National Security

My friend Birthe, who is German, recently asked me what I though was the biggest difference between Germans and Americans. I think she was expecting me to talk about how Germans won’t jaywalk or their obsession with sorting the trash or something, but really the biggest difference is much harder to pinpoint and much more central to the difference between German and American character. The difference is all about risk, how Americans embrace it and Germans avoid it at all costs.

For instance, it surprised me to learn that many of the people here in Würzburg were born in Würzburg, raised in Würzburg, went to the University of Würzburg, and will live and die all in Würzburg. I know that many Americans live their entire lives in the same town – many of my own family members do – but it is much more common, I think, for young people to leave their hometowns and go out and make their own ways in the world. Maybe they return to their old stomping grounds when they marry and settle down, but those years “away” are somehow central to their adult development, at least in th modern American mythology.

Take the American college experience, for instance. Somehow it’s not a real “college experience” unless it takes place far away from home. But very few German students go to University far from home. Most of them go to the nearest university and even live at home during their bachelor’s, their master’s, and even their PhD. Part of the reason is that in Germany “all universities are created equal,” or at least they try to be. Germany does not have the hierarchy of higher education that America does. There is no Harvard or Yale in Germany. All universities are funded by the State, and the State tries to make sure that they are equally endowed and equally respected, the thinking being that a kid from Sachsen-Anhalt shouldn’t have to go all the way to Baden-Würtemburg if she wants to get a good education. And this is necessary, in a way, because few Germans would take out loans to pay for their education. Here, taking on debt is a financial risk to be avoided at all costs, and so German parents pay for their children’s education out of pocket – all $1,000 a year – and many students live at home so as to avoid another rent payment.

Still, even after they’ve earned their degrees, few of them will move far from home, even for better opportunities. I’ve met several Germans, in fact, who even chose their professions, not based on their personal interests or passions, but based on the opportunities available in their hometowns. Kevin and I know a couple who are working toward their PhDs in Physics, but who plan on abandoning the discipline after graduation, because they plan to live in Bonn, where they are both from, and there are no faculty positions in Physics at the University of Bonn.

This is much more common that one might think. I was never so surprised as one day, when Birthe approached me with a question that was giving her a lot of trouble. She was assigned to write an “advice column” for her English class in response to one “Torn in Thüringen.” “Torn” wrote that she had just been offered her “dream job.” It would provide her with professional advance, creative satisfaction, and “double the salary.” The problem: She would have to relocate two hours away, leave her friends and attempt a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend, and even sell her apartment.

Well, after suffering through the vagaries of the German housing market I can understand her hesitation about finding a new home, but come on! I can’t imagine a single person who wouldn’t jump at the opportunity for the job of their dreams at double the salary. After all, you can make new friends, keep your old ones, and a move is the perfect opportunity for your boyfriend to finally pop the question, and if not, then he wasn’t the right one for you anyway. That is would be the American attitude to this conundrum, I think. But Birthe’s question was not whether or not the woman should accept the job. She should not accept it – selbstverstandlich. Her question was which verb form she should use in replying to the letter – formal or casual.

To me, all of these situations seem to point toward an almost pathological aversion to risk, an aversion that reaches well beyond the professional realm and into the personal as well. I know a German man who works as an editor. He hates his job. He is overworked and underpaid. He doesn’t have time to spend with his family, and yet he would never look for a new job or switch careers. He’s been with the same firm since he graduated from college. A change would be to Fremd – too strange, too risky.

I know another German man at the university here who has never traveled outside of the Bundesland he was born in. Recently, his colleagues made fun of him for his parochialism, and so he decided it was time to have an adventure and see some more of the world. He’s taking a trip to Vienna next week – just 24-hours, there and back. Anything more might be to stressful, too risky.

I know yet another German man at the university here (perhaps it’s a male thing?), who has dated the same girl for the past 12 years, since high school, actually. I have nothing against “high school sweethearts.” I think it’s kind of sweet, actually, that someone could maintain a relationship through one’s tumultuous teens and twenties. But after 12 years, the boy still doesn’t know if he wants to marry the girl! Furthermore, he’s a catch. He’s incredibly attractive, in great shape, super smart, and charming to boot. And the girl? Well, I hate to be shallow, but she’s none of these things. She also has a pack-a-day smoking habit and the dental hygiene to prove it. In short, the boy could do much better, and everyone thinks so, but he would never try, because that might be too risky.

