I've been in Berlin only 48 hours and I'm already failing to suppress my tendency to arrive late. In the 'latin' culture of BA, this is ok - I blend right in - but knowing the German reputation for exactitude and punctuality, I was hoping to be able to fake it for a bit longer.  Maybe it's just a shonky stereotype, though - everyone I've met so far seems pretty laid back and relaxed.  Maybe they're just cutting the foreigner some slack, bless their bicycle bells...

However I couldn't help smiling to myself, after passing immigration, at the teutonic precision with which my passport had been stamped - it's placed exactly on the border of the page, maximising the possible number of non-overlapping stamps:

Germany - surgical precision

I can only imagine how he feels about his counterparts from saxon and latin nations after seeing their blurry, higgledy-piggedly efforts:

Uruguay and USA - on rakish angles, almost miss the page
Argentina - smack in the middle, but the right may up at least

Britian - blurry and wonky

What deep-seated cultural values are expressed by the tireless stamping-arm of an immigration official?  What does it say about Australians that they always put the stamp on the very last page?

Australia - skip to the end