… and I really think I should be allowed to vote in the EU accession referendum the Czech Republic is holding today and tomorrow, given the apparent lack of any excitement for the community the people over here show quite visibly. I was wandering around the city all afternoon and late evening and all I saw was a single, lonely EU flag – at the tourist information center.
Archiv für den Monat Juni 2003
American Girls Are Easy. German Guys Are boo-ZAH.
For the better or worse, in my experience it’s the same with American girls as with girls from anywhere – some are easy, most aren’t.
However, two self-proclaimed easy ones, Erin and Meghan, who are “young enough to pay an added fee on rental cars, but old enough to feel uncomfortable in college bars“, have written an internet travel diary during their not-exactly-back-pack trip to Europe last summer. And after that they sat down and compiled their experiences with “semi-disposable [male] EUrail-friends” (Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet) into a handy guide for easy American girls touring Europe – old and new – whose title slightly reminds of Kate Hudson’s latest movie effort (in which she played a certainly non-easy American girl) – “How to Find a Man in Europe and Leave Him There“.
Obviously, I was interested how the two Las Vegans on the run verbalised the impression my people (meaning German guys) made on them. Writing this kind of extrapolatory generalisation, especially tongue-in-cheek-writing this kind of extrapolatory generalisation is clearly difficult because you have to find the right balance. The balance between stereotypes and “grain of truth” as well as the balance between witty writing and inclusion of facts.
And Erin and Meghan do it quite well, although I have to say their verdict is overly strict sometimes as the travel dictionary indicates how much fun they had over here. Their essay is certainly much more about witty writing and stereotyped fun than about inclusion of data points and scientific generalisation. But that doesn’t hurt, and moreover, doesn’t come too unexpectedly – how many data points could one actually expect after a few weeks’ journey, even for easy American girls?
So after having read my (actually quite unnecessary) disclaimer, you can now go on to read their assessment of my breed in the entirety. Or just stick with some goodies…
“… A German man thinks arguing is fun. Just argue back for a while and before you know it you’ll have him laughing (maybe) and buying you a beer for being such a good sport. …
All the hype about German efficiency comes to a halt at four-way stop signs. Europeans do not understand the concept of line formation or one-at-a-time and Germans are no exception. Instead of smashing into one another, as is customary in many countries, Germans yield to car on their right. As you know, a four-way stop is a square, so there’s always someone on the right. As they can’t break “the rules,” there is often a long, confused delay….
Germans also save time when speaking. Every language cuts corners when it’s spoken, but German takes corner-cutting to another level. When ordering from a restaurant, a German would not say: “I’d like to have the schnitzel and fries, please.” He’d simply demand, “Schnitzel and fries.” Germans have weeded most niceties out of their language; being polite takes too much time….
If you’re lucky enough to find a good-looking guy in Germany, we recommend approaching him first because Germans aren’t the most brazen men. If you lack guts, you can easily manipulate the situation and give him a reason to approach you. For instance, crossing the street without the proper pedestrian green light will make him yell. And yelling can ignite a great conversation. … You’ll find it surprisingly effortless to get your German man target riled and screaming at you. Just keep smiling and keep cool and before long you’ll have a date Saturday night.
We advise against asking any questions about your appearance because you may get harsh answers. In fact, you may get harsh answers without asking any questions. If he dislikes the clothes you’re wearing, he’ll tell you. If he thinks you look fat, he’ll tell you. The same brutal honesty goes for questions directed at him. If you ask how he’s doing, be prepared for an extensive discussion about his gastrointestinal problems the night before.
A German man will know many gory details about your country. In fact, he can probably name more American state capitals than the majority of Americans. He’ll assume you know basic history (Everyone in his country does.), so to stop from coming across as a moron, try to fake your way around things you’re unfamiliar with…
If you want to give a German guy the cold shoulder, good luck. If you think his sense of humor sucks, wait until you see his people reading skills. He’s used to dealing with practical, direct Germans so he’s not going to pick up on your desperate subtleties. If you pull the, “I’ll be right back, I’m going to the bathroom” stunt, you’ll find him waiting outside the ladies room. If you try the bathroom trick eight times in one night he’ll think you have a small bladder. You’ve got to be direct.”