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. My friend Birthe is actually terribly adventurous. She went to Texas as an exchange student in high school and wants to move to England or maybe New Zealand and be a teacher after she graduates. Our friends, the Fakhers, lived in Tokyo and Santa Barbara before settling down here in Würzburg. My own German teacher has lived in the United States, Sweden and Korea, and now that she’s retired, she just picked up and moved to China because she though it would be “ein Abenteuer,” an adventure. There are always exceptions, but I would stress that they are exactly that – exceptions. Most people in Germany seem to live and die all in the same place, and to do everything thing their power to avoid risk, as well as adventure, from choosing careers to choosing life partners.

I don’t mean to make value judgments here. There are many lovely side effects to being so risk adverse and rooted in one place. People develop deep personal relationships and really care for their cities, and their cities profit as a result. Governments that avoid risk tend to refrain from disastrous foreign policy adventures and better protect the welfare of their citizens who are most “at risk.” The older I become and the further I travel from my own Arkansas roots, the more I appreciate this very sort of rooted-ness and sense of community.

On the other hand, when this sort of aversion to risk seeps into the very fabric of a culture, I think it can become very moribund and stifling. How can a society that is so averse to risk invent new technologies or create exciting art? Is it any wonder that right now, America produces the vast majority of the world’s movies, music, fashion and technology? Is it any wonder that brilliant students from all over the world come to study at MIT or Cal-Tech – exactly because they are so much better than all the other universities in the world? Sure, some of our risks prove to be foolhardy and dangerous, like the war in Iraq. And certainly, not every American can feel secure that their jobs will always be there, that their health insurance will always pay for the care they need. But sometimes our risks produce incredible results, like iPods and electricity.

Now, one could make the argument that iPods hardly make up for insufficient healthcare coverage. I’ll grant you that. But maybe it’s because I’m young, and maybe it’s because I haven’t yet felt the cold hard realities of someone faced with exposure to too much risk, but I love our adventurous culture. I love our avant-garde arts, our run-away stock markets. I love that in America, someone could drop out of Harvard, start his own company, revolutionize the way we do everything, make a fortune and then give it all away to fight AIDS and third-world poverty. And I suspect that as son as America becomes comfortable in its prosperity, as soon as it values its security over “what might be,” that America will become just as quietly content as Germany, and some other yearning young country – China, or India perhaps – will take over the mantel as the “center of the world.” And for now at least, I would always prefer to be at the center of it all, for all its risk.

Modern Art is Dead

Recently, I traveled with friends from my German class to Kassel to see the famous Documenta 12, Germany’s biggest art exhibit, which runs this summer from June until September and occurs only every five years. Documenta is second only to the Venice Biennale in terms of raw acreage of modern art, although the Biennale is much more exclusive, the Germans take great pride in the fact that such an important artistic event occurs on home soil. The Germans fancy themselves great connoisseurs of all the modern arts.

Hundreds of thousands of visitors, mostly German, descend on this tiny Hessian city to soak up some Kultur. Even those with no real interest in modern art get caught up in the excitement, spurred on by a month-long media blitz that saturates all the newspapers and television news programs. They go just because they want “to be a part of something so big,” one German told me. My German teacher said that if we make only one trip during our entire stay in Germany, we should “auf jeden Falle” (by all means) go to Documenta. So with that advice in mind, and wanting to be good little German students, my friends and I boarded a slow-moving regional train at 7:00 am on Saturday and went to Kassel to see some Art.

I like to think that I know a thing or two about Art. I mean, I majored in Studio Art, and I took a lot of classes in Art History. I know why “good Art” is ten thousand times better than anything I’ve ever produced. I’ve participated in a lot of group exhibitions and installations. I’ve been to a lot of great museums. I’ve even worked in museums and art galleries, although one of the galleries would better be called “a retail art establishment.” So, I’m not a complete Philistine, right? But I swear to God, there was hardly a single entry in this enormous exhibit, supposedly involving only the world’s best contemporary artists, that I liked or that I would even deign to call Art.

Now, without getting into some pointless philosophical conversation over “What is Art?” for the purposes of the post, I’m going to define Art as: something representative, something beautiful, something that causes deep emotion, or something that could not be created by anyone else. Yet by these simple, virtually all-encompassing criteria, very little at Documenta 12 passed the test.

