Schlagwort-Archive: almost a diary

almost a diary, compulsory reading, Europe, Germany, oddly enough, traveling, USA

My New Ralph Lauren Sweater.

So via Blogdex, I found this hilarious article published by USA today called “Ugly sentiments sting American tourists”.

I suppose it was pretty tough to write this article. You can literally sense how the evident editorial intention to publish yet another “peaceful American tourists tortured to death by mad and naked European pacifists”-peace made the newspaper’s European correspondents look desperately for something anti-American to write about. Their effort wasn’t too successful, even if you insist to count Bush-policy discussions as anti-American torture, as the article indicates –

“‘I am certain that a number of American visitors will be asked about the U.S. administration’s policy on Iraq. But if indeed there have been some unpleasant encounters, I strongly believe that they are few and far between,’ says Patrick Goyet, vice chairman of the European Travel Commission in New York. ‘Furthermore, speaking as a European and for the vast majority of my fellow Europeans, I consider any such behavior idiotic and embarrassing.'”

Period.

But the best part of the article is a bullet point list by Bruce McIndoe, CEO of iJet Travel Intelligence that tells American tourists how to behave when in Rome. Well, we all know what the obvious answer is, but let’s have a more detailed look at Mr McIndoe’s propositions.

Avoid American fast-food restaurants and chains.

Believe it or not, but McDonald’s and their competitors do not just cater American tourists in Europe. Like it or not, the deconstruction of traditional European eating habits is advancing rapidly, even in France, although they don’t like to talk about it for cultural and marketing reasons. So Starbucks has just announced to open more than 200 branches in Germany. And I had my last McBurger last Monday night. Remember “Pulp Fiction“? It was a “Royal With Cheese” – basically the same, but with subtle, metric, differences.

Keep discussions of politics to private places, not rowdy bars.

Well, it’s never a good idea to go to a rowdy bar anyway, if you aren’t a cowboy yourself. I seriously wonder what kind of etablissement Mr McIndoe had in mind here. What exactly are “rowdy bars”? There are hardly any cheap-western-movie-style saloons in Europe, should that be of any help. But wait, he might be concerned about the significant amount of Irish and English Pubs where it’s definitely a lot easier for American tourists to talk to Europeans as most interaction is in English….

Take a rain check on wearing clothes featuring American flags or sports team logos.

Damn. I just bought one of those Ralph Lauren US-flagged sweaters and I am not even American. And I did not even buy it for any ideological reason. And when I recently wore it during a generally leftist (read: European left, not its kinder, gentler, liberal US cousin) theatre company’s performance I was actually a bit stunned that no one cared at all. Seriously, the American flag is not something only Americans would wear in public in Europe.

The same goes for baseball caps or university logoed sweaters. If all the Germans who wear Georgetown or Harvard sweaters with Yankee baseball caps actually knew those universities and had any real idea about the baseball team whose logo they promote, Germany would have certainly fared a lot better in last year’s international secondary education assessment. But I will tell you, should I ever feel safer not wearing my Ralph Lauren sweater.

Keep your passport out of sight.

Indeed a good idea. But mostly because it really is a hassle to get a temporary one abroad.
Keep cameras, video equipment and maps tucked away.

Right – very interesting point. Sure, there are places where its safer not to be to easily identifiable as a tourist. Just like in Miami, a few years ago, remember? So this is good advice for all tourists if they choose to visit places they should rather not. But if this is an advice specifically aimed at Americans in Europe it does come across a tad bit arrogant – there are cameras and video equipment in Europe. We also have mobile phones, T-mobile hotspots and even ones with at affordable rates…

Soften your speech; Americans typically overshadow their hosts in the volume department.”

This, I have to agree, is partly useful advice. Some American tourists do overshadow almost everyone in the volume department. That is particularly true for shrieking female undergraduate students. Strangely though, it does not hold at all for all the Americans I know personally…

I wonder what Mr McIndoe’s ideas for blending in in the US would be? Maybe you, my gentle readers do have some suggestions?

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almost a diary, compulsory reading, US Politics, USA

American Exchange Students In Germany.

