Dear American tourists...

Dear American tourists,

I am happy to see you traveling in Europe.  It's wonderful that you have passports and guidebooks and comfortable walking shoes. But whenever I run into you, I am torn. Part of me is drawn to your smiling faces, your slight confusion, your loud voices, your friendliness. I want to help you. I want to talk about where we are from and give you a hug. Meanwhile, part of me wants to crawl under a bench and pretend I never saw you.  I want to wrap myself in a scarf and wear black and not make eye contact.

To better understand what I mean, please watch this video clip from a show called Harry and Paul. It stars someone like you and is only a couple of minutes long. It starts on 1:25.

(now I am pausing to let you watch it...)

This is the bus ride that you took in London, but it could have been Paris or Rome or Munich. It is the bus ride you took after snapping some photos of your hotel breakfast, a corner bakery, and your hand holding up the Eiffel Tower. I know you took these pictures because you posted them immediately on Facebook.

You make eye contact and smile at strangers and introduce yourselves. You strike up conversations on public transit and wear your ball caps proudly. You are impressed that there is a cafe you can walk to, which is not owned by Starbucks (snap a photo). You are amused by the smallness of cars and the tightness of parking spots (look, here's me next to a SmartCar). You are confused by the streets that curl and twist and change names. You are puzzled by money that comes in so many colors. You proudly tell your waitress that your ancestors came from this country. Then you take a picture with her.

Clark Griswold: There it is, kids, my motherland.
Rusty Griswold: Dad, Grandma's from Chicago.
Clark Griswold: Shut up, Russ.

This was me once too. I foolishly smiled at people and expected them to smile back. But now I have lived in Germany long enough that I don't really see the graffitti anymore, I take fresh bread for granted, and I have all but forgotten how to drive. Summer travel season is upon us and you will flood European capitals with your wide-eyed Americanness. I hear your accents and I want to show you around. I also want to duck behind the nearest SmartCar and hide.

The speech part 3, or smoking and Chinese food

During my speech in German class I got a few off-the-topic questions, mostly related to alcohol and tobacco -

Is it true that you have to be 21 to drink and smoke in the U.S.?

Is it true that you can't smoke indoors in the U.S.?

Is it true that you can't drink on the street in the U.S.?

I guess my classmates are a little preoccupied.

Then on the way out, Elena stopped me to ask another question. Elena is a cellist from St. Petersburg, Russia. She is probably the smartest person in our class, but asked what was perhaps the most ignorant question I had heard all day.
"Is it true," she asked "that in America there are bars full of only black people, where white people are not allowed to go?"
"No, of course not," I told her, "but if you are the only white person in the bar, people might look at you funny when you walk in."

Then she went on to talk about how she once traveled to Atlanta with her orchestra for a performance. She talked about how many black people she saw and how scary that was. Then she talked about how wide the highways were and how strange the food was. She couldn't eat it. The whole orchestra ate only Chinese food the whole time they were in Atlanta. I guess they didn't like Southern cooking. 

Here in Germany, where most people we know are very well-traveled and speak a handful of languages, it's easy to feel like Americans are the only insulated ones. Europeans are amazed at how many Americans never leave the country.  So I took an odd satisfaction in hearing Elena's comments about the U.S. It made me feel like she'd be the kind of person to ask loudly how much something cost in "real money" and get angry about not being able to smoke indoors.

You can't smoke indoors in Germany either, so I don't understand why that was such an important question to ask. But what do I know, I am just an insensitive American.

The speech part 2, or the 13%

The U.S. accepts far more immigrants than any other country in the world. The U.S. is home to 43 million* immigrants, who make up about 13% of the total  population (there are 314 million Americans). The majority come from Mexico, China, Philippines and India. The star I put above means that this is the official count of immigrants, but does not include the number of undocumented people, which is about 12 million more. In Germany, with a population of 82 million, immigrants also make up about 13% of the population. Immigrants to Germany come primarily from Turkey, Poland, Italy and Greece.

In Germany there is another important statistic, called 'Migrationshintergrund'. Literally this means migrant background, and practically it means someone who has a parent or even grandparent who is foreign-born. In the U.S. this is not an important statistic. Almost all of us have a migrant background, sometimes it reaches back one generation and sometimes a dozen generations.