Let’s take for example, one of the most talked-about entries this year, Peter Friedl’s “The Zoo Story, 2007.” It is nothing more than a large stuffed giraffe, named Brownie, who was housed in a West Bank zoo and died there during an Israeli raid last year. But to know even that much, you would have to have read the whole backstory, otherwise this particular giraffe has no meaning to the casual viewer beyond any other taxidermied animal. And so can you really call it representative? As for beauty, it’s not particularly beautiful, as it was stuffed by an amateur and has seen more wear and tear in the past year than the stuffed animals in the Harvard Zoological Museum have seen in a century. And it wasn’t even the hand of Mr. Friedl that first elevated it to the level of Art. Brownie was first exhibited as one among many animals that had died "as a result of the Israeli attacks" in a small makeshift museum attached to the Palestinian zoo, which is where Mr. Friedl first encountered it. So what is the point of a work of art that doesn’t transfer meaning, that isn’t beautiful to look at, and that isn’t even original? The only criterion it meets is that of producing a strong emotion, that is, my extreme irritation at its utter banality!

[Speaking of banality, it should tell you something about how dull most of the work was, that I noticed several visitors examining large , square off-white patches on the white plaster walls as if they were part of the exhibit. I saw so many people doing this, in fact, that I thought I must be the crazy one. But no, I asked a security guard, who told me that the off-white patches were all that remained of several pieces that had been removed from the exhibit for undisclosed reasons.]

My guess is that the point of installations such as “Zoo Story, 2007,” was merely to be political – “politics” being one of the three official Leitmotifs of this year’s exhibit. Friedl’s piece is just another example of Europe’s general anti-Israeli/pro-Palestinian sentiment. Other European political prejudices were on full display there as well, including a piece condemning genetically modified crops ("The Victor's Garden" and several condemning the war in Iraq. One of the latter consisted of nothing more than a series of news articles about the war and plastered on a white wall.

But that’s not art, that’s political theater, and not particularly good political theater at that. Overall, the production quality was pretty low. By that, I mean that freshman art students at Wellesley have demonstrated better technique with chicken wire and papier maché that what I saw on display in Kassel. And I’m not the only one who thought so. In general, the event’s reception in the English-speaking press was overwhelmingly negative.

The Guardian’s Adrian Searle wrote:

"The content of the current Documenta, and the ways in which the art is displayed and framed by argument, gives pause for serious concern. Documenta 12 is a disaster."

Richard Dorment, of the Daily Telegraph, wrote:

"The artistic directors this year are the freelance curator Roger Buergel and his art historian wife Ruth Noack, and between them they have managed to stage the single worst art exhibition I have ever seen anywhere, ever. Though Documenta 12 has more than 500 works, so much of what is on view is second-rate, chosen for who knows what reason and displayed so eccentrically that [...] it is easy to overlook the few really good things in it. [...] This is a show organised by two pseuds and intended for graduate students and people who don't really like visual art at all."

But as Dorment mentioned, there were “a few really good things” at Kassel, and since I count myself among the number who “really likes visual art,” I’ll devote the rest of this post to giving them some much-deserved attention instead of dwelling on all that is wrong in the contemporary art world.

Although I prefer 2-D art, all of my favorite Kassel pieces were three-dimensional, many of them belonging to that group that so dangerously teeters on the brink of the facile: the “video installation.” And oddly enough, most the artists, or at least the inspiration for the works themselves, were from the Third World.

Lidwien van de Ven’s piece, titled "Damascus, Ommayad Mosque", consists of about 12 minutes of video of a two-year-old girl, who is rolling around on the carpeted floor of a mosque. It’s a view that few Westerners ever get to see, at least not Christians like myself. What was so amazing about it to me was how un-selfconsciously she played by herself, a happy little rolly-polly figure dressed in a bright pink jacket, while the darkly draped adults scuttled about like beetles on some serious and mysterious errand. Also interesting was that the scene was filmed entirely from ground level – eye-level with the child that is. And in the exhibit hall, several of the viewers also sat down on the carpeted floor in front of the television, to watch the footage from start to finish.

Another captivating, though disturbing, video installation was "Who's Listening?" by the Chinese artist Tseng Yu-Chin. In this video Chinese school children take turns squirting each other with big glops of white yogurt. The children are all smiles and seem to be enjoying this rare opportunity to play with their food, but to an adult’s eye, it looks like some pedophiliac bukaké. Most of the adults watching the segment with me were shocked and shuffled around awkwardly for a few minutes before making discreet exits. You didn’t have to read the artist’s statement to know that Tseng was “making a visual plea for the innocence of childhood emotional experience, even if social conventions lead us towards other interpretations.”

