Road Trip II

Well, I'm finally getting around to sharing the results of my fact-finding trip to Moscow over the New Year's break. I have to say that the Russian authorities cooperated fully despite the stakes involved in my investigation. I was provided with an excellent translator (Joseph Kellner) who also arranged my accommodations with a friendly local. And every restaurant seemed to have specially reduced prices just for my visit (at least according to my ruble exchange calculations). Lastly, everywhere I went the police were out in force to make sure no one tried to impede my fact collecting. There was one misunderstanding where an officer yelled at me as if I was just some random tourist, but I can forgive him since I was trying to blend in by wearing normal clothing. Although such hospitality is materially irrelevant to my mission in Russia, I would be naive if I didn't admit that such friendliness could influence the official report in some fashion or another.

But before I even got to Russia, my translator and I decided to take a completely unofficial pleasure trip around Germany for Christmas.  Please ignore the strange discontinuity in my report. I tried long and hard to find an excuse for these random vacation photos, but I'm sure the committee enjoys looking at random peoples' photos as much as the next person.

The first stop was Berlin. Joey had never been to Germany so it was my job to introduce him to the history of the country which we pretty quickly learned only consists of the Holocaust (more to come on that later). This is the Brandenburg Gate where Ronald Reagan--the ur-inspiration for my trip to Russia--spoke back in 1987. Who'd a thunk back then that we'd all someday be honoring a Hollywood actor as the architect of world peace and western prosperity in 2015. Not me!

One curious thing about modern Germany is that they are the only industrialized country to still produce and consume Capri Sun (or 'Capri-Sonne' in German) in large quantities. This is us at Mustafa's, a famous Kebab place in Berlin where I took Joey immediately after landing. I was mocked for buying the capri sun but after cooling off my palette after the spicy kebab with the sugary sweet orange-powder liquid beverage, I was the one who was laughing.

Germans can seem cold and rude when you first meet them but they open up pretty quickly.

And here we are at the famous Berlin Wall. I personally think the controversy surrounding the wall is a result of a big east-west cultural misunderstanding. In west German culture walls had become semiotic markers for the insecurity of totalitarian states reliant on violence for legitimacy and the accompanying repression and lack of basic freedoms like travel. In east German culture, however, walls generally represented large, well-ordered piles of bricks dividing you from where you really wanted to go. So it was all a big misunderstanding.

I think that in the course of the 10 days we spent traveling around Germany from December 19th to December 29th from Berlin to Leipzig, from Cologne to Munich, we probably visited 9 different Christmas Markets. Christmas Markets are a famous mid-winter German tradition where hundreds of stalls set up shop on every German city's central square selling traditional Christmas delicacies like Gluhwein (mulled wine) and Kartoffelpuffer (hash-brown type things) as well as ornaments, honey, sausages, and a whole bunch of other things. This picture doesn't do justice to all the time spent at Christmas markets and all the amazing things we consumed, but just take my word for it.

Wurst

And off to Cologne!

To See Julia!!!

A really, really long wurst in Cologne. I'm still picking pieces of it out of my mustache.

The Cologne Cathedral took about 632 years to build and stands 515 ft tall. But none of us were prepared for how far Joey's jaw would drop upon seeing this structure. Living in Europe inoculates you a bit to just how crazy it is that dark-aged, uneducated, undernourished stunted mini-people could build such massive churches.

We also went to nearby Essen which at one point in time was the center of Germany's industrial revolution. The coal/steel plants are now all abandoned and this one has been turned into an ice-skating rink. It was a hipster's paradise. Ice-skating in the massive belly of an abandoned steelwork. It was pretty dope/dank.

For Christmas, we went to a little town called Konz near Trier where Julia's family has a vacation home. It was idyllic. We went to church on Christmas eve, sang Christmas hymns, and ate some Eucharist.

We then went home to eat some more. Julia's mom made soooo much delicious food for us over Christmas. Salmon, Roulade (don't know how to translate that), pies, cheese, and so much else. Julia's mom and two brothers are pictured here in a happier moment.

