You Know You are Still in Europe When....

Rode my bike home at 10 PM tonight, after my class finished. There was a thunderstorm, moderate at first, but it picked up force as I rode along the Danube toward the train. Lightning slashed horizontally across the sky. I tried to remember everything I had once heard regarding thunderstorm safey. Can you get hit while riding a bike, or do the rubber tires protect you? I remember there was this generally accepted fact that turns out to be a myth, but I can't remember which is which. Ah, well. Ride faster.

Took my bike on the subway three stops and climbed out at Schwedenplatz, along the Ring, on the edge of the Old City. It was now pouring. Still, tourists and commuters hung around the busy station and debated where to go, how to go, whether to go.

I rode along the Ring. At an underpass along the canal there was a public screening of the World Cup. About a hundred people were gathered in chairs. Stage lights illuminated the area around them.

Farther on, I rode across the university quad. A giant screen TV was set up under a large, circus-like tent. Just as I passed, the crowd moaned and groaned about something. A bad call presumably.

I came to a busy intersection, now utterly soaked and cold, and waited for the light to change. I was about to start across the intersection when I made out the shape of a bicyclist coming toward me fast, running the light, in spite of the cross-traffic and the pouring rain. No light, of course.

As the shadow moved past me, I realized it was a young woman on the bike, her hair in a pony tail (no helmut, of course). She was wearing a black cocktail dress and high heels.

For a moment I thought I was dreaming and then remembered, no, I'm in Vienna.

Papa's Keys

My two year-old is obsessed with the beautiful, formidable doors and gates all over Vienna. Our walks take an increasingly long time, because she stops at seemingly every entryway to pull on knobs and handles.

"Papa," she cries. "Keys!"

"I don't have the key to that door, Eve," I tell her.

"Papa!" She says again, holding out her hand. "Keys."

"My keys are to our house, Eve." I gesture helplessly. I pull out my keys, point to them and then to our apartment, somewhere off in the distance. "The keys won't fit here. This is somebody else's house."

Eve listens intently but impatiently. Nicole tries explaining the situation in her own way. She seems to understand, but she's not buying it.

"Keys, Papa!"

How long will it last, this irrevocable faith that papa has the keys to all doors?

The Myth of Anti-Americanism cont.

I mentioned to Andy Markovitz that, having lived in Europe for a year, I felt a certain solidarity with people who felt that the Europe they knew was "disappearing." He didn't have a lot of time to respond. He already had to go. So he gave me a pretty direct, simple response: "But that's bullshit," he said.

Aha. I would have liked to offer a follow-up. "Do you mean 'bullshit' in the neo-Wittgensteinian sense recently explored by Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt (Schmoes in the Tower Press, 2004?) or was it more in the Biff-at-the-Bar vernacular sense of challenges to your wisdom that you really don't feel like listening to?"

Either way, I beg to differ. Europe is disappearing, and "Americanization" -- while crude and imprecise - is often an appropriate descriptive.

I remember living in Berlin in 1993, when Clinton's Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen showed up to lecture the Europeans on the need for greater "labor flexibility." America had a stunningly successful economic model, the man said, and Europeans need to get on the stick or they're going to continue their slow, miserable decline.

Lloyd was not shy about saying this was an "American" model. Neither are the proponents of lower taxes, broken unions, and a shrunken social state. Now maybe these are good ideas for Europe, or maybe they are not, but they are undoubtedly American -- with very real ramifications for the way of life in most European countries. Why, then, don't Europeans have the right to attack this economic model as "American?" And why don't they have the right to be pissed, including the right to "demonize" the model they abhor?

And now The New York Times reports that Europe is going down the American path of SKY high executive compensation. Quoth the Times:

"For decades, Europeans were far more conservative than Americans when it came to rewarding the boss.

Now, European executives are less inhibited about seeking American- style compensation. And oftentimes they are getting their wish. But while huge paychecks have become a staple of American corporate life, in Europe it appears to be less acceptable and, in some countries, a backlash is building."

Backlash, ja. Probably the critics see obscene executive salaries -- almost totally disconnected from performance - as a distinctly American phenomenon. Probably they would be right.

What else? The German language as we know it has been mutating. There is so much Americanese absorbed into the language - much of it gratuitous and ridiculous - that some of these folks already sound like Valley Girls while still (supposedly) speaking deutsch. I see more Austrians driving SUV's, more Belgians eating frozen french fries, more French eating crappy chocolate. Mon dieu, they are even drinking our wine (and the vineyards of Burgundy are in crisis.) There are also more bad jokes before academic presentations.

Markovitz said a staple of anti-Americanism is to criticize something as "American" and then to criticize the opposite as "American." This demonstrates that they really just hate us - totally apart from the actual things we do, choices we make.

His example: A british journalist criticizes the gym workout craze and criticizes the "American body type" that Brits are now striving for. Then just a couple years later, Markovitz tells us, the same journalist writes a piece criticizing obesity and desribing growing obesity in England as an American import. Pace Markovitz: You can't have it both ways! Skinny/muscular and fat/slovenly can't both be "American" threats to Europe.

