It is natural to feel less informed about your country of origin when you’ve been gone for a few years. Such is the case with me.
I still have access to most of the same news sources. My hometown newspapers are online, major news channels are available here in English (CNN, CNBC and so on) and of course there are the blogs. Yet I still feel out of touch with what is really going on back in the old country (by which I mean the US).
Martin Luther King, Jr. (left)
at the Berlin Wall in 1964.
Photo: Landesarchiv Berlin
I’m still stunned. How could I never have heard of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s visit to Berlin? He even outdid JFK and Reagan by not only going to West Berlin in 1964, but crossing the Berlin Wall into East Berlin – where he gave not one, but two sermons!
Why did Barack Obama fail to mention this not so minor detail during his own 2008 Berlin speech at the Siegessäule? A fellow African-American he greatly admires paid a Cold War visit to both East and West Berlin, and Obama not only ignores it, but evokes two white guys by saying: “I know that I don’t look like the Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city.” No wonder MLK in Berlin is one of the best kept secrets in modern history.
Even with Google, Bing and all that, it took me hours of searching to find any concrete information about King’s Berlin trip – and most of it was in German. That’s even more ironic when you realize that the East German media never uttered a word about King’s historic visit to the GDR. Sure, King fit many things the communist German government liked; hell, even the FBI labeled MLK a commie. But on the other hand, Rev. King kept saying things about democracy, freedom and breaking down barriers. READ MORE »
I’m quite positive that no one wants to read anything else about the swine flu at the moment, but unfortunately, the swine flu is the reason my blog was two days late this week. It has been a hard week for our family, because all four of the kids have been sick, and the au pair as well!
Before it hit our house, I thought all the bluster about swine flu was just that, bluster. I do have to say now that part of it is just that, bluster, but that it can get scary pretty fast. Ever since the news started in about the swine flu, I have been talking to my parents about the differences in news coverage in the US and in Germany. I assumed that the US would blow things up pretty large and sensationalize it as well, but it isn’t too far behind that here in Germany either. In the US it is clear that more people are dying, but the US is a much bigger country and seems to have been hit first. Here I’ve noticed more news about preventing the flu, and especially about whether the vaccine was dangerous or necessary. People in general seem to be more sceptical about vaccines over here, so it doesn’t surprise me that this is the case. READ MORE »
Even though it’s the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall I won’t be addressing the relevant and memorable occasion in this post as fellow blogger Hyde already has. Instead I will be addressing the other side of the Wall. Far west of East Berlin in fact. I’m talking about the west of capitalism now.
It had been eighteen months since my last trip to the US, the longest stretch that I had ever stayed away from home since leaving the United States in 2000. The last time was March 2008 when my older daughter Vera was 15 months old and I was newly pregnant with my second daughter Stella. My pregnancy and the anticipation of relocating to another country prevented us from planning a trip any sooner, but I was determined to celebrate Stella’s first birthday, a big milestone in Korean culture, in the US with my family this October. This expat entry is about culture shock in reverse. It’s about all the things I miss and have forgotten about life in America.
Consumer Gluttony. My husband and I have spent the first week of our trip on a shopping spree thanks to the strong euro, the lack of sales tax on clothes and shoes in Pennsylvania and our compulsion to make up for lost time. After about four straight days of getting into my mother’s SUV and spending lots of dollars at the various outlet malls in central Pennsylvania READ MORE »
For Americans that grew up during the Cold War (like me) or are interested in modern history, coming to Germany can be an eye opening experience. I’m not talking about the events of the Cold War itself, but the fact that so many threats that we were told about as children are now so much closer.
Russian tanks? Less than one day from my house. Rogue nuclear nations? Half the distance from me as from the shores of the US. Wars in the Middle East and Central Asia? Why… those can be just a car ride away!
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