Lucerne's Culture and Convention Center (KKL), designed by French architect Jean Nouvel
Paddlesteamers on the Lake Lucerne (Vierwaldstättersee)
View of Mount Pilatus
Lucerne's Lion MonumentMonday, August 25, 2008
Summer in Switzerland: Lake Lucerne
Lucerne's Culture and Convention Center (KKL), designed by French architect Jean NouvelPaddlesteamers on the Lake Lucerne (Vierwaldstättersee)View of Mount PilatusLucerne's Lion Monument
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Traffic Jams and Tattoos with Dirndls: Impressions from Zurich
The age of the automobil as an individual means of transportation is over. Says cultural theorist Paul Virilio. Because of the oil price, global warming, etc. Some cities, Zurich among them, were already trying to banish cars from their downtown areas, step by step, by taking away lanes and parking spaces.
If only that concept worked! The first impression we got when we entered Zurich by car was: chaos, total traffic jam, aggressive speeding whenever a short piece of free lane opened, desperate fights for every free parking lot.
It took us more than half an hour to go the few hundred yards from the main train station to our hotel late on a Saturday night. Erratic traffic lights, pedestrians crossing streets in hordes without even watching out for cars, drivers almost knocking them over after they hadn’t succeeded to conquer the crossing at the fourth time the light turned green…
Didn’t seem like people were much impressed by the efforts of the city council – if the extremely short phases of green and long phases of red at the crossings were part of the plan to frustrate drivers out of town. And, no, this was not just the clueless tourists’ fault.
Most cars that were hopelessly stuck and dragged along in the metal avalanche had Zurich license plates. Streetcars were half empty. And later, from my hotel window (when our car was sitting in a public garage for $61 a night), I saw cars circling around the block forever to take a chance at the maybe five legal parking spaces within that particular square mile.
So the traffic policy didn’t provide us with a working example of Swiss efficiency. Social rituals in a beer garden did, though. In that self-service beer garden right on the bank of the Limmat where it meets the Zurich lake, people didn’t order one beer, and than maybe another one later. They went for the crates instead.
Many younger people – some of them in flip-flops and very old, cut-off jeans, some in suits and ties – met in large groups, then sent one or two for the drinks. They came back with at least two crates of beer, putting them down right next to their clique’s table and propping their feet up on them in a proprietary gesture. Then passing around and downing one bottle after the other. In an astonishing speed. Very efficient. And very impressive even for a German from Cologne. Where they say it is the waiters’ pride to always serve you a new glass of beer even before you finished the old one.
Apart from that, Zurich is the only city I can think of where it was next to impossible to find an open café on a late Sunday morning. (Maybe people were still exhausted from the beer and the traffic on Saturday night.) It is also the only city where I ever saw a young woman wearing a dirndl and braids with army boots, and huge tattoos covering both upper arms. Looking absolutely, stunningly beautiful. Because of her outfit, or in spite of it – I have no idea.
If only that concept worked! The first impression we got when we entered Zurich by car was: chaos, total traffic jam, aggressive speeding whenever a short piece of free lane opened, desperate fights for every free parking lot.
It took us more than half an hour to go the few hundred yards from the main train station to our hotel late on a Saturday night. Erratic traffic lights, pedestrians crossing streets in hordes without even watching out for cars, drivers almost knocking them over after they hadn’t succeeded to conquer the crossing at the fourth time the light turned green…
Didn’t seem like people were much impressed by the efforts of the city council – if the extremely short phases of green and long phases of red at the crossings were part of the plan to frustrate drivers out of town. And, no, this was not just the clueless tourists’ fault.
Most cars that were hopelessly stuck and dragged along in the metal avalanche had Zurich license plates. Streetcars were half empty. And later, from my hotel window (when our car was sitting in a public garage for $61 a night), I saw cars circling around the block forever to take a chance at the maybe five legal parking spaces within that particular square mile.
So the traffic policy didn’t provide us with a working example of Swiss efficiency. Social rituals in a beer garden did, though. In that self-service beer garden right on the bank of the Limmat where it meets the Zurich lake, people didn’t order one beer, and than maybe another one later. They went for the crates instead.Many younger people – some of them in flip-flops and very old, cut-off jeans, some in suits and ties – met in large groups, then sent one or two for the drinks. They came back with at least two crates of beer, putting them down right next to their clique’s table and propping their feet up on them in a proprietary gesture. Then passing around and downing one bottle after the other. In an astonishing speed. Very efficient. And very impressive even for a German from Cologne. Where they say it is the waiters’ pride to always serve you a new glass of beer even before you finished the old one.