But, alas Dr. Markovitz, it does go both ways. America is the world-capital of gym-freaks, lipo-suction, breast-implants, and, as part of the same package deal, anorexia. But America is also the most obese country on the planet. If you don't think there is such a thing as the "American body type" stroll through the old city of Vienna when the tourists come out to play, and play guess who is American. It's all too easy. On the one hand, homo americanus tends to have muscles in strange places: unnaturally bulking shoulders, triceps that press against the back of their sleaves, sculpted chests. These are obviously not the muscles you get from, say, loading furniture into vans. They are middle class muscles, workout muscles, and while ubiquitous among the Amis, they are still rare (though increasing) among the yuppies of Vienna and Berlin. At the same time, on your anthropological stroll, you will see lots more serious weight problems among the tourists than among other inhabitants of the city. And you'll see a few really serious weight problems too, the "morbidly obese." The Germans have been terrified lately by a frightening uptick in their obesity rates, but it's still nothing compared to the USA. In weight class, we're first class.

Maybe a little extra winter oil isn't such a bad thing. Who is to say? But I marvel at the paranoid tunnel vision of an academic who assumes that the notion of "American body-types" is an invention of Yank-bashing European journalists. (There is an interesting history too, which I'm sure Markovitz is aware of. After World War I, Europeans condemned slim, narrow-waisted, athletic-looking women as having "American" bodies. The French in particular feared this "boyish" look -- made popular by the fashion mags and then by Louise Brooks in "Pandora's Box" -- was the harbinger of a new woman, obssessed with fun and rejecting her duty to bear children. In that case, "America" was an abstract symbol, so I don't see any direct connection between these discourses, however interesting the parallels.)

Who really hates America? Who hates the real America - rather than just some tentative, temporary stand-in? I've had trouble finding anyone. I suppose Ganica's comments to my previous posting suggest that self-hating Americans, at least, might be out there somewhere. But he/she is abroad, no? I think that self-lacerating criticism of American culture while living abroad doesn't really count. Like hyper-patriotism, it's usually just a passing stage, part of adapting to the local bacteria.

Do They Hate Us?

We're in Vienna now.

Saw scholar Andrei Markovitz talk at Webster University's campus here on the phenomonon of anti-Americanism. It was the most intelligent and informed defense yet of the idea that the Europeans' hate us today for who we are (and not simply for what we do.) This is clear, he claims, because they hate is in just the same ways they hated us 50 and even 100 years ago, i.e. long before America became "Mr. Big" in world affairs.

Very interesting, entertaining talk, and just plain wrong. Depressingly wrong. I still don't get the Amis' obsession with so-called anti-Americanism today.

When I lived in Berlin in the '90's someone told me a saying. The Germans are desperate to know if you love them. The French could care less. The Americans just assume everyone loves them.

Well, I guess we're seeing the cost of a love spurned. Now Americans are convinced that "everyone hates us." And we're sure too that it's not for any strange, brutal, thoughtless acts that we are in the process of committing. Noooooo, they hate us cause they.....well, just cause they hate us.

If you want to believe this, evidence is all around you in beautiful, creepy Vienna. Yesterday the streets were full of young people marching against the visiting American President. The weekly news-magazine Profil had a cover photo of Bush with a scrunched up face, and the headline was something like "the crazy world of George Bush." At the Praterstern train stop someone drew a Hitler moustache on the picture of Bush blown up to advertise this issue of Profil. Once you saw the Hitler moustache, you realized it was superflous: Bush already looks like AH in that picture.

Today Nicole and I were walking through the old city, and the America vs. Ghana world cup game was being televised to people sitting or standing around at a sidewalk cafe. Ghana scored it's second goal just as we passed, and the crowd - it seemed like the entire crowd, but who could tell - cheered. This was a pretty sophisticated looking crowd too. I turned to Nicole. Did I miss something in my reading? Was it the Ghanians who sent care packages to the Austrians when they were starving after World War II? Did Ghana play some vital role for 40 years in protecting Austria from a Soviet invasion? Did Ghana invent apple strudel and generously donate it to Austrian national culture free of charge? (Ok, America didn't do that either, but I was getting rollling and Nicole was laughing at my perfect-pitch imitation of an indignant American tourist in Europe.)

I admit it. The Austrians (and the Germans for that matter) go overboard in their animosity toward things American. They have deep-seated, silly prejudices and misconceptions about the USA. On the topic of American culture, they annoy me. Big time.

But: Have you ever heard an Austrian or a German talking about France, Italy, Poland, or Switzerland? You get an abundance of silliness there too. Seems to me that the Europeans more or less all have a pronounced tendency to make incredibly bogus generalizations about each other. They do it with such an air of authority and heartfelt earnestness that it sounds like conviction. Mostly it's just talk.

