|
go go germany Okay, so maybe my ode to England came off sounding slightly odd, but I do have a soft spot for that place and I hope that it lives up to my expectations. ... My favorite issue of The New Yorker, the fiction issue, arrived in the mail today. It was what got me through most of the night at work. Unlike the previous night where one major problem dragged on and on for hours keeping me occupied, I had plenty of time to read and relax. The first piece that I read was titled The Smoker by David Schickler and I saw parts of myself in it. For some reason I could see the same thing that happens to the main character in the story someday happening to me. I would try to explain it better, but I can't think of a way of doing it without reprinting the entire story here. ... My knowledge of Germany is far less extensive than what I know of England and I attribute some of that ignorance to the language barrier. Learning to speak German never had that much of an appeal for me and what small amounts of German that I do know was learned from multiple viewings of the German film Das Boot and other less flattering World War II films. Oh, if I was hard pressed enough, I could probably sing the hymn Silent Night in German. Years ago it was something that I was taught for a Christmas church function. Unfortunately most of the song does not lend itself very well to casual conversation. In my mind Germany gave us Gutenberg, Martin Luther and the Third Reich. That probably isn't fair to the people living there now, but those are the first three things that come to mind when I think about Germany. The next things on my list would be the Volkswagen and Wagner, which also have strange ties to the Nazis. I guess that I see Germany as a nation trying to forget or change their image as an aggressive country with little regard for their neighbors. Twice in the past one hundred years they have been cast as the enemy of the world or at the very least Europe. It was because of them as a nation that hundreds of thousands of people died and those memories take time to fade. Putting aside the historical and political elements of their country, the next important thing that comes to mind would be what they eat and drink in Germany. What I mean to say is that when the first German immigrants settled here in Milwaukee they brought their love of beer and sausage with them. Some of that tradition has faded over the years, but we still have the Miller Brewing Company here to remind us of their early influence on the city and its people. The German people do not eat and drink lightly. When I finally get to Germany I'll probably see a Bavarian castle or two and then maybe gawk at where the Berlin Wall used to stand, but other than that I'm not sure what else I'll do there besides drink in the beer gardens. I guess my lack of interest is because so much of the state of Wisconsin strikes me as German and it doesn't seem foreign to me at all. We may not have the Black Forest or the Autobahn, but we have breweries and polkas.
|