Apart from that, Zurich is the only city I can think of where it was next to impossible to find an open café on a late Sunday morning. (Maybe people were still exhausted from the beer and the traffic on Saturday night.) It is also the only city where I ever saw a young woman wearing a dirndl and braids with army boots, and huge tattoos covering both upper arms. Looking absolutely, stunningly beautiful. Because of her outfit, or in spite of it – I have no idea.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Obama for Kanzler
So, HE was here. About 200,000 people came to the so-called “fan mile” in the heart of Berlin to see Barack Obama. More people than came to any politician’s speech in the Bundesrepublik Deutschland before, if I am to believe the TV commentator. “Obamania” in full bloom, right in the middle of Old Europe.
Usually, the “fan mile” on the Straße des 17. Juni – a name honoring the violently suppressed uprising of East German workers against the GDR’s Soviet-backed regime in June 1953 – is put up to watch the German national soccer team play in a major championship on huge TV screens. Or to watch a Live-8 Concert when Herbert Grönemeyer and Chris de Burgh sing for a good cause.
Granted, some of these 200,000 must have been US expatriates. But the majority were Germans celebrating their somewhat bizzare love affair with Barack Obama. “Obama for Kanzler”, Obama for German Chancellor, one sign sticking out of the crowd read in hopeless Denglisch, this mixture of German (Deutsch) and English that has become so common in this country, transcending decent bakeries, zu Deutsch: Bäckereien, into “Back-Shops”.
There are several reasons why Germans tend to feel so strongly about US elections in general, and US elections with charismatic candidates (Clinton – eh, Bill –, Obama) in particular. First, we think that after watching “Dallas”, “West Wing” and other trailblazing US soaps on TV for decades, we know America and the Americans better than they know themselves. Second, after two terms of George W. Bush, we think that we’d also vote better in US presidential elections than the Americans themselves.
And last but not least, I’m dead sure there is political romanticism in abundance in this country, even if home-bred political personnel like Angela Merkel (the Conservative Chancellor), Kurt Beck (her Social Democrat partner in an uneasy “grand coalition”) or Oskar Lafontaine (the former-Social-Democrat-turned-populist-figurehead-of-the-extreme-left) somewhat fail to inspire such broad-felt romantic encounters right now.
So, why not put one’s heart out to a charming, good-looking, rhetorically gifted young man aspiring to be leader of the US and, yes, of the so-called free world?! Especially as he is not only the first black guy standing a realistic chance to become President of the United States – therefore being the politically most correct candidate, of course –, but reminds people of JFK on top of everything, whom Germans and especially “Berliners” tend to glorify…
Are those 200,000 (and the rest of us, who at least contemplated going, if only we had had a babysitter), then, would-be believers longing to see a new political messiah, as some media spectators had it all figured out? Can Obama – or: Obamania – inspire some new bonding between Americans and Germans, those estranged allies?
To be honest, the rage about Obama at the Siegessäule reminded me more of the hype around baby polar bear Knut in the near-by Berlin zoo two years ago. People found Knut “cute” and went to see him in droves. Now, people find Obama “cool” and come to see him in the Tiergarten park. Which is a synonym for zoo, by the way.
After all, Obama is a phenomenon, inspiring the bright and the young; making more and more people curious, drawing them to the stadiums in tens of thousands. He is a celebrity, huge scale. “Welcome to the show”, one of his many self-declared helpers covered with “Yes, we can!” stickers, called out to people approaching the stage in Berlin.
But should Obama really become the 44th. President of the United States, people will probably react not much different from the way they did when they came to see Knut, the cute fuzzy baby bear, a couple of month after his international media career had started – and found a dirty, bad-tempered adolescent polar bear instead. “This is not the cute white Knut we used to know”, they protested, turned around, and left.
“This is not the cool black Obama we used to know”, Germans might find, should we look at a President Barack
Obama in a couple of months. And turn our backs on him, too, sinking back into our good old habit of Politikverdrossenheit.
Not that he’d care much, probably. But don’t count on promotionally effective pictures of cheering crowds in Berlin any more, Obama, once you step down from the Olympus of celebrity and into the flats of realpolitik!
Usually, the “fan mile” on the Straße des 17. Juni – a name honoring the violently suppressed uprising of East German workers against the GDR’s Soviet-backed regime in June 1953 – is put up to watch the German national soccer team play in a major championship on huge TV screens. Or to watch a Live-8 Concert when Herbert Grönemeyer and Chris de Burgh sing for a good cause.