The entire area around Trier and Konz is Germany's #1 wine-growing region. It is the Mosel/Saar river valley and produces a ton of white Riesling wine. It's pretty hilly and the wine is somehow influenced by the slopes on which the grapes are grown. On Christmas morning we went on a long walk around the mini-mountain next to Julia's home. If you could hear the picture below, you'd hear me asking Julia's father about German politics and both of us expressing our strong support of Mutti Angela.

We tried on 19-century hats and ostentatious Christian jewelry trying to find the perfect look between a dandy and an evangelical.

Wow, this post is getting long. We went to Luxemburg. I'd never been there and still don't feel like I have. Driving through the entire country takes about an hour. What a wimp country. I think the point of the country is that it is a real geographical location but a fake country so that big companies can store their money there and not pay taxes where they actually do business. The model worked so well that the former president of Luxemburg is now the EU Commission president (Claude van Juncker)

We now come to what quickly became the main theme of our travels. In Berlin, we of course saw the Holocaust Memorial, we saw the Stolperstein, the Berlin Wall, and many other scars and scabs from the 20th-century. Being so close to France in Trier, we decided to go and see the WWI battlefield of Verdun. It was a cold day, rainy, snowy, and foggy. The cemeteries went on and on. It was still 2014 and thus 100 years since the beginning of the war.

As you can see in the photos above and below, one of the interesting features of Verdun is how the battle impacted the basic landscape of the area. I don't know if it was the massive year-long shelling, or the digging of hundreds of kilometers of trenches, or the movement of millions of men, horses, and vehicles over the land that caused this, but this is now what Verdun looks like. As you can see, the forest floor is pocked-marked and full of little mounds. Stay-tuned for more battlefields...

After Trier, we still had a few days left in Germany and decided to make a mad dash across the country to what many describe as Germany's Texas: Bavaria. Bavaria is religious, rowdy, rural, full of people wearing traditional dress like lederhosen, and even has a party working for independence from Germany.  In reality, we were only in Bavaria's capital city, Munich, which is actually quite liberal. But luckily, the Munich liberals don't have any objection to Bavaria's famous traditional cuisine such as beer, bread dumplings, and large cuts of beef. Joey, as you can see below, was dumbfounded at the quality of German beer (he described Russian beer as similar to the 'liquid you find at the bottom of garbage bags").

And it finally started snowing! It made for an extremely beautiful walk through the main park in Munich, the Englische Garten.

We also visited Dachau, a concentration camp near Munich. No comment.

Moving on to something only slightly happier, we met up with Taylor and David in Munich! David and Taylor were kind enough to invite me to join in on their honeymoon in Germany since my schedule prevented me from attending the wedding. Despite my absence at the wedding, the marriage seems to be thriving. I even hear that David has an exciting musical project starting up this coming Fall. I really think he could be a star if he continues making such wise decisions

And now, the moment we've been waiting for: arrival in Russia. You can immediately tell that everything is different in Russia the moment you try to do something as simple as read. No wonder we can't understand each other! But I had anticipated such issues. I was practicing cyrillic for weeks just so I could read the airport's advertisements for Russian digital entrepreunership.  

I knew that if I was to get to the bottom of the issue and avoid being stonewalled, I had to go straight to the center of it all, Red Square. Judging from what I'd seen in a lot of books and TV programs, Red Square seemed to be really important for Russian politics. Soldiers marching around, saluting Politburo members sitting atop Lenin's frozen corpse, with everything happening under the watchful eye of the bulbous orthodox church. I wanted answers and this was the place to get them. Nothing was going to stop me.

Unfortunately, I was quickly deterred by the -20F weather. I took a few pictures as evidence that I tried and then we quickly made our way over to the closest cafe to get some hot cocoa. 

I would've continued my investigation but then Russia just kind of shut down for the rest of my trip because of the New Year's holiday which they take extremely seriously. We were invited by one of Joey's Ruski friends to join a group of Russian youths at a Dacha (a cabin) outside Moscow. We agreed under the condition that no questions about our backgrounds would be asked. I've forgotten all these people names, but they were all very kind despite the fact that I threw up in their bathroom (the second time in as many road trips!)