Anyone who wants to immigrate to the U.S. needs a reason. The options are:

• family reunification, where a family member who is a citizen or resident applies for you to join him/her in the U.S., 
• a work visa, where a company applies for you and shows that they need you as an employee
• refugee or asylee status, when your home country is unsafe, at war or politically unstable
• a few less common statuses, like the diversity visa (immigration lottery), student visa or other special cases (my classmate Elias is still trying to get his visa since he worked as an interpreter for a U.S. contractor in Iraq. His paperwork is held up in Lincoln, Nebraska).
• There is no visa for Germans who want to drive around the country like hobos in their RVs.

Even though both the U.S. and Germany have the same proportion of immigrants - about 13% of the whole population - there are some differences between the two.

Germany has better, more generous social programs. These are available to everyone, including immigrants. With universal health insurance, housing assistance, 12-14 months of paid parental leave, subsidized child care, etc., there's a big safety net in Germany. There is social assistance in the U.S., but it's more difficult to qualify and benefits more restricted.

Any child physically born in the U.S. is a citizen - period. The parents' immigration status doesn't matter. And the U.S. allows you to have dual citizenship for your entire life. In Germany, if a child's parents are not German citizens, the baby is not a citizen either. The parents need to live and work in Germany for at least eight years before they can apply for the kid's citizenship.

The U.S. has a lot of illegal immigration, something that is rare in Germany. Undocumented people come to the U.S. and stay because there are jobs for them and because immigrating through proper channels is difficult, expensive, and can take several years for even the luckiest candidates. Undocumented immigrants can and do lead fairly normal lives in the U.S., but they have few rights, often work under poor conditions, and constantly run the risk of deportation.

In my opinion, the U.S. does a better job of integration for immigrants. We are just more used to having them around. Immigrants to the U.S. have opportunities that immigrants to Germany do not, like:

• all immigrant children have the right to go to school regardless of their status
• interpreters are widely available and considered necessary in hospitals, courtrooms and schools
• adults can study English for free through the school system

In Germany, you can often tell by reading someone's last name whether he or she is a foreigner. A last name of Waskowski or Kaladakis tells you that someone has at least a "migrationshintergrund".  In the U.S., the last name could mean that you just showed up last week, or that your ancestors came to America 200 years ago. There's no way to tell.

Of course, racism and prejudice against immigrants do exist in the U.S. But we immigrants are a part of almost every community, and have been for a long time. So even with their prejudices, everyone has to co-exist. Even the most hard-headed Americans have to admit that their families once immigrated too.

The speech part 1, or 'what are you doing here?'

Yesterday it was my turn to give a presentation in German class. Each of us has to present at some point in the semester, about any topic we choose. So far, the speeches have been about the educational system in Nigeria, women's rights in Iraq, and why rats make great pets. Mikhail the book thief also gave a presentation about food additives and preservatives.

Everyone in class seems to think I am a bit of a novelty as an American, so I wanted to choose an Amerikanisch topic. My inspiration came from a weird neighbor that I ran into on the sidewalk.  I don't know his name, but he keeps his bikes next to ours in the basement. He had never talked to me before aside from a grunted 'hallo' every now and then. One day he stopped me and asked what he would need to do if he wanted to live in U.S. I started talking about jobs applying for a work visa when he interrupted and said that he didn't want to work. He just wanted to buy an RV and drive around the country. I told him there was no visa for that, but if he wanted to overstay his tourist visa he could try to be an illegal German RV driver. "What about Canada?" he asked.

This awkward conversation inspired me to speak about immigration to the U.S. and how it works, compared to immigration in Germany, with which my classmates and I are very familiar.

I ran into the weird neighbor again in the basement last week. Even though he has often seen me with Brian, he asked whether I live alone. Creepy. He's just the kind of guy who might try to lure me into his RV. Then he asked why I live in Germany, and said "if the U.S. is so great and so many people want to go to there, what are you doing here?"

I decided to put that speech, and some of the questions that my classmates asked, on this blog. I might even slip in a few German words to make it more authentic. Read on.

Party in the attic

Last weekend, our new next-door neighbor knocked on the door. She introduced herself and said that she and her boyfriend were would be having a party that night, and if it got too loud I should just knock and ask them to keep it down. I didn't. Yesterday, Matti from downstairs stopped me on the stairwell. He told me that he was having people over tonight to watch the big game. It was the Bundesliga championship soccer game between Dortmund and Bayern (Bavaria). Bayern is the team that everyone in Northern Germany loves to hate. They are like the NY Yankees. Matti is a law student who probably spends more time playing video games than watching sports on TV. But yesterday's game was like the Superbowl, so fanatic or not, almost everyone was watching.