But my favorite exhibits contained some element of cultural and political critique with an object that was finely crafted, sensuously tactile, and plainly beautiful. The Nigerian artist Romuald Hazoumé had a number of exhibits made from plastic gasoline cans. From this detritus, he made a series of brightly painted masks, decorated with hair and eyes, mouths and noses. They looked like an interim step between traditional carved African masks and Picasso’s brilliantly colored abstract paintings of those masks. And these were no arts and crafts projects from a child’s “Gifted and Talented” Class. They are really creative – and clever, oil being Nigeria’s greatest wealth and it’s greatest woe.

Hazoumé used these same bottles in another piece, titled "Dream" in which he cut them in half and wove them into the shape of a traditional African fishing boat. Behind the boat is a life-size photograph of an idyllic African beach, like something you would find in a copy of National Geographic or in a brochure for a beach holiday. But they you realize where else you’ve seen boats like this – on the evening news, carrying dozens of African refugees to a new life in Europe, one supposedly better than the postcard perfect one they left behind in Africa. But remember the boat is made of bisected gas cans – with the caps removed – and so these boats, like their real-life counterparts, aren’t seaworthy. Hundreds of African refugees die every year in boats just like these, as they try to cross the uneasy waters of the Mediterranean. And as a final flourish, Hazoumé has tied large glass bottles to the side of his boats – bottles that normally act as bouys. But these bottles are filled with little paper scrolls, the the identity papers of real-life Africans, complete with photos and stamps and all tied up with a rough twine bow. Messages in a bottle.

I suppose critics might call such work kitschy, but I found it beautiful, original, technically brilliant, and quite moving. It’s one of the only works at Documenta to which I would give the title “Art,” and it’s one the only reasons I hold out hope that Modern Art isn’t entirely dead. It just doesn’t come from Europe anymore.

"Making Art": My friends Jinsoo and Chiyo take part in the exhibit “Fairytale” by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. Weiwei imported 1,001 chairs from the (Ming) dynasty to Kassel, and spread them about the exhibit grounds. He also imported 1,001 Chinese people, but to do what exactly, no one seemed to know. By the time we arrived, in August, the 1,001 Chinese had already gone home – we think, but who’s really counting? But the chairs were still there, and thankfully, one was allowed to use them. I’m not sure if it constitutes “Art,” but after walking around Kassel for four hours, it definitely became my favorite exhibit.

That’s one Maß-ive Krug of Beer!

Since we are fast approaching our halfway point here in Germany, I’ve taken it into my head that I need to see as much of this fair country as possible – as soon as possible. And to that end, last weekend I dragged Kevin kicking and screaming to beautiful München, the birthplace of Oktoberfest. Although it is only June, you can easily spend your weekend going from Biergarten to Brauhaus sampling the delights of the Bavarian beers and the brass Oompah bands as if it were already September, which is when, oddly enough, Oktoberfest actually begins. And so, on our first day in München, that’s exactly what we did.

Our first stop was the Biergarten at the Chinesiches Tur in the Englischer Garten. It’s a strange fusion of cultures when you think about it: A traditional German Biergarten, surrounding a five-story-tall Chinese pagoda in the middle of a 18th century English garden, but if I’ve learned anything about the Germans, it’s their love of anything with a hint of Exotisismus. Anyway, the garden is supposedly the largest public garden in the world – even larger than Central Park, or so we heard a tour guide explain to a group of 20 American high school students. “So that means, if you get lost, you die, got it?” Um, got it. But even though Kevin and I didn’t have a map, we managed to stay on course just by following the general flow of traffic, which, after an hour’s brisk walk, led us directly to the Biergarten. (And to think, we were still only halfway through the park!)


Although this Biergarten can seat thousands of people, at five o’clock on an average Saturday afternoon, most are already filled. So I sent Kevin to get beer and pretzels, while I secured us some seats. When he finally returned, he was carrying a Maßkrug of beer the size of one of those Sam's Club peanut butter jars and an enormous pretzel. It looked like a snack for giants! “And where’s mine?” I joked. But Kevin was in no humor, “Do you know how much this cost? It’s like 20 euros!" “Besides," he said, “I couldn’t have carried any more.”

Of course just then, we saw a group of three large German men carrying trays of five beers apiece. Kevin looked chagrined. I joked that they must be carrying them back for their friends and family. But then it was my turn to be chagrined: They sat down at a table by themselves and began promptly throwing back their five liters of beer – and I suspect that was just to start.

