Another stereotype confirmed

I've been yelled at for littering (though it had been a while), and I've been harassed by drunks, but I don't think I've ever been yelled at by drunks for littering -- until recently.

It's a complicated story. I was on the bike with Eve on the back, coming home from daycare. She had her prized Montana bear in one hand and an enormous, empty, Gallerie Lafayette shopping bag in the other. (Why, you may ask? Why not? The bag was sitting around daycare, and she grabbed it, and her grip for such things is often like a bulldog's bite.) We had just crossed the street near our apartment and were headed up the sidewalk, when I realized she'd dropped her bear. I stopped, turned my head, and saw a woman stopped on her bike, in the middle of the street, holding the bear and looking puzzled. Cars were coming. I turned to retrieve the bear from the woman, and then Eve dropped the shopping bag. I let it sit, figuring I'd be back this way, but that meanwhile I needed to rescue Montana bear (and, I suppose, the lady on the bike) from iminent flattening.

It was at that point that the drunks started yelling at me. "Hey!" One guy shouted. "Pick up that bag!" I looked at them, a bit stunned. They were the same guys who often sat on the little garden wall, just next door to the liquor store on our corner. They drink beer most afternoons for a few hours and animatedly discuss matters of the day in heavy Berlin accents.

Under the circumstances, I was a bit flustered. All I could say, rather stupidly, I guess, is "it's alright...." That sent one of the drinkers into a tizzy. "What do you mean, 'it's alright?!" I caught about 20% of what he shouted at me, but the gist of it was that I was a presumptuous idiot and better pick up my bag or the consquences would not be pleasant. I rode by them, got the bear, thanked the lady in the street, and, on my way back, rode by them again, at which point they abused me some more with a few incomprehensible or untranslatable or inappropriate to print in this family-friendly-blog curses.

It suddenly occured to me how incredibly civilized "our drunks" are. I've never seen an empty bottle, or even so much as a cigarette butt in front of that liquor store. They drink cheap beer from big bottles, and they're pretty scruffy, but apart from that, and apart from their generally unfailing politeness both to each other and to passersby, you could easily take them for professors from the Freie Universität.

The Last Tomatoes

At our local market, there is a farmer who comes from Brandenburg each Saturday to sell his fruits and vegetables. Horst is a character. He lectures - that's the only word for it - concerning the nature, diversity, origins, and most of all superiority of his products. I have seen him hold customers in rapt attention for 10 minutes, when all they really wanted was a kilo of potatoes. He makes them try different things and note the texture, the aroma (a favorite word), and flavor of items as seemingly modest as a piece of celery.

Brandenburg is the province surrounding Berlin that was formerly part of East Germany. It's known for its sandy soil, but some regions, Werder in particular, are famous for their excellent produce. Horst's farm is in Werder.

It was one of the tragedies of Germany's division that the people of Berlin were cut off from the farmers of Brandenburg. In the West, of course, they were cut off by the wall. In the East, they were cut off by government economic planners, who decided that Brandenburg's legendary pears, plums, and tomatoes were best allocated for export. Apples, I seem to recall, were available at least part of the year. Garlic, I remember complaining, was nowhere to be found.

[A West Berlin friend who knew me during my 4-month stay behind the iron curtain in 1988 says, in fact, that the thing only I ever complained about back then was the lack of garlic. I probably suspected anti-Semitic conspiracy.]

Horst, it seems, is making up for lost time. He not only tries to educate the curious (and not so curious) about the intricacies of farming, but he invites his customers to the farm once a year at planting time. He clearly doesn't care who they are. He spends equal time with well-heeled businessmen, grungy students, and elderly couples, though he does seem to zero on attractive woman a little more quickly. Everyone gets grabbed by the arm. Sometimes in his exuberance, he'll just stuff a piece of fruit in a person's mouth without asking.

He'll argue with you -- he finds it incomprehensible that anyone could prefer flat Italian parsley to the trusted curly north European variety -- but he's remarkably patient too. He probably feels a little sorry for us: with our strange culinary prejudices combined with an essential ignorance of everything that comes out of the ground or once stood on four legs.