Granted, some of these 200,000 must have been US expatriates. But the majority were Germans celebrating their somewhat bizzare love affair with Barack Obama. “Obama for Kanzler”, Obama for German Chancellor, one sign sticking out of the crowd read in hopeless Denglisch, this mixture of German (Deutsch) and English that has become so common in this country, transcending decent bakeries, zu Deutsch: Bäckereien, into “Back-Shops”.There are several reasons why Germans tend to feel so strongly about US elections in general, and US elections with charismatic candidates (Clinton – eh, Bill –, Obama) in particular. First, we think that after watching “Dallas”, “West Wing” and other trailblazing US soaps on TV for decades, we know America and the Americans better than they know themselves. Second, after two terms of George W. Bush, we think that we’d also vote better in US presidential elections than the Americans themselves.
And last but not least, I’m dead sure there is political romanticism in abundance in this country, even if home-bred political personnel like Angela Merkel (the Conservative Chancellor), Kurt Beck (her Social Democrat partner in an uneasy “grand coalition”) or Oskar Lafontaine (the former-Social-Democrat-turned-populist-figurehead-of-the-extreme-left) somewhat fail to inspire such broad-felt romantic encounters right now.
So, why not put one’s heart out to a charming, good-looking, rhetorically gifted young man aspiring to be leader of the US and, yes, of the so-called free world?! Especially as he is not only the first black guy standing a realistic chance to become President of the United States – therefore being the politically most correct candidate, of course –, but reminds people of JFK on top of everything, whom Germans and especially “Berliners” tend to glorify…
Are those 200,000 (and the rest of us, who at least contemplated going, if only we had had a babysitter), then, would-be believers longing to see a new political messiah, as some media spectators had it all figured out? Can Obama – or: Obamania – inspire some new bonding between Americans and Germans, those estranged allies?
To be honest, the rage about Obama at the Siegessäule reminded me more of the hype around baby polar bear Knut in the near-by Berlin zoo two years ago. People found Knut “cute” and went to see him in droves. Now, people find Obama “cool” and come to see him in the Tiergarten park. Which is a synonym for zoo, by the way.
After all, Obama is a phenomenon, inspiring the bright and the young; making more and more people curious, drawing them to the stadiums in tens of thousands. He is a celebrity, huge scale. “Welcome to the show”, one of his many self-declared helpers covered with “Yes, we can!” stickers, called out to people approaching the stage in Berlin.
But should Obama really become the 44th. President of the United States, people will probably react not much different from the way they did when they came to see Knut, the cute fuzzy baby bear, a couple of month after his international media career had started – and found a dirty, bad-tempered adolescent polar bear instead. “This is not the cute white Knut we used to know”, they protested, turned around, and left.
“This is not the cool black Obama we used to know”, Germans might find, should we look at a President Barack
Obama in a couple of months. And turn our backs on him, too, sinking back into our good old habit of Politikverdrossenheit.Not that he’d care much, probably. But don’t count on promotionally effective pictures of cheering crowds in Berlin any more, Obama, once you step down from the Olympus of celebrity and into the flats of realpolitik!
Friday, July 18, 2008
Summer in Germany: The Palatinate
A Master of His Universe
When J. drives his Volkswagen Touareg through the vineyards and sees his empire beyond, stretching from the mountains of the Pfälzerwald out into the valley of the Rhine, he loves to listen to Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. Can't be loud enough.
Looking down at row after row of Riesling, Weißburgunder, Dornfelder grapes. Perfectly planted, perfectly cut they stand, like an army of extremely well trained soldiers. Growing on one of the country’s best soils for vineyards, at the flank of the hills rolling out to the Southwest for an optimum of sun.
Not a monoculture, mind, as there are lots of shrubs, small trees, and meadows, surrounding the vineyards. A good vintner knows that the best wine needs an intact ecosystem, needs birds and insects and plants to provide for the perfect environment that no chemicals or genetic engineering could ever replace.
J. is a vintner with the best theoretical and practical education one can get. And he is one of the most successful vintners of this small town in the southwestern corner of Germany, right on the French border. He is not the type for understatement, even if he is nothing like a nouveau riche kind of guy. Short grey curls, designer stubble. Checkered shirt with short sleeves, hanging loosely over his shorts, nothing fancy. Socks in sandals, even.
While J. points out the different grapes and explains his “philosophy” of wine making, his wife serves at their vineyard's Strausswirtschaft, as the typical local mix between a wine bar and a restaurant is called. Her smile seems a little tight at times.
In the kitchen, J.’s mother reigns. She has been cooking her famous Bratwurst and Bratkartoffeln (roast potatoes) here for almost half a century. A lot of habitués come here for her cooking exclusively. The meat she serves is from pigs that are slaughtered by a butcher in her yard, right under her critical eye.
But he is the aspiring young vintner who transformed the small family vineyard into a cleverly managed business, who refined his vintner's expertise as well as his marketing after he had taken over from his father a couple of decades back.
