German blogger series: expatriates in America and Germany (II)
Konstantin Klein: WorldWideKlein
Mr. Klein, originally from Munich and Berlin, has been in the United States since 1996. He lives in Arlington, Virgina and does freelance work for the Deutsche Welle German television service. Like Andreas Schaefer (profiled earlier), Klein is also leaving the States soon to return to Germany, in Klein's case to rejoin his family and make a career move "from the writing end of a desk to the technical side, where all the plugs and cables are."

Klein has raised a child here, and has grown accustomed to and even fond of his time in America:

I feel very much at home here. [...] Do I live abroad now - or will I in half a year from now? [...]

[A]fter seven years in the DC area I actually have the feeling to have lost the touch with Germany. So my return will be to a (sort of) foreign country - definitely different from the one I left in 1996, anyway. Which makes the move interesting, again.

Like Schaefer, Klein hopes to return someday. In his correspondence with me, Klein saw effects of his long stay in America on his writing and perspective:

I've started dreaming in English, thinking in English, writing in English - and that hasn't improved my German at all. Fortunately, I used a proprietary style when writing even before I came here, so I still can claim my mistakes in German are in fact just creative writing. As for the issues: I think every expatriate can confirm that it actually helps to watch one's own country from outside for a while. It puts things into perspective, opens one's eyes for different views and in general provides more openness. Very recommendable!

Klein has been radical in putting an old blog down when he starts a new one, so "WorldWideKlein" will probably not survive the move, even in archive form -- Konstantin retired his prior "nothingbutthetruth.de" blog and allowed the domain to lapse.

That seems a shame to me; part of what can set apart a blog is being able to trace changes in a person's writing and thinking over time. (That may be Klein's point, too, come to think of it.) At any rate, current entries in Klein's "WorldWideKlein" blog concerned with the contrast between German and American cultures are under the heading "Culture Shock":

Italianization: I know lots of Germans, who are firmly convinced they have a sound, well worked-out opinion about the USA. I know no one who would claim he had a sound opinion about, say, Italy. [...] "The German" (if there is such a thing) would be understanding (or not), amused, shocked -- whatever. But: he would hardly claim he had a sound opinion. Why is it different for the USA?
-- Good question.

Family life: ... a report in the local newspaper about the life of the Peters family of Arlington, VA. Dad, mom, two kids each from first marriages, nine TVs, nine telephones, six VCRs, six cell phones, three stereos, three MP3 players, two DVD players, an Xbox and a Nintendo gaming system, there are four shiny new PCs for the children and two older laptops for the adults, the digital household. Family life happens mainly during 35 minutes of supper, before and after that the dear little ones can be found in front of their respective computers.

Thesis: This family life works so well, because they never see eachother.

So that's how my neighbors live. And? Am I surprised?
-- Not a bit.

Other entries under the heading "USA: PoliticsRUS" can also sometimes reflect a specifically German take on American politics -- or how some of it's rubbed off:

Eat this, Homeland Security!: [CNN graphic showing that hijack warnings would not make about 80% of Americans change their travel plans] That's why I love my chosen countrymen.

Thinking differently: ... It's a lot of fun to disentangle whether, when, where, how often and with what intent Bush and Blair distorted the truth. It's so much fun that it will fill our news just as long as the next elections in the USA and the United King Kong.

Whatever: then I'm just the only one who's interested instead how the Bush and Blair governments will convince their citizens to support the next project. The critical questions might just be asked in advance next time.

Look for "seismicorange.net" or ".de" to replace "worldwideklein.com" sometime this fall. Klein tells me he may move to longer, less frequent items; short or long, I look forward to reading them.


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TRANSLATION NOTES: sound, well worked-out: fundiert. posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:41:00 AM -- |    

 
Volunteer Tailgate Party
Welcome to the Volunteer Tailgate Party! It's some of what Rocky Top Brigaders have been writing lately, generally -- but not completely -- limited to those folks who pointed me to one or two posts of theirs. Without further ado, please have a look:

Peggy, who runs "A Moveable Beast," thinks about billions, grains of sand, and Iraq in All Green and Wrinkled to the 9th Degree.