In the end one Maßkrug filled with one liter of strong Münchener beer was more than enough for the two of us. Hell, I couldn’t even lift the thing until after Kevin had already drunk most of it! However, one pretzel – even one three times the size of my head – was just not enough. It is commonly believed that the further south you go in Germany, the better the pretzels are, and that München – the cultural and economic capital of Bavaria – has the softest, most buttery pretzels in the world. And being something of a pretzel connoisseur myself, I can attest: They do. So when in München, get your own pretzel, a big one. At the very least, you’ll need all the extra bread to sop up all that beer.

The World is (incredibly) Flat

Last night Kevin and I were flipping channels in desperate search of some entertainment. Unfortunately, as I’ve already documented on this blog, Germany is a TV wasteland. While I can occasionally find interesting reality television programs, the Germans’ taste in movies is unbelievably awful. Although, it’s very awfulness can occasionally be entertaining.

Recently, Kevin and I stumbled upon such prime-time offerings as The Scarlet Buckaneer (1978), (“A pirate and a hot-tempered noblewoman join forces to protect Jamaica from a tyrant”), and Krull (1983), (“A prince and a fellowship of companions set out to rescue his bride from a fortress of alien invaders who have arrived on their home planet.”) The Scarlet Buckaneer, was pretty campy, although I’m sure it’s one of the movies James Earl Jones leaves off his resumé.

But Krull was completely unwatchable. “It may actually be the worst movie of all time,” says Kevin. And he would know. His favorite childhood movie was The Last Starfighter (1984). (“A video-gaming boy, seemingly doomed to stay at his trailer park home all his life, finds himself recruited as a gunner for an alien defense force.”) Our theories are that either Germans can’t tell the difference between good and bad movies or that German television stations are just so cheap they will only buy the movies with the lowest licensing fees – as in “three easy installments of $19.95.”

Anyway, the one channel that regularly shows good movies is Duna, the Hungarian channel. They’ve recently aired Legally Blond, Chocolat, Stripes, and Anne of Avonlea. Well, at least they are good by comparison. Unfortunately, they’re all dubbed into Magyar, the Hungarian language, and Magyar is one of the rare languages spoken in Europe that doesn’t belong to the Indo-European language group. We can’t recognize a single word, but that doesn’t stop us from watching it. Watching good movies in Magyar is better than watching bad movies in German.

So last night Duna was showing some Bollywood movie about a beautiful young Indian woman who falls in love with a dashing British man, while her match-maker mother is trying to arrange a match with an obsequious bore. Although we couldn’t understand a single word, Kevin and I were really enjoying this light-hearted comedy of errors, and we began discussing how Indian culture, with its strict moral code and caste system, is one of the few modern countries where you could still have a story along the lines of a Jane Austen novel.

But after we’d been watching the movie for half an hour or so, we realized that the Bollywood movie actual was a Jane Austen novel – the 2004 hit, Bride & Prejudice -- just updated for modern audiences. This could not have been better luck for us, since Pride & Prejudice (1995) is one of our favorite movies of all time. In fact, Kevin and I have seen it so many times that we can recite the entire script backwards and forwards. What a crazy world it is to be sitting in Germany, watching an Indian remake of a British novel, recorded in English and dubbed into Magyar – and to not understand a single word, but to know the whole story all the same.

Fassschlupfen

This past weekend was the Würzburg wine festival and the major local wineries opened their doors for tours and tastings. As part of the “cultural studies” portion of my German class, the entire class went on field trip to the Staatlischer Hofkeller in the basement of the Residenz, the “oldest continuous winery in all Europe.” (School is sooo much more fun here!)

The visit included a lecture by a local wine master (shown above) in his traditional garb), a wine tasting, and a tour of the actual wine cellar, with its several-hundred-year-old, hand-carved wine casks, or Weinfässer. But my favorite part of the day was a chance to try my hand at Fassschlupfen, crawling in and out of the tiny door at the bottom of the Weinfass.


Believe it or not, this is actually a normal part of the wine-making process. After every bottling, some poor soul has to crawl in each Weinfass and clean it out by hand from the inside. This was the unfortunate task that befell my friend Jack when he worked in a winery in Baden-Würtemburg last year. Still it’s pretty tricky, and you can’t be predisposed toward claustrophobia. But as you can see, I managed to crawl in and out and was awarded an official “Fassschlupfen Diplom,” signed by the Kellermeister himself.