Yeltsin speaking to us from the dead. Nah, this was actually the moment he turned power over to Putin in 1999 I believe. Good move Yelts.

I didn't realize this photo had been taken but after I calmed down I realized that it perfectly captures how tired I was at that very moment.

After taking the train back to Central Moscow we then boarded another 19 hour train for Stalingrad..whoops, I mean Volgograd. We felt like we just needed to get out of Moscow since it isn't so representative of what Joey considers the "real" Russia: the provinces. Apparently there are no laws in the provinces, no western influences, and everything is super cheap. Volgograd was a logical choice since Joey and I are both pretty interested in the Eastern Front of WWII (from opposing sides) and it was within reasonable distance of Moscow (only 40 hours return trip!). The train ride in itself was a part of the experience. We lived in these four-person cabins, got hot water from the samovar, and I toyed with Joey in chess with the down-time.

I think the thing that struck us both the most about Volgograd was the massive width of the Volga. No wonder the Russians held on to a bridgehead on the west bank so tenaciously. They would have had a hard time getting back.

Mother Russia celebrating impaling the fascist German hordes with a sword made of the carcasses of millions of her sons.

Looks pretty even, but black C5 to B7 sets up a queen-king fork with mate in two moves. 

This is Igor, the man from whom Joey is renting a room. Very friendly man who made a lot of incredible Russian food for us during my stay.

Now this is a story that must be told. On January 6th we were out and about on the streets of Moscow on our way to attend a midnight Orthodox Christmas mass (pictured below). It was extremely cold (-23F). Suddenly, upon turning a corner, we noticed some strange light streaks in the sky. As you can kind of make out in this picture, they were of all different colors without any clear arrangement. We had no idea what they could be. They didn't look anything like the northern lights, or anything like colored search lights (even if such things existed). The Russian lady next to us insisted that it was a Christmas miracle from God and that we needed to quickly repent. Joey began to tell me that the likelihood of him becoming Christian just shot up 100% (from 2% to 4%) and I was even starting to doubt my doubt. When we finally got home that night we looked it up and after a while we found out what the phenomenon is. In far-northern climes, when it gets really cold, the humidity in the air causes ice crystals to form. The light from the ground is then reflected in these ice crystals and the resulting light streaks are called "light pillars". They are apparently quite rare and spectacular, as we can testify. 

Pegida

Last night (Monday) I held a speech about my dissertation topic to this crowd in Leipzig:

As you can see, people had very strong feelings for and against my comments, but I think the majority liked it. Actually, what you are seeing here is the "anti-Legida" rally in downtown Leipzig. I was in attendance but didn't hold any speech. For those of you not following domestic German politics, "Legida" is an off-shoot movement of the original "Pegida" mass folk movement based out of nearby Dresden. Before you inevitably ask why anyone would be against such a poorly-named, but harmless-sounding folk movement, let me fill you in on the background. 

Starting in October of last year, this teutonic-looking fellow by the name of Lutz Bachmann began organizing a public protest every Monday evening in Dresden under the auspices of an organization he had established named "Pegida". Pegida is an acronym if you were wondering. It stands for "Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes" (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamification of the West). While Herr Bachmann should be congratulated for coming up with a winning name for his movement--it has just the right number of vowels and consonants in the right places to qualify as a word--his movement's aims should not be commended. Capitalizing on recent turmoil in the Middle East (such as the gruesome actions of ISIS which spilled over into Germany) and what is already a major European unease with Muslim immigrants and refugees, Bachmann's Pegida movement calls together all Germans who fear that their western society is at risk of being swept away by a tide of muslim immigrants. In recent formulations of the movement's goals, Bachmann has called for decreasing the amount of accepted Refugees, demanded that the duty to integrate be made a part of the constitution, denounced Islamic 'misogyny' and sharia law' and demanded that Germany generally adopt a stricter immigration policy akin to Switzerland. 