Oh, and of course – they have this pocket phonetic dictionary that will help you survive over here, certainly in these rough times of the transatlantic rift… and it proves the Erin and Meghan do really seem to understand German culture a little…
“A beer from the tap, please – Eye-n beer here.
Can I drive your car, please? – Gib meer dee shh-LOO-sell YET-zst.
Does your dog bite? – Bice-t dine who-nd?
Does your wife bite? – Bice-t dine-uh fr-OW?
Just because I’m blond doesn’t mean I’m perfect. – Halt dine moon-d.
Please don’t invade my country. – Hill-f mish.
Where can I recycle this? – Ish ha-BUH mule.
Why are you yelling? – Vuh-ROOM bist doo so boo-ZAH?
You should laugh, the joke was funny. – K-eye-n on-gst, eye-n fitz ist goot.”
Inappropriate.
Very much so. In pretty much all possible respects. I wonder if this kind of service was what the mobile handsets’ manufacturers’ marketing department had in mind when developing the idea of mobile handsets with cameras?
Here’s to the dead. And the living.
The four German soldiers who died in last week’s Kabul suicide attack, Jörg Baasch, Andrejas Beljo, Helmi Jimenez-Paradies, and Carsten Kühlmorgen – the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th German soldiers to die in a (publicly known) sort-of combat situation after World War Two – were honoured today in a special ceremony at Cologne airport.
Earlier today, they were bid farewell by their comrades and Acting Commander ISAF, the Dutch Brigadier General Bertholee, at Camp Warehouse, Kabul. As any decent leader, he knew he had to adress the future while not forgetting about what happened –
“We can show our respect for the sacrifice that our comrades made in only one way. Continue our mission as well as we can; show determination; and make clear that we will not be intimidated. That will also help to overcome our grief.”
Not surprisingly, their work has seen a spark of interest in recent days. I suppose one thing the public could do is preserve this interest and remember that all those international troops are in Afghanistan not only to help an increasingly isolated Afghan central government survive against resurfacing warlords, but because we believe that our very personal security is enhanced by doing so.
They are some some of those who make people carry balloons instead of bombs. And they have a website that describes some aspects of their life – and sometimes their death – in Kabul.
Expect more handshaking
Expect more handshaking Donald Rumsfeld is in Germany today to attend the 10th anniversary ceremony of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Patenkirchen (where it is much nicer when you can ski…). The German Defense Minister is also going to be there, thus the expected handshaking.
Jane Galt on Signal And Noise
Megan McArdle has an interesting post about the difficulties of gaining useful data through polls. She correctly states that – however carefully chose your sample may be – some people will always lie, that is, she implies, a lot of people will lie.
Personally, I think that questionnaire framing in conjunction with the reality construction effect of increased statistical attention to a particular issue (if you increase statistical research of domestic violence, chances are you’re going to see a huge – statistical – increase simply because you’re asking more often) is the bigger problem with respect to reliable idea of what’s going on in people’s minds – as it is usually done with the result in mind.
But Megan is right: people will lie for the pure fun of it, because they want to be in compliance with what they believe are societal expectations, or those of the person asking them, even in anonymous surveys, they will “lie” because they don’t really get what the pollster asks and feel it is embarrassing not to understand, and they will lie for a whole lot of other reasons I haven’t thought of and for which a poll would probably not be helpful. But on the other hand, sometimes “lying” is too big a word for a different perception of reality… just ask the PR people in the US Department of Defense, they would probably agree these days ;-) Megan writes –
Surveys are bad because people lie. And the more important/interesting the subject, the more they lie. Imagine you did a survey: would you hide Jews in your basement if you lived in Nazi Germany? You’d probably get a “yes” response 90+ percent of the time. Yet if you transported all the people you surveyed to Nazi Germany, where they would actually have the opportunity to dedicate an unknown number of years to hiding a dangerous person in their basement, feeding and clothing them, emptying their chamberpots, and putting their entire family in danger from the kind of people who roll up to your door in the middle of the night and carry away even your smallest children to a location where their fingernails may be pulled out, their eyes gouged and their bones broken without disturbing the neighbors, you would find that your “yes” response dropped to a tiny fraction of 1%. The 90% yes response is what we call stated preference, and it doesn’t correlate very well with revealed preference, which is what we call what people actually do, rather than what they say they would do.