Yesterday, my sister published an article about American exchange students’ perception of the Iraq/media induced rift between the the Bush and Schroeder administrations in the local edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung [it’s not online, unfortunately].

I’m glad she found some American students to talk to. There are not too many of them. At the Johannes-Gutenberg-University in Mainz, only seventy-nine Americans are enrolled. Seventy-nine out of a student body of approximately 30,000. Seventy-nine out of approximately 4,000 non-German students. But let me be clear here – this is by no means an unusually low number. All those US students here at the moment must have made the decision to go to Germany a fair amount of time before the anyone used the word rift to describe German-American relations.

Sure, talking to people is not quantitative research. But it does give you some idea of what’s going on, if those you talk to do have an opinion. I’m glad my sister found some who had. I met two American undergraduate students in Munich early in Febuary who replied to my question about their opinion of the ongoing quarrel that they were not sufficiently well informed about the issue to have an opinion of their own. That was on the day when another American, Donald Rumsfeld, was in town and was told by Joschka Fischer, the German Foreign Minister, that he had not yet been convinced of the necessity of war in Iraq.

In their defence, I don’t think the two girls were particularly interested in politics in general, so their reply also had a touch of intentional modesty, rather than just one of unfortunate ignorance. Actually, their ignorance shows that there are Americans in this country whose personal reality has only marginally been affected by the international politics, if at all.

It shows that at least those not professionally involved in shaping opinion have learnt to differentiate between those governed and those who govern. The students who were interviewed by my sister basically stated the same – they very much enjoy their stay and have never been bullied by anyone because of their being American, the only notable difference being more political discussions than before.

Those discussions, on the other hand, may not have become too heated, as the Fulbright Commission’s American programme manager Reiner Roh reckons that less than ten percent of the American exchange students who receive Fulbright scholarships support the Bush administration’s policy on Iraq.

Sure, not all American exchange students are Fulbright scholars and there are clearly a lot of possible reasons for such an extreme divergence from the general American attitude, not the least of which is the fact that these students do understand foreign media.

But personally, I believe that there likely is a significant correlation between a person’s willingness to learn about different cultures and her political acceptance of an international order constraining even the most powerful, which is fundamentally at odds with divide-et-impera policies of a Kagan-style (neo-Bismarckian) system of ad-hoc axes and alliances.

So I would like to repeat something rather important these days – there is German-American life beyond governmental quarrels. And it’s a lot more fun. I really wonder what the American students dressed up as for yesterday’s raving Monday parade?

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almost a diary, oddly enough

La Marseilleise.

So “Rosenmontag“, the raving Monday, was good fun, as expected. The day started with me attending a vodkaesque “Russian-Montag”-Party – I hope my non-German readers can appreciate this subtle linguistic humour.

So most people were disguised in Soviet uniforms they had purchased either on Ebay or on some east European flee market. Naturally, the music of choice came from a CD featuring more communist songs than you will ever want to hear – and – the French anthym, “La Marseilleise”.

I suppose those compiling the CD were too busy drinking Vodka to note the subtle ideological point they were making…

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almost a diary, USA

Just A Google Away.

So I thought this blog seriously needed a non-US/non-Iraq related entry and I thought a nice explanatory piece about the orginis of the carnival tradition of my home town would do the trick.

So I googled for some keywords in English and was slightly surprised by the fact that there are a lot of English documents about this tradition.

So I am very happy to accept the pleasures of Google-induced increased division of work and simply sponsor a survey article published by the German embassy in Ottawa, Canada, called “Carnival in Germany – Germans go wild” as well as a rather thorough historical and linguistic analysis called “karneval-Fastnacht-Fasching” by Robert Shea, who is also running a website dedicated to German

And German-American Customs, Traditions, Origins Of Holidays.

So thanks to Google I will get sufficient rest for a great “Rosenmontag” – a raving Monday. Oh, here’s a site that has some photos from previous raving Mondays…

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almost a diary, Germany

Carnival Junkie…

Mainzer Street Carnival

is not just a great song by singer/songwriter Cindy Alexander. Some carnival junkies are real people. And on this weekend, about a million of them will be on the streets of my home town, Mainz, Germany. And even though I am not exactly one of them, chances are I’m going to wear a costume in public at some point during the next five
days…

http://www.mainzer-fastnacht.de/images/strasse1.gif

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almost a diary, compulsory reading, Iraq, USA

Ever Lasting Love?