As you can see in the chart above, Pegida's weekly walks quickly gathered steam. In October, only a handful of people showed up at these rallies. But by November, the number had grown to 5,000 or so each week and yesterday that number (in Dresden) was 30,000. Quick explanatory note: you may be wondering what the significance of Monday is. Demonstrating publicly on Monday evenings is an important tradition in East Germany. Back in 1989, a movement began where East Germans would gather on Monday evenings in churches (especially in Leipzig) to express their dissatisfaction with the communist regime. For Germans, this movement is seen as a major catalyst for the fall of the wall and its slogan of "Wir Sind das Volk" (We are the people) is a rallying cry for a very German-style grass-roots ideal of democratic and governmental transparency. Pegida directly evokes this tradition by meeting on Mondays and appropriating this chant (Wir sind das Volk) as an indictment of political elites who they feel no longer listen to the concerns of ordinary Aryans. 

But with their massive growth, Pegida now has the attention of all of Germany. For a society very sensitive to any right-wing movement, this is scary stuff. German political elites have been quick to denounce the movement as "Islamfeindlich" (anti-Islamic) and racist. Most observers are quick to point out that its stronghold--Dresden--is home to the least number of non-Caucasian residents anywhere in Germany and that Pegida's unrealistic fears of a Germany where German soon won't be spoken on the street are really stand-ins for a deeper frustration with life. Another important note: Dresden isn't just Pegida's stronghold. It is also the stronghold of contemporary German neo-Nazism. Every year on February 13th large numbers of neo-Nazis gather in Dresden to commemorate the Dresden fire-bombing and to march for a more just world...or something like that. I guess that is an important piece of background information as well. And then there is the Fuhrer himself: Lutz Bachmann. Bachmann served two years in prison (after being extradited from South Africa where he had fled) for burglary, selling cocaine, and driving drunk. Not exactly the best example of citizenship if you ask me.

Up until recently, popular right-wing parties hadn't found fertile ground in Germany. France is well-known for Le Pen's FN and a number of Scandinavian countries sport anti-immigration parties that do fairly well in elections. But as discontent with the EU and anxiety about islamic extremism have boiled over recently, this last election cycle saw the first viable right-wing party in Germany emerge: the AfD. It has been interesting to see how their leaders have been very careful to take a different line than the major parties in talking about Pegida. These protestors are potential voters for AfD and they've been very careful to say that their concerns are legitimate and should be listened to. Uh-huh. 

Now, with that background, I can return to the counter-protest last night. Leipzig is a very young city and our numbers far exceeded the new Leipzig branch of Pegida (thus "Legida") marchers (40,000 counter-protestors vs. 7,000 Legida). German students are very politically active (relative to American youth) and I often chuckle about how earnest they are. Instead of the normal potty-language graffiti that one might find in American toilets, one generally only finds left-wing mottos written in German bathroom stalls: "Say No to Racism!" or "No to Fascism" are common. So I wasn't surprised when my tram ride to Leipzig from Halle was jam-packed with what seemed like every college-student in town. 

There were a lot of great posters as well. One sign read "Bier trinkt das Volk" ("The People drink Beer!" which in German is a play on "We are the people"),  "Gegen die Dresdenisierung Leipzigs" (Against the Dresdenization of Leipzig), and this one below which says "Trailer Parks against ignorant, nationalistic Assholes". 

One thing that made the demonstration somewhat interesting to me was the ambiguity surrounding just what the Charlie Hebdo attacks meant for the demonstrations. On one hand, the Pegida people clearly sought to use the attacks to legitimize their movement: if you don't think Islam is threatening for Europe after Charlie Hebdo then you are the crazy one. But on the other hand, I saw quite a bit of Charlie Hebdo signs (Je suis Charlie) at the anti-demonstration and we even held a moment of silence for the victims. For the left, the attacks are mostly meaningful as an example of what happens when fundamentalism, hate, and intolerance are allowed to run wild--charges that are as readily applicable to Pegida's stances as they are to muslims. There's something tragic in the fact that such a morally unambiguous act leaves us with no corresponding clarity as to how to respond politically. We just end up accusing one another of misusing or misunderstanding the incident. 

In any case, Pegida (and Legida) won't disappear overnight and there should be many more Monday marches to visit. I suggested to my friends that we should try to mingle sometime with the Legida crowd just to see what they're like. So maybe that will be a future post!