I like Horst, but I am truly mesmerized by his produce. Perhaps it's all a dog and pony show, but then, hey, "ruff ruff." I never had such fantastic strawberries, and for that alone I'm grateful. I think of the strawberries in America, tasteless, dry, scentless and with an unnatural crispness, and I wonder how such different products could even have the same name. Whether you're in Binghamton, NY or Brunswick, ME, or Ballwin, MO, American strawberries always seem to come from Watsonville, CA. Is this Watsonville even a real town, or is it just an imaginary place, dreamed up by some corporate brander, like the Hamburgerville (?) where Ronald McDonald, the Hamburgler and friends live in perpetual fun?

One-hundred years ago American social reformers feared that children would grow up never understanding their connection to the farm: never knowing the smell of cut hay or the taste of fresh eggs and milk. We know what happened to that concern.

Now you have to wonder if a generation of kids is growing up who will never have the experience of biting into a strawberry and having the juice drip down their chins, and whose concept of a tomato will always be a shiny, plastic-like decorative element that must be smothered in "special sauce" before it has any taste.

Strawberries in June

Cheap American Whine

The Onion had a nice little feature in their "American Voices" section in which they asked ordinary people on the street what they thought about Germany's appointment of a woman Chancellor.

One person responded something to the effect of: "you're trying to trick me into thinking I should care about German politics, aren't you?"

I can well understand that most Americans mostly don't care about European politics. Why should they? The only possible reason I can think of is that there are a few things Americans might actually learn from Germany. After all, in spite of its so-called "crisis" and the seemingly gloomy perspective of the people who live here (moi not included), the country does a lot of things well. Germans are relatively prosperous. The cities are lively and attractive places to live. Health care is almost universal. The schools are excellent. The crime rate is low.

What I can't understand, however, are Americans who only pay attention to Germany (and the rest of Europe) when they feel that their country has been gravely insulted. "Davids Medienkritik" is an entire blog dedicated to exposing supposed examples of anti-American prejudice in the German media. David and friends believe that German papers caricature American politics, demean our culture, and belittle our sacrifices in the cause of international liberty. When they're not busy documenting German intolerance toward America, the bloggers are trashing the Germans' social system, mocking their slow rate of growth, and offering 1001 I-told-you-so's regarding Germany's collapsing economy.

And that's not the only blog of its kind. There are an amazing number of American sites out there whose subheadings could read: "arrogant, whimpy, crisis-plagued Europeans get what's coming to them." The weirdest thing about this phenomenon is that most of these American guys (and they seem to be all guys) live here in Europe.

No, wait, the WEIRDEST thing about this phenomenon is the bloggers' total lack of reflectiveness about the strengths and weakness of American society and their fanatical defensiveness. Blogger-David recently offered evidence of a rising rate of social security payouts in the US as proof that the US social system is superior to Germany's. One of the regular visitors to the site declared that poverty in America is 97% "transitional," and that it's good for people to be poor for a while: It's a learning experience. (Gosh, yes, I feel so deprived at not having had the chance to live in a housing project and get shot at for a couple years. This must explain my mediocre SAT scores.)

Of course there's lots more blah blah blah on these sites of the complex sort of our-widget-production-growth-graph is bigger than their-widget-production-growth-graph, which I won't pretend to have understood.

But I'd just like to know: When did we get so sensitive? What is at stake if a few German papers draw a moustache on Lady Liberty? Why does every American boy start plugging his ears with red, white, and blue silly putty every time someone criticizes his country or suggests, god forbid, that America might borrow a few good ideas from abroad?

Seems to me that there's a simple and seemingly obvious fact that is destined never to penetrate the blagosphere:

Dudes, in a number of very basic quality of life measurements, we (America) suck, and they (Germans) rule.

The bloggers like to mock the paternalistic and costly elements of the European welfare state. But the mother of all welfare programs is the prison system. That's where mostly poor and poorly educated folks are housed for years and years, with every single aspect of life taken care of by the state. In the USA, the annual cost per prisoner is comparable to an overseas cruise. The food, however, is significantly worse, and you don't get to hear the likes of Tony Orlando and Dawn each night after dinner.

In 2003, there were well over 2 million people incarcerated in the United States. That's a ratio of 715 prisoners for every 100,000 people. If all the prisoners in America were put in a city, it would be the 4th largest city in the country, right between Chicago and Houston.