PapaScott translates a a blog entry from WorldWideKlein Live –

“Before they were impossible to find, now the German embassy is giving them out by the handful: the German-American friendship pins with the German and American flags side by side. These days they’re probably no longer needed.”

I don’t think so. Sure, there are people who boycot Camembert and Chrysler (hehe) these days. So what? They will start buying again pretty soon after CNN has stopped broadcasting “Axis of Weasel” advertisements. Moreover, “Die Zeit” mentioned last week (could not find the article online) that Germany has become extraordinary popular in NON-CNN-US, a country in which people carry Schröder-portraits during anti-war demonstrations.

But I found the most convincing reason of all last September, one day after the infamous remarks by former German Justice Minister Herta Däubler Gmelin had made it to the frontpage of the NY Times – German brass players in New York’s Upper East side.

Steuben-Parade - German Brass Players in the Upper East Side

Talk about Weasels as much as you want – as long as this kind of musical pollution does not make Americans want to strangle the perpetrators, things are in pretty good shape.

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almost a diary, compulsory reading, self-referential

Life Offline / FAQs

It’s been a long time since I haven’t been online for almost a week. It must have been at some point in 1999, I suppose. So, at first, it felt a bit strange not being able to read my email or drop a note in this blog. But then I realized that it’s probably a good thing to renounce to the comforts of cyberspace every now and then. If only to see if it is still possible. And I think it’s reassuring that it is.

So, having to catch up with a lot of things, I will write more later, but I just have to comment some questions I received by email from Roman reader Marcus Tullius Cicero, in case his questions should be common ones –

Q: “Is that really your picture?”

If you are referring to the picture in the upper left hand corner of the page, the reply is probably “yes”. But no one knows what a browser does to your looks ;-).

Q: “Is that a gun nestled in your left armpit?”

Well, I guess some people are indeed able to turn a pen into a weapon as or even more powerful than a gun. But I am not sure if such a compliment is the correct interpretation. So I am slightly disturbed by this question. I am German, after all, not American. See “Bowling for Columbine” for further reference.

Q: “Why don’t you allow comments on your site?”

Good question. The answer is that this site was originally designed to communicate with some friends. So the guestbook was easily sufficient to provide room for non-email based communication. And still, only a tiny fraction of visitors leave comments in the guestbook [ thank you ! ] But I will look into installing a commenting system.

The more discussion the better.

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almost a diary, Germany

If You Are In London This Week…

why not attend some of the great events organised for this year’s London School of Economics German Symposium by the LSE German Society.

Unfortunately, you have already missed the one hour special performance “Old Europe At Its Best” by Harald Schmidt, Germany’s #1 late night talk-host. Remembering the one time he did a show entirely in French, I am really disappointed I missed this performance in English.

Also, the Foreign Minister, Joscka Fischer, had to cancel his talk with Tony Giddens due to unplanned UN Security Council business on Wednesday.

For everyone in London who is interested in Germany, LSE is the place to be – certainly this week.

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almost a diary

Self Help Tip # 1.

I attended the first concert of a friend of a friend tonight. Just one man and his guitar. It was pretty much what you would expect from someone presenting his art on stage for the first time. So it’s not his performance I want to tell you about. Rather, I’d like to tell you about an idea conveyed in a little “self-help song” he sang.

So “When you’re weary, Feeling down, When tears are in your eyes” you might no longer need chemical bridges to cross your troubled waters from now on: Just imagine a sexual act performed by a well known politician of your choice.

While the therapy is certainly unusual and clearly involves some graphic indecent thoughts, I have to say, the song worked wonders for the audience – everybody was in stitches. But it is crucial to choose someone usually considered entirely asexual. Don’t pick George Clooney or Mira Sorvino and then complain to me the therapy did not work for you.

Maybe you should just give it try – next time you feel down, why not think of W in the Oval Office, playing with a Havanna. Or even better – think of him playing with little Talking President Dolls, just like Lord Dark Helmet did in Mel Brook’s Spaceballs.

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