During our conversation, Matti mentioned that the party would be not in his 3rd floor apartment, but in the attic. Since he'd never had a party in the attic before, he explained, he wasn't sure how loud it would get. I told him it was ok, we were going to a friend's garden for a barbecue anyway. "But not until 4 in the morning," he said, with a grin. And if it got too noisy, I should just come up, knock on the door and tell them to keep it down.

I have several questions about this:

1. Have we been going about this noise thing all wrong? I thought that the best way to keep your neighbors happy was to invite them to join your party. The last two weeks we have only gotten warnings, not invitations. Of course, it's possible that our neighbors invited the entire building except us - it has happened before. We get in trouble for running the washing machine on a Saturday morning. Is that noise somehow unforgiveable, while attic parties at 4am are ok?

2. What was Matti doing in the attic anyway? Where did he get the key? And why would he have the party there rather than in his own apartment? I could have asked him these questions. The problem is that I thought of all of them about 15 minutes too late. I am pretty bad at coming up with timely and relevant replies when I have conversations in English, so in German it's even worse. The delay in thinking of subjects I should have brought up, witty remarks, or the ideal comeback is 3-5 minutes post-conversation when it's in English, 7-9 minutes in Spanish, and 12 minutes plus in German.

3. This whole concept of "knock on the door if it's too loud" is an easy out for the party host. He/she feels like neighbors have been forewarned and it's ok to fire up the karaoke machine and belt out play bad German pop music until the sun comes up (lately that's around 5:30am). The forewarned neighbor, on the other hand, likely won't do anything. Nobody wants to be the one to show up in pajamas and mud mask and hair curlers, bang on the door and tell the young fellas next door (or in the case of the attic party, directly overhead) that they are causing too much gosh darn ruckus. Of course, it the pop music is really awful, extreme measures might be necessary. Fortunately, this neighbor/blogger is a heavy sleeper.

Biking home from Andrew and Katja's garden last night was oddly calm and peaceful. At 10pm the sun had just set and the streets were empty. Everyone was in front of a TV somewhere, watching the big game. The only ones out were us foreigners.

Bayern won in overtime, in case you were wondering. And I fell right into bed. If there was noise coming from the attic, I didn't notice and didn't need to tell anybody to knock it off. I may, however, do a little laundry in the middle of the night tonight, just to see if anyone dares to knock on the door and complain.

Rome - days 3 and 4

On Saturday morning, Brian and I ventured out of our shoebox sized hotel room and roamed the neighborhood. What did we find? shopping. We stopped in some store and at an open-air market where you could buy fish or squid or fava beans or artichokes or underwear.

Later in the day, we attempted St. Peter's again, this time with Uncle Bud. The line to get in the church was even longer than it had been the day before. So what did Uncle Bud do in this situation? He cut in line. I wasn't so sure, but I figured if an elderly man of the cloth can get away with it, so can I. The plan didn't last long. We got kicked out of line by an annoyed tour guide and decided to get out of the Vatican City.

The next stop was the Basilica of St. John Lateran, followed by the Basilica of St. Paul beyond the walls. Bud's favorite was St. Paul's and I can see why. Its entryway is surrounded by columns and filled with palm trees. The marble is pink and white and the face of every pope is painted around the ceiling inside. Outside is a huge statue of St. Paul holding a sword. The sword recognizes how he was beheaded, and the church is built over his tomb. St. Peter is usually shown holding keys, since he guards the gates of heaven.

St John Lateran

St Paul outside the walls

Then we ran into La Taverna del West. It's a kitschy Americana restaurant, complete with offensive carvings of Indians and a bar shaped like a covered wagon. Brian and I like to go to kitschy American restaurants in foreign countries whenever possible. It's fun to look at what they think the States is like and to judge whether they can fry a decent onion ring.

La Taverna del West

Sunday was our last day in Rome and we went to a place that is definitely off the tourist track: the EUR. The EUR (Esposizione Universale Roma) was Mussolini's vision for Rome's new city center, reaching all the way to the sea. It was to be the site of the 1942 World's Fair and a monument to 20 years of Fascist rule. Mussolini had these huge, white, neo-classical structures built and created a district that is almost its own city-within-a-city. There's even a nod to the Church at the Sts. Peter and Paul Basilica, which Mussolini planned as his own mausoleum (dictators are not modest).