Team America visits Germany

A strange thing happened this week. I started enjoying German food after swearing off the entire national diet last summer after eating 15 bratwursts in one week. I eat lunch everyday in the university cafeteria--by no means the best-prepared German food to be had--but somewhere between the plump, soft bites of my Kartoffelklöße (potato dumplings) and the Hirschgulasch (venison goulash) I decided this country and its food ain't so bad after all.

Even though this change of attitude means that I'll enjoy the rest of my time in Germany much more, it also means that I'll soon lose every last trace of my American identity as I integrate more and more fully into German society.  But before I begin to think currywurst is real food or join an anti-war protest, I will attempt to use my last minutes of American consciousness to describe some thoughts about being an American abroad. This post will at points delve into my general political outlook so look out.

To start things off, I'll begin with a metaphor: being an American abroad (an AA as I'll call it from now on) is a bit like being a hated celebrity, say like...Justin Bieber. Everybody thinks they know the true you, some people are devoted fans, but most think you're an untalented, upstart superficial idiot, and everybody knows everything about what you did last summer (egged your neighbor's house and invaded Iraq), and then judges you for it. Despite this being a perfect metaphor, there's only one thing wrong with it: you didn't personally invade Iraq last summer, your government did. Whereas Biebs personally did egg that house. I suppose it could have been his friends who were over at his house who did it and Biebs then had to take responsibility for it, in which case my initial claim to a perfect metaphor stands. The point being: as an AA you have a high public profile. Politically and culturally, your country has penetrated, pierced, bombed, oozed, streamed, and beamed its way into every corner of the world. You are a known commodity about which everyone has an opinion and they all want to share it with you (in English preferably). Unable to bask in the ignorance that comes with being from Burkina Faso, an American has to answer for its culture often by undergoing a probing to see to what degree you match all the stereotypes: was your high school like the one in all those teen movies? (no, no one drank at my high school), do you own guns? (no, but I wish I did), have you ever tortured anyone? (yes, but it prevented a terrorist attack).

Over the years, I've decided that how an AA deals with its oversized reputation--wether it embraces its American identity or not--is very telling. I'll admit, it is not always easy to make the right choice here. Some wilt under the pressure and become Benedict Arnolds when confronted with ad hominem counterfactual conspiracy theories about supposed CIA-supported coups in Nicaragua, Guatemala, South Vietnam, Chile, Iran, Haiti, and Cuba, unilateral oil wars in Iraq, and a blank-check to the apartheid-regime in Israel. It's easy in such situations to feel uncomfortable being conflated with the bloated and corrupt political elite of your country. But that is, for better or worse, the choice we face as AAs: either turn our coats and deny that we support neo-imperialism or admit that 'united we stand, divided we fall' and let our individualities be subsumed into the glorious and transcendent national consciousness.

For me, it was a long road to being able to say with Colbert, "I Am America" and authentically embody all the contradictions of America's dynamic and diverse culture in my one person. When I was younger, I had a disdainful, haughty relationship to American patriotism. I would cross two of my fingers as I placed my hand on my heart and mutter the lyrics to "Give Peace a Chance" during the pledge of allegiance every morning in elementary school. Yeah, I was that 4th-grader. Growing up in a particularly patriotic corner of America (Utah Valley--regularly ranked the most conservative county in America), I think my natural contrarianism and early interest for European history made me think that the flag-waving, God-bless-America, gas-guzzling variety of American patriotism was provincial and uncultured (how foolish I was then!). I yearned for the cosmopolitan city lifestyle: living in an apartment in a European or east-coast city, with public transportation right outside my door, and hearing foreign languages being spoken while riding to the new Baroque exhibit at the Musée d'art. In other words, I was a lot like the prodigal son who had outgrown his home in some dusty Judaean province and longed to re-fashion himself as a liberated left-leaning cosmopolitan patsy under the bright-lights of first-century Jerusalem.