The winery’s buildings are beautifully renovated, the heavy oak portal opens four days a week to restaurant guests and wine customers, many of them from the upscale region of Karlsruhe across the river Rhine. In J.’s huge cellar, wooden barrels stand next to stainless steel tanks, tradition and high tech mingle in these cool, quiet halls.
J. has three sons. The eldest is already studying viticulture, so the succession is assured. During the last two centuries, a lot of young people left the Palatinate, as the land, split too often among too many offspring, in many cases hardly delivered enough to provide for one family. Many of these younger siblings that couldn’t be provided for, tried to make their own way overseas, and settled in Pennsylvania or other parts of the US.
Today, many wine growers send their children to California – to study different methods and traditions of viticulture in the Napa Valley and other famous wine regions. But it is clear that J. would never consider leaving his home region for good. America? Not for him, and it is clear that he almost feels sorry for us for having to live there, as he sees it.
His pride and his interest are focused on his product, on his peers. He and maybe a handful of other outstanding vintners have brought prosperity to their village that had seen less fortunate times before. He is successful in his world, and what lies behind that world’s limits? – He couldn’t care less.
"All creatures drink joy At the breasts of nature", goes Schiller's text that Beethoven chose for his Ninth symphony, and: "Kisses gave she us, and wine"...
J. may never get as rich as some deftly calculating start-up entrepreneur who sells out to financially potent investors at a certain point. He may never become a cosmopolitan with a refined understanding of or taste for different cultures. But maybe this is a price worth paying for an imperturbable self-confidence?
Joy, beautiful spark of gods...
Looking down at row after row of Riesling, Weißburgunder, Dornfelder grapes. Perfectly planted, perfectly cut they stand, like an army of extremely well trained soldiers. Growing on one of the country’s best soils for vineyards, at the flank of the hills rolling out to the Southwest for an optimum of sun.
Not a monoculture, mind, as there are lots of shrubs, small trees, and meadows, surrounding the vineyards. A good vintner knows that the best wine needs an intact ecosystem, needs birds and insects and plants to provide for the perfect environment that no chemicals or genetic engineering could ever replace.
J. is a vintner with the best theoretical and practical education one can get. And he is one of the most successful vintners of this small town in the southwestern corner of Germany, right on the French border. He is not the type for understatement, even if he is nothing like a nouveau riche kind of guy. Short grey curls, designer stubble. Checkered shirt with short sleeves, hanging loosely over his shorts, nothing fancy. Socks in sandals, even.
While J. points out the different grapes and explains his “philosophy” of wine making, his wife serves at their vineyard's Strausswirtschaft, as the typical local mix between a wine bar and a restaurant is called. Her smile seems a little tight at times.
In the kitchen, J.’s mother reigns. She has been cooking her famous Bratwurst and Bratkartoffeln (roast potatoes) here for almost half a century. A lot of habitués come here for her cooking exclusively. The meat she serves is from pigs that are slaughtered by a butcher in her yard, right under her critical eye.
But he is the aspiring young vintner who transformed the small family vineyard into a cleverly managed business, who refined his vintner's expertise as well as his marketing after he had taken over from his father a couple of decades back.
The winery’s buildings are beautifully renovated, the heavy oak portal opens four days a week to restaurant guests and wine customers, many of them from the upscale region of Karlsruhe across the river Rhine. In J.’s huge cellar, wooden barrels stand next to stainless steel tanks, tradition and high tech mingle in these cool, quiet halls.
J. has three sons. The eldest is already studying viticulture, so the succession is assured. During the last two centuries, a lot of young people left the Palatinate, as the land, split too often among too many offspring, in many cases hardly delivered enough to provide for one family. Many of these younger siblings that couldn’t be provided for, tried to make their own way overseas, and settled in Pennsylvania or other parts of the US.
Today, many wine growers send their children to California – to study different methods and traditions of viticulture in the Napa Valley and other famous wine regions. But it is clear that J. would never consider leaving his home region for good. America? Not for him, and it is clear that he almost feels sorry for us for having to live there, as he sees it.
His pride and his interest are focused on his product, on his peers. He and maybe a handful of other outstanding vintners have brought prosperity to their village that had seen less fortunate times before. He is successful in his world, and what lies behind that world’s limits? – He couldn’t care less.
"All creatures drink joy At the breasts of nature", goes Schiller's text that Beethoven chose for his Ninth symphony, and: "Kisses gave she us, and wine"...
J. may never get as rich as some deftly calculating start-up entrepreneur who sells out to financially potent investors at a certain point. He may never become a cosmopolitan with a refined understanding of or taste for different cultures. But maybe this is a price worth paying for an imperturbable self-confidence?