I like "A Smoky Mountain Journal." The author, Jim Fletcher, cares about the Smoky Mountain National Park -- one of the most beautiful places in the world -- without being more-environmentalist-than-thou about it. So I'll recommend this item for "Fletch": a nice photograph of a "Turk's Cap," a yellow flower he photographed on Clingman's Dome. Also, check by this post about helping to fight a disease killing off the Park's hemlocks.

Buglyblog's kct reports on a possible innovation in the field of commercial bathroom products.

Manish picks up a very interesting story in the Toronto Star: the Mounties seem to believe they've broken up a terror ring in the early stages. A flight training school, a nuclear power plant, and a diploma mill are mentioned. But Manish rightly objects to the fact that the suspects -- remember, nothing's proven so far -- are being held without being charged. And there's a lot of fairly vague evidence that sometimes sounds like the 19 arrestees are guilty of being sloppy college students.

Granny Rant follows the Halliburton no-bid path to major profits in Iraq, and brings readers up to date on what Congress and the GAO may try to do about it. Meanwhile Halliburton shares have gone up 50% over the past year. Time to short? Either way, you win...

Guy Montag red shirts himself from organized labor to celebrate September 2.

Teresa "Hatamaran" dreams of Stevie Wonder.

Barry of "Inn of the Last Home" takes up the "dinner guest" post of SayUncle's (see below) and writes:

I wish more people would have the courage to admit they have opinions and beliefs in subjects that may contradict or agree with "traditional" political platform topics all across the board.

He also reviews UT's first game of the season: 24-6 over Fresno State -- but it should have been 30-0, so Barry's still not satisfied. Tough crowd!

Glenn Reynolds will get a boost in traffic now: I direct your attention to his writeup of an Algerian journalist's infiltration of a Parisian Al Qaeda cell: These aren't people with legitimate grievances. This is the Klan with a Koran. Also, given the context, some words even a gun skeptic can smile about: My advice: carry a .357 magnum, and wear whatever the hell you want. See also one Ms. Yahaya's response.

Les Jones sends a great postcard from New York. I remember my brother recommended the CityPass too; too bad about MOMA.

Submitted by me on Ms. Granju's behalf, a "Loco Parentis" post that points us to a Metropulse article of hers daring to doubt ... homework. Good for her! My kid just started kindergarten, and the homework has already begun. True, it was just bringing a "me bag" of stuff for show and tell, but it kind of stressed Maddie out at first. PS: There was a pretty good Harper's article this month about schooling by a teacher of the year, who traces mandatory public schooling to ... Prussia. I'll leave finding it as an exercise for the Googler.

As for my own blog, have a look around; lately I've been writing about bloggers from Germany in America, and noticed a good post by Natalie Davis about DWB and affirmative action.

Queen Medb threatens Nestle with a lawsuit. Send the kids out of the room, there's a revealing photograph...

Stoney of "Rebel Yell" writes about Democrats:

What the Democrats have become is the Radical Republicans of the 1860s. Somewhere between Roosevelt I and Roosevelt II, the landscape of American politics switched poles.

Sent as a complaint, arrived as a compliment! At least at this moral reprobate's address. Stoney isn't wild about the GOP either, but he's effectively in that corner.

Brian Arner ("Resonance") posts an item titled A few more killings from peace.

Say Uncle sets a dinner guest straight about what he thinks of Gore... and Bush... and Ashcroft. He gets a 67% "newsrack" rating... and you can't go wrong with a Sam Adams for a good beer. I'd add it to his post-disaster survival kit.

Lead Rocky Topper South Knox Bubba designed an airport security system we should have another look at. More recently, he's been writing about Knoxville's air quality and mayoral race.

CJ, who writes the "Up For Anything" blog, celebrates the beginning of college football. CJ bleeds orange ... Syracuse orange, that is. Like my Maddie sing-songs, "That's OK."

