I hear you, loud and clear

Americans aren’t really shouting or being aggressive, they just have loud voices. - AFP

Let me preface this piece by admitting two things. One, I am not someone you’d typically describe as soft-spoken. My voice has and does carry, sometimes even to my own detriment. Two, my ears have now probably become more sensitive to sound after being lulled by the relative quite of Germany. I can only quote a girlfriend from Ecuador who once famously noted, “Even the dogs in Germany are quiet.”

I, too, once griped about the designated “quiet times” in German neighbourhoods; even wrote about it in this very column. But then again, Germans generally aren’t loudspeakers. That is, unless, they are watching the World Cup and that’s a whole new ball game.