Joy, beautiful spark of gods...
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Summer in Germany: The Rheinland
City on the Rhine I: Cologne
Köln Hauptbahnhof: the central train station
Cologne Cathedral and the Ludwig Museum
river promenade
"Südkai": My favourite lounge
Lukas Podolski´s new apartment will be right here: Kranhäuser in Cologne
City on the Rhine II: Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf´s skyline
Mannesmann tower
City on the Rhine II: Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf´s skyline
Mannesmann tower
The new harbour
Waterside promenadeSaturday, June 28, 2008
Heroes here and there
Most certainly, this was and is not intended to be a journal on soccer. But I have to write about soccer at least once more. Simply because I bumped into two very different kinds of heroes on your side and on this side of the Atlantic lately.
Here, it is a tiny soccer player who definitely ascended to heroic status last Wednesday. His name is Philipp Lahm, and his last name ironically means "lame", although he is an amazingly fast runner. He is the most likeable hero one could ever imagine. He is probably also the most typical modern (West) German kind of hero I can imagine.
First of all, he plays defense - so he's totally unoffensive -, but scored the third and decisive goal of the German national team against Turkey this week (message: You don't need to be on the aggressive side to be successful). He is only 5,6 feet tall and looks like the sort of son-in-law any mother would just love to have in the family. Definitely not on the Goliath side. Although Germany's leading news magazine, "Der Spiegel", ascribes a good measure of sex appeal to "EC Hero Lahm"...
On top of everything, his rising fame even outside the soccer fan community - which began at the world championship in 2006 - seems not to have damaged this guy's golden heart in the least. Among other things, the 24-year-old lends his face to a campaign against speeding on Germany's infamous highways, playing with his being small in physique by declaring: "Speeders are SO cool", showing a tiny distance between his thumb and middle finger. And he founded a charity to support underprivileged children in Europe and Africa. "I had a super childhood, I have always been privileged", he said in an interview. "Now I want to give something back."
The other hero is someone I had more difficulties to accept as such, although he clearly seems to be a very amiable person, too. His name is Danny. He is not famous at all. He is a soldier from New Jersey, and he serves in Iraq.
His picture hung right next to my eight year old son's classroom door, framed by US flags. “We Salute... One Of Our Country’s Many Heroes Fighting In Iraq, Army Private 1st Class Daniel Gabryszewski”, said the poster that the second graders had made. Danny wears an overall in camouflage color. The martial outfit somewhat distracts from the fact that he, like Philipp Lahm, is more on the tiny side.
N. and his classmates wrote to Danny regularly, and he answered their questions by mail. He drives some kind of special army truck, and a New Jersey newspaper printed an article about him.
But why should children be indoctrinated like that, was my first thought when I heard about this campaign. Why do they have to glorify a soldier fighting in a war of which the legitimacy is more than questionable in the first place?!
When I told N.'s teacher, Mrs. M., of my concerns, explaining that Germans in general tended to be rather uneasy with the concept of war heroes for historical reasons, she smiled and said: "I think the children really need someone like that." As she had worked miracles with those second graders before, I didn't object any further.
At the end of the school year, the class organized a charity sale for Danny. They designed posters advertising the event, crafted door knob hangers and fridge magnets, and persuaded their Moms to bake cookies for the sale - in spite of almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit outside.
From the posters I learned that "their" soldier has his king-of-hearts qualities, too: On top of "fighting against terrorists and for democracy in Iraq", as N. told me in a tone of utter conviction that made me cringe, Danny takes care of stray puppies, and he supports poor children in Iraq with school materials.
That's what the second graders' sale was for: Buying pet food for the puppies, and pencils and markers for the children Danny tries to help. Everybody came: teachers, students, parents, siblings. After less than an hour, each and every item had been sold. And the children counted more than 300 dollars in their cash box.
The most important thing, though, was the whole lot of thought and honest work they invested - and their obvious pride in their common project.
I'm still not totally convinced that it is a good idea to make second graders worship soldiers as heroes - even if I have to admit that it is somewhat easier to stand up and be counted on a successful soccer player's side, than on the side of a soldier fighting in a questionable war.
But I sure learned that working for a hero's good cause is a most inspiring activity for children. And when N. was asked whether he was looking forward to go to Germany for the summer, he said that he sure was, but that there was just one thing he really regretted: That he was going to miss the picnic his classmates were planning in July - for Danny, while the soldier from New Jersey would be on vacation at home.
Here, it is a tiny soccer player who definitely ascended to heroic status last Wednesday. His name is Philipp Lahm, and his last name ironically means "lame", although he is an amazingly fast runner. He is the most likeable hero one could ever imagine. He is probably also the most typical modern (West) German kind of hero I can imagine.
