Welcome to Germany! This is my third trip here and I must say, change gonna come. Where as before I had long seen these people as genocidal maniacs, something has changed with this visit. Perhaps it is the cleanliness of the taxis, or the audobahn, on which my business colleague topped out at 194 Km/hr while using a sonar powered navigation and steering system. I dont know what happened, but during my whole trip here, I never once felt like pissing on the floor or hate fucking some teutonic piece of ass for reparations. So, my prior trips to germany were a bit more exciting, but strangely, I am feeling very happy and comfortable to be here!
My business requirements have me training our Germany partner for 2 days before I have to head to Prague and Finland next week. Work is proceeding swimmingly, but what has really captivated me is, of course, the reaction to our recent elections. First, let's be straight up about this -- Europe is FAR more racially non-subtle than Americans. In fact, every channel I watched showed brothers dancing up and down when obama won and then offset this with dejected McCain supporters all looking like strom thurmon's ballsack on a stick.
I am not saying that these people are racist, but I was just suprised -- and then it occurred to me: somewhere along during the campaign I had forgotten that Barack Obama was black! Perhaps this was some jedi mind shit aspect of an amazing campaign, but seriously -- I realize he is our first black president and i realize that this is historic, but this notion was entirely overshadowed by a politics of inclusion and positivity.
And for the first time in a LONG time, I was feeling great to be an American abroad. Folks seemed generally happy for me, and of course I had perma-grin on my face. It is incredible how much people in other countries despise (or maybe more aptly -- are confused by) Bush and the policies of the neocons. And what's even more impressive is that they know everything about the slightest details of our political spectrum. You can imagine my embarassment when I asked -- "Hey uh, so dont you have some lady running this place?" But then it became obvious -- the farther you get from watching a story closely, the broader the strokes. So the Germans see Obama as black above all, and I see some bloated lady with a bad haircut running all of Deutchland.
But let's face it, you dont need a sociological lesson. Shit, if thats what you wanted, you wouldn't have dropped out of high school to get your GED. I get it. You want to hear me tell you stories of me stumbling through munich after eating a 3 pound pig leg. Fine then. Heres a pic of the leg:
And a couple accomplices:
Must rewind! We left the hotel at 9pm. The dude driving the car was a wiry cat with a strange cackle and powerful unibrow (uni-brau?). His passenger/coworker was a Turk. Together we hammered into central munich, found impecable parking and began the evening.
The details are sketchy. I recall several items: First -- Munich is beautiful, friendly, and goddamn fun. Here is a picture of city hall at night:
Down below city hall, we squared up to the massive german portions as shown above. The rest of the evening involved lots of laughs and revelry. I hugged a German couple. Thirty people in a crowded bar started chanting 'Yes we can!'. I believe I drunk dialed my mom (not like THAT!). Finally, I retired in my hotel room at 3am, exhausted and anxious in anticipation of that 6am wake up call which would ready me for my travels to prague.
The next morning was a battle of will. In the end, I successfully boarded my flight to Bonn which would eventually take me to Prague, but I will spare you the details of my struggles. Let's just say 5 liters of lager coupled with 3 white russians do funny things to my system. I should have taken a cue from our recent presidential contest and held off on the cream. That lactose will get you every time.
