title: ASP.NET MVC 3 not accepting my German date format settings - why?
body: <p>I have a new ASP.NET MVC 3 project, and MVC and Razor are all brand new to me... can't figure this one out.</p>
  
  <p>I have a dev machine on US-English Win7 x64, running English versions of VS 2010 Pro SP1 and ASP.NET MVC 3. But the app I'm working on is for a local client, and needs to be all in German and use all the formatting and defaults commonly used here.</p>
  
  <p>In my view model, I have defined a variable of type <code>DateTime</code> and augmented it with some extra hints as to how to display (and edit) it - I need the Swiss-German date formatting, which is: <code>day.month.year</code> (in that order, separated by dots <code>.</code> - not slashes)</p>
  
  <pre><code>public class MyViewModel
  {
      [Display(Name = "Gültig am")]
      [DataType(DataType.Date)]
      [DisplayFormat(DataFormatString="dd.MM.yyyy", ApplyFormatInEditMode=true)]
      public DateTime ValidAt { get; set; }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>(of course, there are more properties in that view model, but those aren't relevant just now)</p>
  
  <p>In my Razor view, I simply use the default stuff set up by the ASP.NET MVC 3 <code>Add View</code> T4 template:</p>
  
  <pre><code>@Html.EditorFor(model =&gt; model.ValidAt)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Trouble is: if I enter something like <code>13.06.2011</code> (13th of June, 2011) which I believe is valid and conforming to my display and editing formats, I am still getting a client-side validation saying that <code>The value '13.06.2011' is invalid</code> - <strong>WHY???</strong> </p>
  
  <p>There must be something really fundamental (and probably totally silly) that I'm missing here.... </p>
  
  <p>Even though I have set all of this up, </p>