First of all, he plays defense - so he's totally unoffensive -, but scored the third and decisive goal of the German national team against Turkey this week (message: You don't need to be on the aggressive side to be successful). He is only 5,6 feet tall and looks like the sort of son-in-law any mother would just love to have in the family. Definitely not on the Goliath side. Although Germany's leading news magazine, "Der Spiegel", ascribes a good measure of sex appeal to "EC Hero Lahm"...
On top of everything, his rising fame even outside the soccer fan community - which began at the world championship in 2006 - seems not to have damaged this guy's golden heart in the least. Among other things, the 24-year-old lends his face to a campaign against speeding on Germany's infamous highways, playing with his being small in physique by declaring: "Speeders are SO cool", showing a tiny distance between his thumb and middle finger. And he founded a charity to support underprivileged children in Europe and Africa. "I had a super childhood, I have always been privileged", he said in an interview. "Now I want to give something back."The other hero is someone I had more difficulties to accept as such, although he clearly seems to be a very amiable person, too. His name is Danny. He is not famous at all. He is a soldier from New Jersey, and he serves in Iraq.
His picture hung right next to my eight year old son's classroom door, framed by US flags. “We Salute... One Of Our Country’s Many Heroes Fighting In Iraq, Army Private 1st Class Daniel Gabryszewski”, said the poster that the second graders had made. Danny wears an overall in camouflage color. The martial outfit somewhat distracts from the fact that he, like Philipp Lahm, is more on the tiny side.N. and his classmates wrote to Danny regularly, and he answered their questions by mail. He drives some kind of special army truck, and a New Jersey newspaper printed an article about him.
But why should children be indoctrinated like that, was my first thought when I heard about this campaign. Why do they have to glorify a soldier fighting in a war of which the legitimacy is more than questionable in the first place?!
When I told N.'s teacher, Mrs. M., of my concerns, explaining that Germans in general tended to be rather uneasy with the concept of war heroes for historical reasons, she smiled and said: "I think the children really need someone like that." As she had worked miracles with those second graders before, I didn't object any further.
At the end of the school year, the class organized a charity sale for Danny. They designed posters advertising the event, crafted door knob hangers and fridge magnets, and persuaded their Moms to bake cookies for the sale - in spite of almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit outside.
From the posters I learned that "their" soldier has his king-of-hearts qualities, too: On top of "fighting against terrorists and for democracy in Iraq", as N. told me in a tone of utter conviction that made me cringe, Danny takes care of stray puppies, and he supports poor children in Iraq with school materials.
That's what the second graders' sale was for: Buying pet food for the puppies, and pencils and markers for the children Danny tries to help. Everybody came: teachers, students, parents, siblings. After less than an hour, each and every item had been sold. And the children counted more than 300 dollars in their cash box.
The most important thing, though, was the whole lot of thought and honest work they invested - and their obvious pride in their common project.
I'm still not totally convinced that it is a good idea to make second graders worship soldiers as heroes - even if I have to admit that it is somewhat easier to stand up and be counted on a successful soccer player's side, than on the side of a soldier fighting in a questionable war.
But I sure learned that working for a hero's good cause is a most inspiring activity for children. And when N. was asked whether he was looking forward to go to Germany for the summer, he said that he sure was, but that there was just one thing he really regretted: That he was going to miss the picnic his classmates were planning in July - for Danny, while the soldier from New Jersey would be on vacation at home.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Soccer sensations
Cologne/Haan, June 25
The first thing that happened after we had made it out of the Cologne airport last Friday was that N. stepped into dog poop. Won't be the last time, I guess.
One tends to forget these things after ten months of absence. Germany has pretty straight laws against leaving dog poop on the sidewalk, but hardly anywhere are they strictly enforced. In Berlin, for example (probably the German dog capital, too), you shouldn't ever walk through the streets with your eyes simply on people, sights, or traffic lights. At least half of one's attention should be focused on scanning the sidewalk for possible turds.
Things soon got better, though. The weather is gorgeous - seems there IS going to be a summer in Europe this year. And yesterday, when I stepped out of the Cologne railway station, the first thing I saw was a guy picking up his dog's smelly legacy from the sidewalk.
Then, of course, the whole country is in soccer euphoria. Flags everywhere. Hanging out of windows, sticking on cars (eight was the highest number of flags I have counted on a single car), even on baby strollers. Hardly a bar, café, or restaurant that hasn't installed huge TV screens to encourage - and profit from - the collective worshipping of the Soccer God.