But luckily, a little world-traveling in my European mecca along with a healthy dose of ressentiment and reactionism helped to set me straight. From the age of 19 to 29 (my current age) I spent almost five years in Europe. First as a mormon missionary in Norway, then as a master's student in England, a number of summers in Germany, and now on a one-year research fellowship in Germany. Eager to embrace what I assumed was a bastion of reason, moderation, and benevolent pluralism, I happily sat myself down at the feet of my European friends to hear what wisdom they had to share with me. But I quickly experienced something quite different. Instead of nodding my head vigorously as I heard Americans described as fat, violent, gun-toting religious ignoramuses, I discovered a previously unknown sympathy with my American compatriots. Something in the uninformed stereotyping of the other shattered my idea of a Europe free of regional blinders or pride. Pretty soon I stopped attending soccer-viewing parties and the local chapter of the anti-capitalist revolutionary student club. One heard from my lips less and less frequently denunciations of neo-liberal governmentality and I re-discovered the moral dimensions of American sports-culture. I soon become a practiced apologist for American neo-conservatism and my favorite rhetorical tool was the 'moral equivalency' argument. When confronted with some outlandish and improbable argument about the misuses of American power, all one had to do was point a finger to some problem in Europe, like say, their own history of colonialism and genocide, or their present-day booming weapons-industry. It's a great tool this moral equivalency argument. Instead of having to talk about specifics or admit any guilt in any particular instance, you can just silence the other by questioning their fitness for making a critique in the first place.

Now, to get real for a second, I think this time around in Europe, I am changing my approach a little bit. I am still quite vigorous in denouncing what I think are unfair characterizations of the blessed homeland, but I no longer feel quite as instinctively defensive about defending the less savory aspects of American history or political culture. I think Germany's own confrontation with its past and the lack of defensiveness has been an inspiration for me in this regard. It's hard to find another example of a country whose own recent history is constantly invoked as the measurement for pure evil. I know it was different in the 50s and 60s and that Germans still generally chafe under the world's obsession with Nazism, but overall, I think Germans have set a great example for how to graciously take criticism about their past and national culture and to perform meaningful self-criticism. It seems to me that in order to perform this self-criticism Germans have perhaps embraced an over-the-top rejection of patriotism and nationalism vainly trying to deny that national-identity is in our blood. But that makes sense--if 'German' for so long only meant genocide and fascism then you probably aren't going to happily embrace that identity or name even if it ignores that people sharing the same language, geographic space, and culture do have intertwined destinies however much that can be manipulated.

As for myself, I'm constantly trying to find a way to be open to self-critique of what are very real problems with American power and society while at the same time continuing to feel what I consider a perfectly reasonable pride in a country I consider great in so many ways. Not the least of which is Team America:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOEIruwzf54

The Wurst Post

I'll be the first to admit that life in a small, provincial German town may not offer the forms of excitement that people my age are on the look-out for. There isn't an endless stream of beautiful, thick-framed glasses-wearing18-30 year olds to hang out with, no bowling alleys, and definitely no occupy protests condemning neo-liberal governmentality (there are farmers' markets though!). Since I basically know no one here, my option for entertainment most evenings is limited to either watching the latest Coen brothers film I've downloaded, reading in my internet-less room, or...worst of all...continuing to work. But, on the other hand, being exiled to an area that is as authentically German as can be with very little foreign influence has provided me an up-close look at what traditional German life is like which I otherwise might miss out on in a big city.

And at the top of the list of what makes up 'traditional' German life is German cuisine. In my mind, three types of food stand-out as being the most important to Germans: the wurst, cabbage, and beer. This post is dedicated to the wurst and cabbage with a little reflection on the German character at the end.

Wurst is probably the most emblematic food of Germany with a staggering 1500 regional variants from the classic Bratwurst, Blutwurst (blood sausage), the Frankfurter Bockwurst, Knackwurst, Weisswurst (white sausage), Leberwurst (Liverwurst), and so forth. Each wurst differs slightly depending on the seasoning and the type of meat used (venison and horse seem to be popular locally--I just had a venison wurst for lunch) The local wurst, the Thuringer Rotwurst is apparently quite famous.

