literally (LITERALLY) everyone person I have met that I talked to for more than a few minutes asked me this question. And honestly, I can't defend my country, because it's true: 62% of Americans are overweight. That is totally insane. This isn't to say there aren't overweight people in Germany, too (all that beer has to go somewhere), but there seems to be significantly less. I should also mention that people really love it when I tell them about the overweight people in Wal-mart that have to ride around on electric scooters because they can't walk. They can't believe it.
• On the fatness note, they are always shocked to hear how many fast food restaurants we have. It's crazy to them that, in my small town of about 10,000 people, we have an Arby's, a Taco Bell, a KFC, a McDonald's (now with two drive-thrus), a Burger King, a Dunkin Donut's, a Subway, and a Pizza Hut. I'm probably even forgetting some. In Solingen, a city of 100,000, they have only a few fast food restaurants. 
• Another thing that has come up quite frequently is Americans' apparent unwillingness/stubbornness when it comes to learning languages. Literally everyone I met here (other than some very old people) knows English at least to a conversational fluency. They often know a third language, too. I looked up some statistics to verify my observations, and they only confirm that Europeans seem to value language learning way more than Americans (look this stuff up yourself if you don't believe me, because this is pretty shocking). If you don't care about these numbers, skip down to the fifth bullet!
• In 2005, 56 percent of Europeans spoke a language other than their mother tongue, and this number continues to rise. 28% of respondents spoke two foreign languages. In some countries, the statistics are even more shocking - in Luxembourg, 99 percent of citizens speak a foreign language, as well as 97 percent of Slovaks and 95 percent of Latvians. 
• Meanwhile, in the U.S., a mere 26% of people speak a language other than English at a conversational fluency. 30% of Americans feel it is "not important at all" to learn a language, compared with just 8% of Europeans. 
• If you don't believe me, here are the websites I got these numbers from:  http://www.gallup.com/poll/1825/about-one-four-americans-can-hold-conversation-second-language.aspx
• http://ec.europa.eu/languages/languages-of-europe/eurobarometer-survey_en.htm
• So, now that it's really obvious Americans don't seem to care about learning languages (!), I can tell you that Europeans find this really, really arrogant and selfish of us! They feel like Americans expect everyone else to learn English, so that we have to do nothing. It makes us seem lazy, narrow-minded, uncultured, and arrogant. At many levels, it's just plain offensive to Europeans that we seemingly expect everyone else to learn our language, while we don't bother to learn their's. While it's true that, in the globalized world where business and friendships transcend borders, a lingua franca is sort of necessary in order to communicate (and this language is English), you should also keep in my mind this quote: " If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart." At least attempting to speak someone's else's language goes miles toward cross-cultural understanding and friendship. I don't know why this is highlighted, or how to fix it...
• Phew, now that that's off my chest, I will tell you that Germans (and Europeans in general, it seems) do in fact admire America in many ways! It's considered cool here to wear a t-shirt or scarf with an American flag on it, and a lot of brands say stuff about "live the American lifestyle" and things like that. American culture dominates the world, and so Europeans try to emulate our culture. 

So, these are just the observations I've made so far, and I'm sure I'll have more soon!