Although it looks difficult, apparently anyone can do this if they learn the right moves. According to our tour guide, an American woman attempted it last year – while she was 8 months pregnant! The way he tells it, she crawled in without any problem, but then became stuck. Apparently they had to wait a whole month before they could get her back out. (Buh-dum, pum, pum)

Krazy for Knut

In case this story has not made it to the States yet, please allow me to introduce you to “Knut, der kleine Eisbär,” who is currently taking Germany by storm. Hardly a day goes by without a story about the baby polar bear on the evening news, and polls say that 58% of Germans follow his story on a daily basis. But, perhaps that’s to be expected. It’s a great story:

BERLIN, Germany – He was the “miracle baby,” the first polar bear born at the Berlin Zoo in more than 30 years. Immediately after birth, Knut (rhymes with “cute”) and his twin brother were abandoned by their mother, 30-year-old Tosca, a former circus performer. His brother died, but Knut has thrived under the 24-hour care of zookeeper Tom Dörflein, who sleeps on a cot by the bear’s pen and bottle feeds him every three hours just like a real baby.

At a mere three months of age, Knut made his world debut to a crowd of thousands. His portrait, by celebrity photographer Annie Leibowitz, has graced the cover of the newly launched German edition of Vanity Fair, and he’s became a symbol of the growing concern over climate change. “No ice, no polar bear,” said Sigmar Gabriel, the German Environment Minister, who is also Knut's godfather.

But soon after his successful debut, Knut fans the world over were stunned when animal rights activists called for him to be put down, saying that it was cruel for an Eisbär to be raised by humans. “Raising him by hand is not appropriate to the species but rather a blatant violation of animal welfare laws,” Frank Albrecht, an animal rights activist and window installer, told the German tabloid Das Bild. “In actual fact, the zoo needs to kill the bear cub – preferably with club, like the kind they use to club baby seals.”

Zoo officials claim they never entertained notions of euthanizing their “little cash cow.” In the months since his birth, the stock price of the publicly-traded zoo has more-than doubled from €2,000 per share to €4,900. In addition, the Berlin Zoo has earned millions in ticket sales and Knut merchandise. Up to 45,000 visitors flood through it’s gates every weekend, and the gift shop has had trouble keeping up with the demand for Knut T-shirts and plush Knut toys. There’s even a Knut song, a video ringtone, and a soon-to-be-released computer game.

In fact, the call for Knut’s death was merely satirical – a Swiftian suggestion, if you will – in response to a decision at the Leipzig Zoo back in December to euthanize a two-day-old sloth named Hugo after he was rejected by his mother. However, the subtleties of this statement were lost on the Eisbärchen’s youngest fans, who protested outside the zoo, holding up placards reading “Knut Must Live” and "We Love Knut.”

“Adults are so mean.” Celina, 6, told the Das Bild, “I would be really sad if little Knut had to die.”

“I thought animal rights activists were supposed to protect animals and didn't want to kill them,” added fellow protestor, Alexander, 4. “They are really silly!”

“I mean, come on,” said Job Bluth, 40, a businessman and freelance magician , “A Babyeisbär is 10 times – no 100 times cuter than a baby sloth. He deserves to live!”

Yet some calls for the bear’s death were not so light-hearted. Yesterday the Berlin Zoo received an anonymous note saying only, “Knut dies, Thursday noon.” Zoo officials say the threat was not taken seriously, and no additional security precautions were put in place, beyond Knut’s 15 full-time bodyguards. Thursday came and went with no attempts on the Bärchen’s life.

However, Dörflein, Knut’s full-time handler and surrogate father, says that despite the bear’s cuteness, even he wants to kill him sometimes, “I could throw him against the wall when everything comes together and he's shat all over his cage at three o'clock in the morning,” he told the Frankfurt’s Rundschau newspaper.

Dorflein, 43, has attracted his own following, mostly women. Knut is rarely seen outside the presence of his handler, who has been described by Der Spiegel as “bearded and tall … and a bit like a bear himself.” When Dörflein took a few days vacation at Easter, Knut became “visibly distressed,” said zoo officials, and he had to cut short his 3-day vacation and return to the zoo. “I coulda killed the little furball right then and there,” he said. “But he was just so darn cute!”