Right now there is some sort of festival going on in Gotha and of the 7 stands selling food, 6 of them are selling different types of wurst.

 Traditional German event music consists of old German men playing their favorite American 70s rock with racist Americana as their backdrop.

If you wanted to go out on a limb and ask what the Wurst tells us about the German character, one could possibly say something about how the wurst developed as a product of efficient butchery techniques. Efficiency is something very important to Germans. The wurst is made (or once was) when the butcher took all the scraps from the animal (intestines, fat, organs, blood), mixed them all up and then preserved them by salting and putting them in the intestine casing (the exterior skin of sausages). So it was the way to eat any kind of meat that wasn't fresh which explains its popularity and usefulness. But this attempt to connect wurst to the German psyche is feeble at best. Wurst is just as popular in the rest of continental Europe.

In any case, Germans do eat a lot of meat. No doubt about it. But when Germans aren't eating some form of wurst, they are most likely eating some type of kohl (cabbage). Kohl is another linguistically manifold culinary concept. There are an incredible number of different types of vegetables bearing the name of kohl in German. Rosenkohl (brussel sprouts), Blumenkohl (cauliflower), and Grühnkohl (kale). Then there is Kohlrabi, Rotkohl, and of course the most important form of German cabbage, sauerkraut. Sauerkraut is fermented cabbage slicings and is of course an important condiment put on the Bratwurst.

The other day, I found myself in a lunch conversation with my German colleagues about all the different types of Kohl and the different regional ways of eating or preparing it. I ended up thinking about how the anthropologist Frank Boas highlighted the fact that inuit and saamis have an incredibly developed vocabulary for snow. Being in such close proximity to this natural phenomenon, they have many more words to describe its various forms than people from more southern climes. I had this same sense for the German appreciation of wurst and cabbage and food culture in general. In my opinion, continental europeans' relationship to food is fundamentally different from that of Americans. Even though we have very 'American food' like hamburgers, milkshakes, and so forth, there isn't a strong sense of deeply traditional regional cuisine in the same way as Europe. In the US, our diet is a mish-mash of a hundred different national cuisines and you can pretty much eat however you want wherever you are (despite bbq and grits being especially important to the south). With Europeans, you really stick to traditional cuisine. Sometimes I am really taken aback by how closely my Hungarian friends stick to just eating their national foods.

But this closeness to certain types of food makes sense when you realize how tied Europeans are to their local regions where their ancestors have been settled for hundreds of years. It is very different than Americans who are on average much more likely to move from state to state throughout their lives. Europeans derive so much more of their identity from their local regions than I feel is the case in the US. Each region's cuisine and culinary habits differs a great deal (maybe not to an outsider) from the next region. What type of wurst is popular, what type of chutney or sauce you use, and so forth.

And the average German is very knowledgeable about food in a way that Americans aren't, i.e. it isn't pretentious. I just had a conversation with an Italian friend about how for my generation in the Anglo-world, caring about food, being able to cook, knowing about incredibly obscure vegetables--in other words being a foody--is a very trendy and hip skill to have. As a mark of culture, this I feel would be kind of lost on Europeans. Knowing about food and cooking at home from scratch is just second-nature and how life has always been for Italians, the French or Germans. My italian friend said she is still shocked at the thought of eating food from cans. So I think our generation's pride about cooking with fresh food and gourmet food in general (perhaps as evidenced by our desire to photograph it) is more about the novelty of such a lifestyle and distinguishing ourselves from a reigning food culture of canned or fast-foods inherited from our parents.

Moving from objects to people, one of the things I like about Germany is striking up conversations with older Germans about their past lives. It's a good way to practice German in a non-threatening environment since old people are very egotistical and like to talk about themselves. But that's ok because older Germans have the right to blabber on about their life experiences since recent German history is much more tumultuous and interesting than American history (excluding our grandparents generation of course). For example, just the other day I was at a conference in Marburg and I ended up having dinner with the extremely charismatic organizer, Winfrid Schröder. He started talking about his childhood and specifically about the conservative post-WWII culture that reigned in Germany. He mentioned how his father was a very silent figure who was wounded on the eastern front and how his uncle was a womanizer who then joined the SS--but not just any old humdrum SS unit. He was a member of Hitler's special bodyguard SS division, the 1st SS Panzer division or "Leibstandarte". He was killed sometime during the battle of Berlin. For someone like me, a former WWII buff, this type of personal history always blows my mind. An uncle who was in the SS!!! Not that I think that is cool or anything.

