Another name story ...

This afternoon, before heading to the grad class of boredom, my buddy Jan and I stopped at one of the local Peet's coffee stores. I order my Latte and the girl behind the counter asks for my name. I tell her my name which left her totally disoriented on her little touch screen. So I go ahead and spell my name for her: J - o - e - r - g
She types it in (correctly that is) and feels compelled to say something because the name strikes her as not being typically American. So she asks me where I am from and I tell that I am German. Oh boy, what a mistake. She starts telling me that she is German too. She doesn't speak the language and was born in the U.S. (which she tells me w/o me even asking for any of that), and that she is partially German and Norwegian. She asks me whether I get this a lot. Not sure what she meant I say: "Do you mean that every American is partially German?" I think she got my hint ... But how come that once people either figure out that I am German (or after I told them) feel compelled to either tell me that they are German as well or, run down the list of all the German words they know. They all seem to know the same words, which are either lame curse words, names of towns or names of food. What do they expect? That I hug them because I am so happy I met another (partial) German? All I wanted is a cup of coffee ... but at least she wrote down my name correctly.