But the day will soon come when the bear is not so cute, nor friendly with humans, even his “father.” Polar bears hit puberty at about a year and soon after become too violent to be alone with humans. At two years, they are ready to mate. Most recently, the zoo in the western German city of Gelsenkirchen hinted that it would be interested in having Knut court two-year-old polar bear Lara. “In theory, he could already come here when he turns one,” a spokeswoman for the Gelsenkirchen Zoo told the news agency DDP. “That way we could produce a little Knut, Jr., every year or two and keep revenues up.”

*Article compiled from English-language storieson Der Spiegel … and a little of my own research.

Watch the music video “Cute Knut”:

Connected!

After two long, lonely months, I finally have Internet access at home. So those of you who are sick of hearing my excuses about “why I don’t write more often,” don’t worry; I’m out of excuses – except maybe for that backlog of e-mail and news and blogs I have to catch up on.

I know I moved to a foreign country and all, so I shouldn’t expect things to be the same as they are back home, but I really never thought that it could take so long to get connected. After moving into my Boston apartment, it took me three days to get Internet service. The day after moving into my Würzburg apartment, I marched myself down to the T-Punkt and signed up for the fastest router and the fanciest service plan that money could buy … and the sales lady told me it would take three weeks, “at the very least.”

I could not quiet find the right German words to express my shock and horror, but I think my face must have said it all. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” she told me (without looking the least bit sorry), “But unfortunately it cannot go any faster.”

In fact, it took five weeks. Five weeks of walking across town to the Internet café once a day, or even twice a day, rain or shine, barefoot, and uphill both ways. Upon hearing about my plight, a German friend recently said, “Isn’t it a shame how dependent we are on the Internet?” As if it were self-evident that we’d all otherwise be sitting in a café, reading a book, or enjoying the beauty of Nature.

“No, it most certainly is not a shame,” I wanted to say. “It is self-evident to me that the Internet is an amazing invention that makes our lives easier and more interesting; keeps us connected to friends, family, and world events; and allows us a creative forum for documenting our debacles in foreign lands. The only thing wrong with the Internet is not having enough of it.”

Not surprisingly, few Germans share that sentiment. What is surprising is how long they are willing to wait for pretty basic services. Kevin and I recently spent an hour trying to make eye contact with a waiter in order to pay our bill, and he’s like, “Where’s the rush?” Three months ago, I applied for a train pass. I’m still waiting for my train pass. Meanwhile, my nonrenewable, temporary pass has expired.

I say this is surprising because the Germans are not exactly famous for their patience. Queuing is a foreign concept in these parts, and the way they push on and off public transportation would make a New Yorker blush. Twice, on trips to France and Italy, I was nearly pushed into the Mediterranean by German tourists eager to get the best snapshot or the best seat on the water-taxi. And yet, they’ll wait three-to-five weeks to receive Internet service, when it need only take three days.

I have finally come to the conclusion that it all boils down to differences in value the two cultures place on the object for which they are waiting. For instance, there is no reason why a train pass cannot be issued at the local train station where it was purchased. It’s really nothing more than a simple magnetic ID badge, which any Student Services or Human Resources representative can make in about thirty seconds. However in Germany, your “application” must be sent to a central office where they lose your photo, unleashing a chain of snail mail correspondence that will never end.

But I think Germans are willing to wait three months for their train passes because they place a high value on the job security of the government bureaucrats who process their applications. (This is perhaps not surprising in a country with 14 percent unemployment). I also think it has something to do with the German love of “official-ness.” They really like those important looking stamps that they put on all “official” paperwork.

Similarly, I can imagine why Germans do not prize fast restaurant service. Here, the goal is not to eat, pay up, and leave; it is to sit for hours on a sunny terrace overlooking rivers and vineyards and castles, to eat, converse, and digest, to read a book, sip a cup of coffee, and soak up the beauty of a sunny afternoon. It’s kind of hard, but I am starting to get the hang of it. However, you can’t tell me that sitting in my pajamas at my own kitchen table eating a bowl of cold cereal and catching up on the latest celebrity gossip, doesn’t come in a close second.

Are we having fun yet?

Two Kids in a Candy Store

Of the many reasons Kevin and I were excited about moving to Germany, high up on the list was the easy availability of Kinder Egg Surprises (Kinder Überraschung, in German), those ingenious chocolate eggs that open to reveal plastic yellow “yolks” that open to reveal tiny plastic pieces that can be assembled to into little mechanized toys. Truly the height of German engineering!

Kevin grew up on Kinder Eggs, and later introduced them to me when we backpacked Europe together, back in 2002. But they are nearly impossible to get in the States. The only place I was ever able to find them was the Sugar Shack on Newbury Street, where they sell for $3.50 a piece. In Europe they are sold everywhere and for only 0,50 euro.