Interestingly, I remember reading about a recent poll in which Germans were asked about their ancestor’s behavior during the Nazi period (unfortunately, I can’t remember where I read that) and such an astoundingly large part of their ancestors were actively involved in saving oppressed people that someone commenting on the figures wondered what happened to all the people who looked the other way when Nazi thugs came to pick up their neighbours. Some were clearly lying for one or the other reasons above, others just stressed the part of reality they found more convenient to convey. Think about it, could “my granny told me how she did not report someone/something to the authorities” not be interpreted as “active” protection? As reality is so complex, there’s no clear-cut way to differentiate what’s true, and what’s not. If you define cut-off points, ie categories, you once again run the risk of creating reality instead of reporting it. Gosh, Werner v. Heisenberg was a wise guy indeed…
A statistical problem relating to more recent German politics are the poll results for fringe parties in any election. Believe it or not, but the figures reported for fringe parties on tv are basically just made up. They are informed guesses, but if my information is correct, they are essentially made up. The reason for this is that the polling institutes simply do not get any useful number of responses for these parties – because of small, “representative” samples as well as the reasons cited above. They know that these parties do get some votes – you can count them, after all, later on.
But in the meantime, they’re just guessing. And as it’s only fringe parties, it usually doesn’t make a real differencein most cases. But it’s nonetheless interesting to know how the tv presenter arrived at “other parties: 3,9 percent”.
Living History. Deleting Posts.
After Blogger decided to shred two of my planned entries today I have settled for one involving only very little typing.
I was in Washington, DC, back in 1998 when the Starr-Rreport was released, and I have never in my life seen so many journalists per square-centimeter.
I only had a tiny disposable camera with me, and the reddish part in the right hand side – yeah, that’s my middle finger.
I guess Hillary Clinton will have a more interesting account of that part of her living history. Der Spiegel has some German excerpts from her biography/political re-positioning in this week’s print edition.
I am not particularly interested in this kind of books, but I did have a brief look at the excerpt. I can’t help but wonder. What does Hillary Clinton really mean when she writes about she and Bill managed to get on after, well, you know –
“The Key to understanding our marriage is certainly our common history. But to be true, our relationship is too profound to be put into words. Maybe I could express it this way: In the Spring of 1971 I began a conversation with Bill Clinton, and more than thirty later we still talk to each other.”
“We still talk to each other?” Now here I can’t help but wonder if I believe this is a positive or negative verdict about their relationship…
Note: As this is a re-translation from German, I don’t know what she actually wrote. Last week’s Wolfowitz-oil quip should be a sufficient reminder of the perils of translation.
Ausstoepfeln.
Timothy Garton-Ash’s “Unplug Yourself: Media Is Matrix” essay in German. From Sueddeutsche.de
Akaba is in New Hampshire
Richard Chaim Schneider thinks that the the Akaba agreement is not really getting anyone on any road for peace but was in fact the beginning of the American Presidential Campaign 2004. Otherwise, he asks, why should anyone be interested in repeating the processual mistakes made in the Oslo agreements, as the Roadmap does? From Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
The Granita Deal. In writing.
The Guardian has obtained a document outlining the political deal Tony Blair and Gordon Brown struck when Brown stepped aside in favour of Blair in the Labour party leadership contest in 1994.