But how can we possibly argue seriously that they "hate" America? Isn't it enought that the Europeans buy our products, learn our language, visit our country, mimic our customs, watch our movies, listen to our music, obsess about our stars, our politicians, and our pets. They're even into Paris Hilton, for god's sake! Now they read our high-fallutin'ist novelists too. Right now 3 out of 10 novels on the Austrian bestseller lists are Americans. Paul Auster is a household name all across Western Europe. Philip Roth is treated as a demigod. The most widely respected choreographer in Europe is an American. The leading theater director. One of the leading opera directors. Many of the major classical singers are Americans. In the past 10 years, even American conductors have had a breakthrough in Europe -- and they're still mostly not accepted in America as legitimate!

In German and Austrian academia, it's American scholars who mostly set the standard. Look who is getting read in university classes - regardless of the discipline. Even in German history....even in German literature American authors are treated as authorities. Hell, the Europeans even invite American academics to come speak to them about their own anti-Americanism! This is a pretty puny form of hatred?

And how can "anti-Americanism" be worth taking seriously when there are no consequences? A year ago, people were saying that anti-American sentiment had destroyed international cooperation. But this is clearly bullshit: it turns out that even the most "anti-American" European leaders were secretly cooperating with the U.S. on Iraqi intelligence and the schlepping of accused terrorists to secret interrogation spots. What are the consequences of anti-Americanism apart from one bulldozed McDonald's in rural France? Well, ok, they were marching against Bush....but is he now "America?" God help us.

IMHO, the allegation of anti-Americanism is a big farce, and it plays right into the hands of the Bushies and other neo-cons who want to delegitimate the European social model, European foreign policy, and (most of all) European criticism of the U.S.

So enough already. Consider me an opponent of those claiming to fight anti-Americanism: an anti-anti-anti-American.

Can't wait to come home and start a movement....

Some Things I Won't Miss

1. The Culture of Bureaucratic Deference
There is a myth of the submissive German. Historian Richard Evans wrote a clever essay about it years ago called "In Search of the Untertangeist." He argued that Germans are as cranky and rebellious as the next folk. True, he wrote, the Prussian bureaucracy spinned together a fantastic web of regulations, but that did not mean that Germans followed them.
I am not going to contradict Sir (or almost "Sir") Richard, but living in contemporary Germany does make you feel that the great myth of submissiveness is founded upon a certain truth. German employees tend to have an insanely deferential attitude toward their bosses' pronouncements.
I faced this attitude buying bread, getting a video, filing for my daughter's papers. Germany's bureaucratic hoops and twists are ultimately no more idiotic than the ones in America. The difference, however, is that German workers tend to honor these regulations with solemn self-righteous loyalty. What I have longed for in Berlin are the winks, smirks, and pleasure-filled rule breaking that you get from the average American grunt. I wanted some acknowledgement, any acknowledgement, that the rules do indeed suck (even if we must ultimately live by them), that the boss could in fact be an idiot.
The video store example stays in my mind because there was this ultra-hip, rebel film dude behind the counter, when I posed the question: Is it really necessary to make your customers stand in line for 10 minutes just so we can return a dvd? Couldn't the store have a drop box? No, hip dude counter man said to me with great solemnity and self-righteousness. We cannot have a drop box, because it is important for us to make sure that the dvd has not been damaged at the point that you return it. I gave him my but-let-us-join-in-solidarity-against-the-corporate-boss-man laugh and also a wink, and I said, "somehow 100 + million Americans manage to drop their dvd's in drop boxes without causing major damage to the entertainment industry. It must be possible, no?"
No, he said, and explained to me how the policy needed to stay in place because...well, just because. No wink, no smirk, not even a momentary acknowledgement of the possibility that his corporate boss might possibly demand something irrational.
Then there was the bakery: The great "Backfehler" episode. There is a French bakery in our neighborhood. Many mornings I got a baguette there, and it was excellent. Many afternoons I brought home a baguette that was stale and depressing.
I finally asked the young woman behind the counter what time the baguettes were baked. She told me they were baked once a day at 4 AM. Aha, I said, so that's why my baguette is always stale in the afternoon.
What?! She said. Your baguette was stale? That cannot be.
But, I responded. It's really not surprising. No baguette can be fresh after 12 hours.....
What, she said? Stale baguette. It must have been a Backfehler (a baking mistake). We are very sorry, she said mechanically.
....but a French baguette is not like a heavy German rye , I said to her. There's no way to make it.....
It must have been a Backfehler, she repeated, mechanically. People were starting to get in line behind me, and we were both getting self-conscious.
Ok, I said.
Please try our baguettes again, she said, gesturing to the pile of -- as I had just figured out -- 14-hour old baguettes.
No, that's ok, I said. I think I'll just get some cookies.
I'm sure it was a Backfehler, she said. Things were getting tense.
It's not a Backfehler when bread just gets old, I told her, starting to get annoyed.
She stared at me. For a moment I thought tears were welling up in her eyes.......Backfehler she said. I'm sure it was a Backfehler. The hard-drive in her brain had apparently crashed.
Reboot, reboot, I thought. No chance. I had to get out of the store.

2. The universally dyspeptic mood of almost every customer service person north of Bavaria (and the Bavarians are insufferable with their perky false cheer and cloying formalities)
Are Berlin service workers unfriendly? Is the Pope earnest?
Stay tuned for these and other answers to the troubling questions of Central Europe today.
.....