The world's fair never happened because of WWII, and facism and Mussolini didn't last much longer. After the war, the buildings were used as housing for families who had lost their homes, and the city completed construction of EUR by the early '50s. Today the massive granite structures house seldom-visited museums and goverment agencies. Its an almost creepy memorial to facism, a place that is frozen in time. If you want to read more, check out this link: http://www.romeartlover.it/Eur.html

EUR

EUR

Despite all its fame and history, Rome is a real city. It has garbage and graffitti and homeless people. And tons of tourists. But I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the Uncle Bud's commentary, the streets, the churches, the noisy, emotional people who talk with their hands, the gelato. And if the line to get into heaven's gate is anything like the line to get into St. Peter's, I am pretty sure Uncle Bud will be able to cut in.

Rome with Uncle Bud - day 2

I have a confession to make. Since I just visited the Catholic capital of the world, I feel like this is the time to make a confession. In Rome, Brian and I did not visit the Sistene Chapel or the Vatican Museums or Trevi Fountain. We did not go into St. Peter's Basilica. I don't remember seeing any art by Caravaggio.
Readers, please pardon me for committing sins that neither Rick Steves nor the Let's Go guide would forgive.

We did, however, visit a fish and vegetable market, the old Jewish ghetto, and Mussolini's facist city-within-a-city. We rode crowded, graffitti-marked metro trains and bought socks from a singing Nigerian named Frank.

But we'll back up to day 2. Uncle Bud was hard at work in the interpreting booth, so Brian and I set out on our own. We visited the old capitol area of Rome, including the Victor Emmanuel Monument, the Forum and the Coloseum.

Forum

Forum

Colosseum

Victor Emmanuel II monument

There are places with ruins from the Roman empire that are better preserved. In Rome, bits of the empire are all over but usually in pieces, with crumbling columns and shattered foundations. Your imagination needs to work not only to fathom how old these buildings are, but to picture how imposing this pile of ancient bricks could have been. What I find most interesting is how Rome has grown up around the ruins. It's not a musuem but a living, growing, sweating city. Temples to the Roman gods became churches, and obelisks stolen from Egypt had crosses stuck on top. Basilicas built in the Rennaisance stand next to rubble from the classical era and across the street is a block of apartments and a busy cafe.

As it started to rain outside the Forum, the smartest people in town were the South Asian guys, who had put away their squeaky toys and started selling umbrellas and ponchos. We walked down to the Tiber River and got caught in a downpour, finding our way to kosher lunch in the old Jewish quarter. Then we walked up to the Vatican City and St. Peter's Basilica. It's shaped with two huge arms that encircle the square in a big Catholic hug. The line to get in stretched all the way down one arm, across the front of the square, and into the other arm. We didn't wait. Instead, we crossed back into Rome (only time I have ever entered a new country on foot) and wandered into the nearby neighborhood.

We spent the next hour or two on the sidewalk under the green awning of a deli/bakery/convenience store drinking beer and looking at this church:

That's when we met Frank. We heard him first, singing a religious song as he walked up the street carrying big blue plastic bags. We started talking to Frank, who was impressed that we knew where Nigeria is and that it's an English-speaking country (it embarrasses me when African people assume that Americans, and probably Europeans too, know nothing about their continent). He chatted with us for a while and asked if we would buy some socks. We did. Then he told me that he believed I would be pregnant the next time he saw me. He was wrong. Fifteen minutes later he walked back past the deli and talked with us again. I was still not pregnant. We said a friendly goodbye and he walked away singing.

I have a soft spot for immigrants in most places, so it's no surprise that I liked Frank. But I liked the Romans too. Here's something that would never happen in Germany: in our kosher lunch restaurant, I waited in line for the bathroom. After a few minutes, the woman in front of me was tired of standing there and she banged on the door and shouted. A woman came out shortly afterward and shouted back. She walked away, the line moved on and everyone was satisfied. I liked the emotion, the talking with hands, the friendliness of the shop owner who had a whole conversation with me in Italian even though we both knew I didn't speak any.

Those are my confessions. Forgive me readers, but I don't feel guilty.

Rome with Uncle Bud - day 1

We went to Rome last weekend...
I know. We were just in Belgium, then Wales, then a week off in Hannover, then 3 days of work before a holiday weekend. Life in Europe is pretty good in the Spring. And you can't make me feel guilty about it. So there.