In Germany, in 2003 there were 79,153 prisoners. That's smaller than Bielefeld. It's not even Evanston, Illinois. That's a ratio of 96 prisoners per 100,000 people.

Even if we could agree with our neanderthal friends that every one of these American prisoners deserves to be incarcerated, it would still raise the question of why such an extraordinary number of Americans have become so anti-social that they have to be put behind concrete and barbed wire and guarded around the clock.

And don't start thinking that the great prison boom has made America safer than Germany. No. Not even close.

Leave the prisoners out of the statistics (which is of course what almost all quality of life statisticians DO) and any honest comparative analysis still has the US looking bad.

Regarding infant mortality, the poverty rate, adult health and wellness, education: USA lose, Germany win. A recent Harris poll that was, of course, trumpeted by the all-American blog consortium indicated that Americans are far more optimistic about the future. Germans, in fact, were the most pessimistic people on the list of countries. But even that factoid, while interesting, is hard to square with another fact of life (and death):

Suicide rate among 15-24 year olds
USA: 13.7 per 100,000 people
Germany: 4.7 per 100,000 people

And that's in spite of the fact that Germans are prescribed significantly fewer anti-depressants and use far less meth, pot, crack, and cocaine (the anti-depressants of choice in many American cities).

On the other hand, they do drink more alcohol. But the beer is so good.....

German Politics: Workers' ID cards

The political situation here gets muddier by the day - at least for the clueless American.

It's not enough that the incoming Socialist finance Minister proposes privatizing the highways. Now the Socialists in Berlin want to introduce a mandatory proof of legality card for all workers in construction, restaurants, and cab-driving. The card will have to be worn at all times and will contain a computer chip containing crucial identifying information. The goal is to do something about the 70,000 illegally employed workers -- many but not all of them illegal aliens.

The Conservative Berliner Morgenpost is, not surprisingly, gleeful. Presumably it will be a while before journalists have to wear these lost-doggie chips as well.

Personal Life: Eve Speaks

Eve's first words (more or less in order of appearance):

Teddy
Tschuss (goodbye)
Celia
ja
heiss (hot)
dada
mamma
apfel
mein
Keks (cookie)

Most of these words have been said just once. It's as if she's decided to work through the entire German language first before moving on to try and build sentences. The problem of course is that German allows for an almost infinite variety of compound words. This could take a long time.

German Politics: Turning a Corner

Germany is abuzz regarding Edmond Stoiber's mad verbal assaults on his supposed ally, Angela Merkel. Stoiber, the irrepressibly pompous head of the CSU, has never come to terms with Merkel's leadership of the Conservatives. Even before the "grand coalition" has started ruling, he seems to be promising it will come apart at the seams.

Actually, I think Stoiber's theatrics are a sign that the grand coalition is going to succeed. Merkel and the pragmatic wing of the CDU must be inching their way toward a common agenda with the pragmatists in the Social Democratic Party. Why else would Stoiber be taking up position as the populist right-wing whiner in residence? He is planning to be the standard-bearer for the loyal opposition.

All good. Whatever else one may think about Merkel, she's not the kind of politician to be easily swayed by worries of an internal revolt. She's not burdened by (West German) history and old personal debts, like her fellow Conservatives. One could easily see her building a new base of support in the political center.

The only important question is: Are the Social Democrats commited to working with her, or is this just a temporary, tactical alliance?

The Sacred and the Profane

Photos: France

Bienvenue a Paris


Powernap - Metro


Bored with Bourgogne


Angry at French agricultural subsidies



At Monet's Garden in Giverny

German Politics: Wilful Misunderstanding

I've come to suspect that the American media purposefully gets German politics wrong.

I was in the U.S. when Merkel was finally appointed Chancellor, and the constant tagline on the story was "free-market reformers" triumph in Germany. Obviously it's a simpler story when the media can portray Angie as the new Maggie Thatcher and the Conservatives as free-market cowboys, while the Socialists supposedly cling desperately to the social models of the past. Who wants to get lost in the messy details of German politics? I'm sure American reporters were aggravated when it came out that a future SPD Minister wants to privatize the nation's highways, while the Conservatives oppose it! I can certainly sympathize with any reporter who figures he should just leave that story alone.

