I’m sure many of the “German” restaurants in the US are more caricatures of what a real German restaurant would look like. People often get a distorted view of the reality of a different culture - like the clubs in Germany where people get together to dress up like cowboys and Indians. [;)]
FWIW one of the best known “German towns” here in Minnesota is Hamburg, the hometown of professional wrestling legend Buck “Rock and Roll” Zumhofe.
TV shows as well as the fact, that the former US Zone in Germany was in the southern part of the country, have created a certain stereotype of what Germans are and Germany looks like. Anyone having travelled through the country has seen the vast differences in character of the people, language and, of course, architecture.
All Germans wear Lederhosen, drink beer out of big steins - just as much as all Americans wear cowboy hats and devour huge loads of hamburgers and hotdogs [;)]
My problem is the diametric opposite of the main line of this thread.
The available Japanese buildings aren’t Japanese enough!
Where is the country farmhouse with a thatch roof two meters deep. How about the irimoya roof that was ubiquitous in the area I model. Many of the older storage and industrial buildings were of vertical board-and-batten construction. Others were of post and panel construction, but the panels were (originally) snow-white plaster. I don’t even bother to look for kits, or ready-to-plop, for the Meiji-era (and older) structures I need.
Fortunately, I enjoy scratchbuilding…
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan as it was in September, 1964 - and is no more)
Shapeways has some interesting game pieces (for Axis and Allies) that look like they’d make some interesting Monuments. The ones that caught my eyes are the Japanese Imperial Palace and the Tour Eiffel – they’re both very stylized, but that works for public works of art.