And just yesterday I struck up a conversation with an old lady in the train who was on her way to her home town in eastern Germany to celebrate the 65 anniversary of her confirmation (a German tradition apparently). We started to chat about where she had lived in Germany and she began to tell me about her family's escape from East Germany in 1952. Her family were actually all from West Germany and had only immigrated to East Germany to find work during the 1920s. When the war ended, his father secretly secured a job at a West German company and they facilitated his family's escape through West Berlin. She talked for a while about how they simply had no future in East Germany. If any of them wanted to go to college or a blue-collar job, then they would have to join the party. And this was something they despised having just lived through Nazi times. Towing the line and constant surveillance coupled with economic stagnation didn't sit well with them.

While I am personally a pro-war activist, having a sense of Germany's past of political totalitarianism and state surveillance is important to understanding their approach to contemporary politics. Germany, more than any other state, abhors the idea of a centralized collection of private data under the name of security. They went berserk during the NSA scandal. While I personally see this obsession with privacy as slightly neurotic, it is important to understand this obsession in its historical context. The memory of Hitler and especially of the East German secret services (Stasi) famous surveillance programs has made them wary of any compromise of privacy rights.

On the other hand, and perhaps paradoxically, Germany stands as the example par excellence of a controlled, orderly, and secure society which is achieved through an often inflexible, burdensome, and bewildering (for foreigners) bureaucracy. Germans are often thought of as hyper-rational in their obsession with record-keeping and following protocol. They are careful only to cross the street when the man is green, they exhibited a macabre meticulousness in carrying out and recording the Holocaust, and the Stasi recorded everything about an individual's life down to what they ate in the morning and the kind of trash they produced. This mindset considers it very important that all situations have to be thought out, recorded, and a rule made for how to proceed which then must be strictly followed. Germans today have a saying which sums up this attitude about how this type of micro-management: "Vertrauen ist gut, Kontrolle ist besser" ('trust is good, but control is better').

The rules for entering and leaving the research center at which I work might serve as a small example of this mentality. When I arrived in Gotha, I was given a lengthy orientation of all the things I had to do to properly use the research center building. One of the most peculiar aspects of the protocol for the building is this:

It is a board with slots for all of the fellows and employees using the building. The names are arranged in order of the most senior fellow at the top to the least senior (yours truly) at the bottom. Every time we enter the building we are supposed to move our name-tag over to the 'present' slot to indicate that we are in the building and to move it back to the 'absent' slot when we leave. This way everyone will know if there is anyone else in the building so the last person can know to turn on the alarm. As one German friend said with deep primal satisfaction when he saw it, "sehr praktisch" ("very useful"). As for us foreigners, we kind of roll our eyes. The building really isn't that big and it's pretty easy to know who is still left in the building. But even if it seems like micro-management, it does make entering and exiting more efficient. As a footnote, I also enjoyed one of the instructions in the manual we were given about using the building (yes, we got a 10 page manual for how to use the building). The line in question stated without any irony "If you are the first to enter the building and are assaulted by intruders who force you to enter the alarm deactivation code, be sure to enter the following code which alerts the authorities instead of the usual code..." I kind of laughed at the thought of being assaulted and then calmly thinking through the appropriate protocol delineated for us to use in such a case.

I would say that for most Germans today, the national values of micro-management, hyper-efficiency, and social order on the one hand and a fierce defense of private data on the other don't seem contradictory--and for the most part they're not. Efficiency and order aren't intertwined with a totalitarian system as they once were, but are rather held up as the reason for German success in economic and industrial matters (thanks to German engineering it is one of the world's largest exporters), on-time and expansive public transportation, and an overall highly-functional hybrid welfare state.

Well, I'm pretty tired of this mediocre post. Until next time!