Observation - Germanhy's Different!

Thought I’d share a few observations/reflections from a recent trip to southern Germany. First stop was Augsburg, very near Munich, then on to Marburg, a university town several hours north.

French was useless on this trip (no surprise - but at least it didn't seem to be the liability that I'm sure it once was) and, even though many Germans speak some English, since we were off the beaten tourist path it was far from ubiquitous – at the tourist office in Marburg they finally dug up one brochure in French and one in English. But everyone was open and helpful and pantomime and a bit of English usually worked! But my lack of German, especially the lack of a food vocabulary, was really frustrating!

The food wasn’t elegant but it was good – and copious! Some restaurants offered some plates in different sizes – kleine (which means small) was usually the size of a substantial American entre, grosse (large) was supersized and then one restaurant offered what they called verdammt grosse (as our college aged friend translated it – f*****g big!

Some surprises in the grocery store – curry ketchup (see photo)! And Kraft products – like cream cheese and Miracle Whip, both of which I have yet to find in France. And it seemed to me that the selection of foreign food was better too.
When I finally looked at the map to situate Augsburg I was taken aback to see how close it was to Dachau – really just a few kilometers.

In bookstores, it’s always interesting to see what English-language books got translated. But what surprised me in Germany, compared to France, is that translated English books kept their English title (ditto for films although with films sometimes the English title is followed by a German translation). When I mentioned this to the college student daughter of the German couple we were with, the said ‘well, of course, it’s the title and since many German’s speak English it was the obvious thing to do. Contrast that with France where almost all titles are translated, certainly films (and the original language title is never given in that case) – in the case of films, sometimes the French title makes sense in terms of the film but it’s usually a French in-joke so for someone like me it’s often hard to figure out just what film it is (if I start with one of the actors and look at what they’ve done, I can usually get there!). For instance, Revolutionary Road is called Noces rebelles (Rebel Wedding) in French. Go figure…

One last post on the American presidential election:

No lack of coverage of inauguration here this week! As you can see from the photos, most magazines and newspapers featured articles on this event. And yesterday, many (the majority?) of French television stations, public and private, covered the events starting well in advance of the swearing in. And even more revealing was the French news team covering the inauguration. In Washington, along with French journalists you had Segolène Royal (who was Sarkozy’s opponent in the last French presidential election) along with the current Miss France (who holds both French and American citizenship (part of her youth was spent in Mississippi). Also covering the event (though I’m not certain whether from Washington or Paris) was Christine Lagarde, French minister of Finance (who spent 20+ years as a corporate lawyer in the US) and Rama Yade, French secretary of state for human rights (who was born in Senegal).

The commentary was equally revealing. Echoing yesterday’s headline in Le Monde, one comment was Obama brings ‘patriotism without nationalism’. Another striking comment (which I haven’t heard in the American press so this may be a perspective from this side of the pond) is that maybe Obama will be the last black American president, meaning that going forward maybe race won’t be a notable characteristic. We can only hope that his presidency takes us that far! And the inauguration was front page news in the daily papers today (and I don’t mean just a little article – it was THE front page).


It’s hard to describe the depth of the excitement, anticipation and outpouring of good will one feels here. When I arrived at exercise class yesterday, everyone congratulated me and I received moving e-mails from a couple of French friends. Though the US is far, far from perfect and though everyone knows that the problems we (all) face are enormous, the sense is that yesterday we regained much of the good will of other nations that was progressively lost during the past 8 years.