Rome was never on our list of must-see destinations. Neither is Paris or Vienna or Euro Disney. We went to Rome because my great uncle (with a real name of Br. Martin, but called Uncle Bud by my family since way before I was born) is there for a few months and it was a good chance to visit.

Uncle Bud is a Christian Brother. That means he has taken vows but is not quite a priest and not quite a monk. He joined the brothers as a young man and has lived, worked and taught in many places around the world. This year he is working as an interpreter in the Brothers' conference in Rome, as he has every seven years for the last few decades. On our first day in Rome, Uncle Bud gave us a tour of the Casa La Salle, the main residence and headquarters of the Brothers worldwide. We saw the chapel, the meeting rooms, the interpreting booth, the dining room, Uncle Bud's room (considerably larger than the hotel room I had booked online) and climbed up to the rooftop.

From the roof of Casa LaSalle

Then, despite telling us that he doesn't get around on foot as well as he used to, Uncle Bud took us on a wandering tour of the Spanish Steps, Pantheon, and Piazza Navona. We navigated through crowds and turned down Bangladeshi men selling sunglasses and flowers and squeaky toys. We dodged hordes of tourists, mostly Italian ones, and window shopped at Gucci and Valentino and Prada. We ate huge cups of Gelato.

From the top of the Spanish Steps

In Rome's old city

It's odd to be in a city crowded with tourists. We've had a series of off-peak trips that has left us exploring largely on our own. Now we were a few in a horde of map-carrying, guidebook-reading holiday travelers.

At the Pantheon

Are Brian and I travel snobs? Do we groan at the thought of visiting another church, another museum, waiting in another line? Not quite. And if that ever happens please smack me.
Brian and I have just figured out what we like to see when we travel... you'll read more about that in the next post or two. And it does not involve Euro Disney or squeaky toys.

Cattle in flight

There was a time, at least according to the movies, when flying was glamorous, when stewardesses and pilots were hot stuff, when airports were classy. I've been flying a lot lately, but the more I do, the less classy it gets. I sometimes feel like just another mooing cow that gets herded onto the great cattle car in the sky. Fancier airlines at least give you a free newspaper and make an effort to at civilizing the experience. But this last couple of trips we took only the most discounted of discount flights and rang our cow bells right through take-off.

When you are in the holding pen (they call it 'the gate'), it's interesting to watch your fellow travelers. Americans are easiest to spot because they are the only ones traveling in pajamas. They are not actual pajamas (usually) but sweatshirts, yoga pants, and comfy sneakers.  A really dressy American passenger wears jeans. I hate to say it, compatriots, but you dress like slobs when you fly. Brits look a little less like they just rolled out of bed. And the Europeans look put-together, as usual, in airports. They could be flying to Rome or going to the theater. The men are in button-down shirts and pointy-toed shoes, the women in boots and skirts. They are probably all wearing scarves.

In case you are still not sure about a passenger's nationality, you just need to watch his plane-boarding behavior. This is where you can really see the divide between Americans and Germans. As a freedom-loving American, I exercise my right to not board the plane until I absolutely have to. I am not worried about overhead compartment space - I already checked a bag. I am not worried about finding my seat - it's reserved for me anyway. I will linger in the waiting area (holding pen), enjoying my personal space, as long as possible before I have to inhale dry air and buckle my adjustable seat belt.

Germans, however, are the opposite. They start lining up even before boarding begins. On our most recent flight, a line formed before any staff were at the counter. I don't know if the plane had even arrived yet. All this lining up made me wonder for a minute if I was doing something wrong. Just like scarf-wearing has started to rub off on me a little, I felt like maybe I should be lining up too. My sense of freedom snapped me out of it - why should I line up anyway? And like a steer out on the open range, I stayed off to the side for as long as I could.

The flight is finally over. Do you want to get off the plane? Good luck. The Germans aren't making space for you. Just like livestock you'll have to shove your way out into the aisle and climb over someone to get at the overhead bin. If you have a window seat, no one will wait to let you out.

So what does airplane travel tell us about international relations? Americans are sloppily dressed independent types, but at least they will help a short lady who can't reach her carry-on bag. Germans appear neat and orderly, but won't hesitate to stampede when those exit doors open. Is the airport the place where humans do away with politeness and show their true natures?  We're all animals anyway.