But I think the mischaracterization of German politics goes beyond any urge to simplify. The American media has been heralding the failure of European social democracy now for two decades. There has long been this unseemly glee over the "FACT" that coddled European workers with their long vacations, generous social benefits, and incredible job protection will soon have to face harsh realities. "Schadenfreude" may be a German word, but hardworking neo-puritan American commentators have taken the phenomenon to new heights.

If Merkel really were an American style free-market reformer, then this would mean that Europe's wealthiest nation had finally rejected the "European social model." Americans could be reassured that democratic socialism will be swept into the dustbin of history, along with all the other sentimental European fantasies of economic equality, security, and solidarity. Once European social democracy is truly dead, then liberal Americans in particular can purge their last remnants of guilt about poverty and inequality. We can stop feeling bad at not having done enough, at having secretly applauded Bill Clinton's welfare reform and the rightwing turn of the Democratic Party. Even New Orleans won't seem so bad, because we'll know that there's really no alternative, that cowboy capitalism is the only economic model left on the globe with a claim to viability and legitimacy. (Come back, Francis Fukuyama, all is forgiven!)

But it really isn't so. Germans might sell the highways to the highest bidder (but probably won't). They might introduce greater labor flexibility (and should). They might even lower taxes and further restrict benefits (perhaps in itself not such a bad thing either.) Most reasonable people here agree that the system needs reforming. I think that's just as true among the Social Democrats as among the Conservatives. Belief in the German social system, however, runs deep and wide. Both governing parties recognize a moral obligation to uphold the safety net and promote the redistribution of wealth, and they still believe -- in spite of all the hand-wringing and self-flaggelation -- that the basic model works. Certainly they envy American growth rates, but so what? They envy Chinese growth rates even more. Angie Merkel is no more likely to imitate Reagan and Thatcher, than she is likely to start playing Deng Xiao Ping. Europe will remain (obstinately) European, at least for the forseeable future.

A couple things about that election

Politics in Germany was certainly never this fun before. That must be the biggest surprise about the election. The spectacle of Conservatives eagerly wooing the Greens to join their coalition after months, no years, of demonizing them as hippy freaks on acid made for great theater. One leader of the Conservatives went on TV and radio for a week to publicly profess how much his party had in common with the Greens. As the Greens failed to respond to these overtures, the Conservative sounded more and more like Pepe Le Pieu expressing his love to some inanimate object, a vacuum cleaner or pipe fitting, he mistakes for a fellow skunk.

Now that particular skit is over, but the show goes on.

And the Conservatives are not skunks. The more the Socialists behave like power-mad opportunists, the more the Conservatives grow on me. They are not to be confused with American Conservatives. On issues like the environment, health care, and the social safety net, their stances are to the right of the German Socialists, but to the left of the American Democratic Party. They support the Kyoto Agreement on global warming. They believe that the state has a responsibility to protect the poor and promote social equity. They oppose joining the American-led occupation of Iraq.

There are still 1001 reasons not to root for the Conservatives (And Edmund Stoiber constitutes single-handedly reasons # 1-20), but we should be clear about what we're getting. Angie Merkel ain't no Maggie Thatcher.

How 'bout a grand coalition? What say the leaders from these parties just head out for a giant retreat, get really sloshed, and then play spin the bottle in mixed groups until dawn? See what comes of it. Americans would love the idea of a government based on new alliances, a new spirit of togetherness. Wouldn't it be swell if W. and Ted Kennedy spent a few days drinking at the Texas ranch or at Martha's Vineyard. Surely, they'd come back with a realistic plan to save Social Security?

The Germans, however, are horrified at the prospect of any such inter-party orgies. There is just too much history separating the Conservatives and Socialists, too much emotion, too many tragedies. Germany has never embraced the idea of mass, umbrella parties the way Americans have done. Regardless of their growing similarities in policy, CDU and SPD symbolize fundamentally different things. The SPD is the party of workers, dreamers, and social workers. The CDU is the guardian of religion, the family, and men in silly hats and incredibly unflattering trousers. The one party still sings the International. The other party plays bad accordion music. Both parties still have a basic raison d'etre in their opposition to the other. If forced to cohabitate, they will become caricatures of themselves (think Felix and Oscar) and nothing will get done.

I'm afraid it would never be enough to send German party leaders away to a beer-soaked lovefest retreat. It's the people who need a long, groovy vacation.