Right now, N. (my son), his father (my husband), and his grandfather (my father) are watching the semi final match, Germany against Turkey. Three generations, all experts, of course. Cursing, brawling, yelling, lamenting. The German team is playing like a bunch of toddlers in a sandbox. The coach should be fired and sent to Siberia. The Swiss referee is a partial imbecile (pro-Turkish, of course). And now the TV lines from Basel broke down on top of everything. For the second time. Unbelievable. The score is 1:1.
I'm not a big soccer fan. I even used to hate late Saturday afternoons, when every family in West Germany had to go home from whatever activity they were engaged in because Daddy absolutely had to watch the "Sportschau" on TV, showing the games of the national soccer league.
But I have to admit that I am once again moved by the cheerful patriotism that Germans have been exercising at least in the context of international soccer championships for the last two years. It started 2006 with the World Championship in Germany, which our family experienced during our last summer as residents of Berlin. When Jürgen Klinsmann and his men became heroes. When the whole country was happy. And for the first time, the world liked us. Even more important, we finally seemed to like ourselves.
There are more than solid reasons to hate and fear any German nationalism, of
course. But two years as immigrant in the US have made it pretty clear to me that without a healthy dose of patriotism, a country's identity and self confidence probably won't be worth much. And a national identity, a certain feeling of belonging somewhere worth belonging, is something one comes to cherish even more when living as - and sometimes feeling like - a Non-Resident Alien in a foreign country.
There! The German team just scored the third goal against Turkey - it's 3:2 now, 30 seconds before the final whistle. Three generations are jumping up and down on my parents' living room sofa. "We are in the final!", beams N., "maybe we will even become the European champions!" Now the TV shows half a million soccer fans, cheering and celebrating in front of the Brandenburger Tor in Berlin.
Honestly, I couldn't care less whether Germany is soccer champion or not. But seeing all these people celebrate their team and their country, makes me feel just happy to be one of them.
Even if that includes people whose "best friend's" dog poop I sometimes cannot completely avoid.
The first thing that happened after we had made it out of the Cologne airport last Friday was that N. stepped into dog poop. Won't be the last time, I guess.
One tends to forget these things after ten months of absence. Germany has pretty straight laws against leaving dog poop on the sidewalk, but hardly anywhere are they strictly enforced. In Berlin, for example (probably the German dog capital, too), you shouldn't ever walk through the streets with your eyes simply on people, sights, or traffic lights. At least half of one's attention should be focused on scanning the sidewalk for possible turds.
Things soon got better, though. The weather is gorgeous - seems there IS going to be a summer in Europe this year. And yesterday, when I stepped out of the Cologne railway station, the first thing I saw was a guy picking up his dog's smelly legacy from the sidewalk.
Then, of course, the whole country is in soccer euphoria. Flags everywhere. Hanging out of windows, sticking on cars (eight was the highest number of flags I have counted on a single car), even on baby strollers. Hardly a bar, café, or restaurant that hasn't installed huge TV screens to encourage - and profit from - the collective worshipping of the Soccer God.Right now, N. (my son), his father (my husband), and his grandfather (my father) are watching the semi final match, Germany against Turkey. Three generations, all experts, of course. Cursing, brawling, yelling, lamenting. The German team is playing like a bunch of toddlers in a sandbox. The coach should be fired and sent to Siberia. The Swiss referee is a partial imbecile (pro-Turkish, of course). And now the TV lines from Basel broke down on top of everything. For the second time. Unbelievable. The score is 1:1.
I'm not a big soccer fan. I even used to hate late Saturday afternoons, when every family in West Germany had to go home from whatever activity they were engaged in because Daddy absolutely had to watch the "Sportschau" on TV, showing the games of the national soccer league.
But I have to admit that I am once again moved by the cheerful patriotism that Germans have been exercising at least in the context of international soccer championships for the last two years. It started 2006 with the World Championship in Germany, which our family experienced during our last summer as residents of Berlin. When Jürgen Klinsmann and his men became heroes. When the whole country was happy. And for the first time, the world liked us. Even more important, we finally seemed to like ourselves.
There are more than solid reasons to hate and fear any German nationalism, of
course. But two years as immigrant in the US have made it pretty clear to me that without a healthy dose of patriotism, a country's identity and self confidence probably won't be worth much. And a national identity, a certain feeling of belonging somewhere worth belonging, is something one comes to cherish even more when living as - and sometimes feeling like - a Non-Resident Alien in a foreign country.There! The German team just scored the third goal against Turkey - it's 3:2 now, 30 seconds before the final whistle. Three generations are jumping up and down on my parents' living room sofa. "We are in the final!", beams N., "maybe we will even become the European champions!" Now the TV shows half a million soccer fans, cheering and celebrating in front of the Brandenburger Tor in Berlin.