But after three months of having all the Kinder Eggs we could ever want, some of the “surprise” had worn off. Then for Easter, the stores introduced Giant Kinder Eggs – easily 10 times larger than the original chocolates with even bigger, better toys! Check it out: (For comparison, I’ve placed it next to my Ostrich egg -- also available in German stores.)

As American as Apple Pie

So, last week was the “International Food Party” at my German school. Everyone was asked to bring a traditional dish from their homelands, and as the token American, I chose apple pie. What could be easier or more American than that?

Of course, the Germans would never deign to sell pre-made pastry dough (which is all I have ever used), and so I had to attempt my first-ever homemade piecrust. Only, I couldn’t find any vegetable shortening in the supermarket. According to my German-English dictionary the equivalent German word is “Schmalz,” but the only kind of Schmalz they stock is Schweinschmalz – essentially, pork drippings. Maybe that’s what the German use for their piecrusts, I thought. In the end it was all I had to work with, so it would have to do.

Unfortunately, when my pie came out of the oven, it smelled distinctly of bacon. I couldn’t stomach a single bite, but the students in my class seemed to like it well enough. Some even came back for seconds. The only person I didn’t fool was my German teacher. She asked after the crust, and I confessed that I had used Schweinschmalz. “Well, I don’t know what you use to make Äpfelstrudel in America,” she said, “But in Germany we use Margarine.”

Ginglish II: More Ginglish

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the linguistic development known as “Ginglish,” that curious combination of English as spoken by native German speakers. But since then, I’ve encountered a few incidences that can’t really be classified as Ginglish, but which aren’t proper German or English either. So I’ve come to the conclusion that there must be a fourth category: English that isn’t trying to be English at all, but English that has been so appropriated into the German language, that it cease to retain any of its original English meaning.

English has become such the lingua franca of the modern world that it can no longer be considered as belonging exclusively to native speakers of English. For instance, all across Europe there are Internet cafés called “Internet Non-Stop.” Both words are English words, but we would never put them together like that. Still, you ask someone from Madrid to Moscow for an “internet Non-Stop” and they’ll point you in the right direction. Ask them for an “internet café” and you might draw a blank. Likewise, my hair salon offers a “hair flat-rate,” which I have learned means that you can pay a flat fee of 35 euros a month and get your hair cut as often as you want. Again, I understand what both words mean in English, but I never would have put two and two together an come to this conclusion. Besides, I can’t imagine that anyone but my father cuts his hair more than once a month.

So, without further ado, a few more instances of non-English English. Maybe you can figure out what they mean:

Exhibit A. I came across this Kneipe (bar) on my recent trip to Dresden. I’ve since searched all of my German dictionaries, and I have yet to find a meaning for “ass” that makes any sense in the context of a bar. I’m afraid that my knowledge of German slang isn’t very good, so I can’t say if “ass” means “ass” in German as well as in English, but I doubt it. And besides, the German word for a donkey is “Esel,” not “ass.” As it is, the actual German word “ass” (actually spelled “aß”), is the literary past tense of “to eat,” which makes no sense in this context either. So, I am left to conclude that “Bierbar ‘Ass’” has a specific German meaning devoid of its English one.

Exhibit B (click to enlarge). This is a Goth apparel shop a few blocks from my house. It’s where Marilyn Manson would go to shop, were he to ever visit Würzburg. Now, I’ve never found Goth fashion very glamorous, but I can appreciate that some people do. And some people who do have been known to commit suicide. Still, I can’t imagine a store by this name, flashing the symbol of a handgun, would be allowed to stay in business for very long – not even in the gun-happy U. S. of A. But maybe that’s a difference in taste and not in language.

Exhibit C. However, there can be no justifiable cause to name a hair salon “Hair Killer.” No way. No how. Just doesn’t make any sense. So, I can only assume that “killer” in the context of “hair” has a completely different German connotation than its English one. I probably means “cool.” Like [Question]: “You’ve got really killer hair. Where’d you get it cut?” [Answer]:“Hairkiller.”

Exhibit D. Despite its subtitle, Tanesha does not sell costume fairy wings or costumes for fairies of any sort. It merely sells your average “first and second hand” women’s clothing. Furthermore, I don’t think we’d say “firsthand” clothing either. Sounds cheap. But nobody asked this English speaker.