Honestly, I couldn't care less whether Germany is soccer champion or not. But seeing all these people celebrate their team and their country, makes me feel just happy to be one of them.
Even if that includes people whose "best friend's" dog poop I sometimes cannot completely avoid.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
All About Bubbles
There are lots of things one gets used to after living in the United States for more than one year. That everybody asks you how you are, but nobody wants to know. That a “7” in handwriting doesn't come with a dash in the middle. Even this stubborn resistance against the metric system.
What I haven't got used to, though, is the overwhelming presence of economic excess.
At least in this part of the country, where a seven-year-old boy once expertly asked me whether we were paying for our car "on a monthly basis", an automobile with less than six cylinders simply doesn't seem to feel right.
When my neighbor D. was pregnant with her second child, her girlfriends gave her huge gift bags full of expensive clothes at her so-called baby shower. My son, who turned eight this month, got a couple of hundred dollars' worth of birthday presents from his friends (or rather from their parents).
On a larger scale, law firms and enterprises of the financial sector compete for graduates from elite colleges by offering six-figure salaries for their first year on the job. Getting rich and retiring by the age of 35 has become not an unrealistic goal among twenty-somethings at Wall Street.
As we have also learned during the past few months, a lot of people with no financial resources whatsoever were given - and accepted - hazardous mortgages from major banks. Mortgages they could never seriously be expected to pay back.
And why shouldn’t they go for it? Didn’t even some politicians and NGOs actually embrace subprime mortgages as a means to give poor people the chance to own a home, too? Didn’t the whole country get used to living with huge deficits in its federal budget as well as in its trade? And hadn’t everybody lived quite comfortably with spending, on average, more money than he or she actually earns? The national savings rate has been in the negative since 2005. But why bother if one had got used to the value of homes growing at a double-digit rate every year?
Now, Americans watch the mortgage crisis expand and the stock markets crash. Their's, and those of other countries around the world. Concerns grow that a major recession is going to follow suit.
And not only do the wealthy lose money. Middle class people and families with low income stand to lose their homes and investments they rely on for their old age. Cities face bankruptcy because of the real estate market collapsing in whole districts.
Not that there hadn't been warnings in abundance. For someone coming from a part of the world where economies tend to suffer from over-regulation (and where people tend to put their money into savings accounts with ridiculous interest rates, rather than either spending or investing it), it was fascinating to watch the mortgage crisis evolve with the Fed, the government, and other institutions looking the other way. While the financial industry turned ever more creative in "redistributing" risks as if they could make them dissappear.
As a student of American history, I had already marveled at the excesses of the so-called Gilded Age towards the end of the 19th century, when “robber barons” like Rockefeller, Carnegie, and J.P. Morgan dominated the scene until these early financial heydays ended with the Panic of 1893.
Since then, America has become even more of a “Bubble Economy”, as Eric Janszen, founder of the investment website iTulip, argues in the February issue of Harper’s Magazine. (Janszen, and iTulip, became famous for predicting and commenting on the burst of the dot.com bubble in 2000.)
And no end is in sight, according to Jantzen: He writes that what he calls the FIRE sector – Finance, Insurance and Real-Estate businesses – has successfully replaced the business cycles which had at least been connected to the economy’s fundamental value and health, with a cycle of “shared speculative hallucinations”. Helped by media, governments and legislators, they pick out a certain sector and inflate it with capital, thus creating a perpetuum mobile of rising assets for as long as the hallucination lasts.
To cover their losses after one bubble bursts, the author concludes, financiers will have to create an even bigger new one. And a new bubble might already be well on its way: Janszen predicts alternative energies and infrastructure to be the next target. Not that those sectors didn’t need investment, he writes. But odds were that the lion’s share of the bubble trillions would end up in shares and not in actual new industries or infrastructure.
Janszen doesn’t leave much hope for any “change” of this system from the political side; on the contrary: Following Al Gore and the latest media hype, presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton have already begun to embrace alternative energies as a political key topic, thereby only delivering one more crucial ingredient for FIRE’s success in creating a new bubble.
One might add that financial sector’s powerful grip on the US economy does also result from the simple fact that alongside the bubbles, the sector itself has grown into huge dimensions. FIRE nowadays stands for more than 20 percent of America’s GDP.
Last but not least, the sector has been extremely successful in luring a major part of the country’s intellectual talent into its own system. Take the example of Princeton University: Six out of ten undergraduate students go from this university straight to Wall Street. Needless to say that the best get hired in advance, before they even graduate.
At least right now, it seems hard to imagine a way out of the vicious circle of bubble economy. Or, as Janszen laconically puts it: “Given the current state of our economy, the only thing worse than a new bubble would be its absence.”
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