Buddy Don, the "Wandering Hillbilly" uses the scientific method and a lifetime of experience to compose "women: the rules". Rule #2: women luv outlaws. Now see, that's what I'm doing wrong: I look all dangerous and sexy and then I have to explain that I'm married and going home to my lovely wife and little girl, and yet another poor lady's all disappointed. Must dress more conservatively and dial down the "rebel" vibes.

That's it. Drive safely! See you at next week's Tailgate Party!

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UPDATES, 9/4: Also check out posts by Bill Hobbs (1, 2).
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EDIT, 9/4: No longer naming "Say Uncle." posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:24:00 AM -- |    

 
German blogger series: expatriates in America and Germany (I)
Expatriate – the word can evoke a person rejecting his or her native country on the one hand, one rediscovering an affinity for that country amidst new surroundings on the other, or simply immersing oneself in new surroundings.

Expatriates are “bicultural” and usually bilingual as well. I think this sense of being different, of feeling like one is part ambassador, part scout, part adventurer, in some part homesick, yet in part just getting on with everyday life, adds something to the blogs of a number of people I read regularly. So I compiled a wider list of German-speaking expatriates* and asked them about being expatriate bloggers. I wound up corresponding with four in more detail:

Andreas Schaefer,
the anonymous author of Siebenviertel,
Konstantin Klein, and
Scott Hanson.**

Andreas Schaefer: dekaf
Andreas moved from Munich to Santa Clara, California in 1998, explaining he chose California "because I always had an affinity to the USA, but also because of the better weather, and finally Silicon Valley isn't the worst place for a nerd to work." His blog grew out of an earlier website with photos devoted to keeping in touch with friends; the blog relies less on photos than the web site apparently did, but still features occasional nice photos and photo series that alternate slice-of-life with "this is America." The blog name stands for "Deutsch Kalifornische Freundschaft" (German Californian friendship); Schaefer maintains the blog as a group project with friends in Germany and (I think) elsewhere in California, but is responsible for perhaps three quarters or so of the posts.

It seems safe to say Andreas no longer feels quite the same affinity he once did; as is the case for many folks, his doubts about the California way of life battle with a sneaking appreciation for its easygoing finer points. In "3 texts about California" Schaefer cites the TV show "It's Like, You Know,"

Next day you wake up, it's two years later, you've sold every believe you've ever held sacred and you don't care cause you're living way to happily ever after in a beachhouse waiting for your guatemalan gardener like every other braindead southern californian.

The screed-song "Enema" by Tool receives third place mention (Here in this hopeless f*ng hole we call LA, The only way to fix it is to flush it all away [...] I wanna see it all come down. suck it down. flush it down. ). The first of the three texts, an Austrian's (no, not that Austrian) take on California, translates in part as:

Once you're there for 2 weeks you totally accept the mellowness, you never get rid of it. And when you go home to the garden dwarves, all of a sudden you're the mellowest of them all...

Like any good schizophrenic Californian, Andreas sees elements of truth in all three perspectives. (And like any good Northern Californian, the California criticisms turn out to actually come at Southern California's expense ...)

In response to my somewhat inanely phrased question about feeling "in touch" with Germany, Andreas was the most definite of the bloggers I corresponded with: "very much so." He's also maintained a somewhat arms-length relationship with his temporary home in California -- about what I did, even though I lived there for twelve years. You love it in a way, but eventually you still leave. The war in Iraq has not made it harder for Schaefer to plan moving back to Germany sometime later this year.

If you don't read the news, it's as wonderful as ever here [in California]....But I listen to the radio, watch CNN, and read the newspaper and news on the Internet, and the question remains, how and for how long can I live in this country?*

Posts like that or photos like this one suggest, I think, that Schaefer's expatriate experience has caused him to rediscover affinities for his home country, or have at least taken the bloom off his affinities for this one. On the other hand -- a bit like that Austrian once said -- Andreas e-mails that "I will be back. Eventually."

That would be nice; Schaefer's blog from Santa Clara has succeeded as political and cultural reporting from America, with detailed rundowns on the Texas redistricting saga and the California recall election on the one hand, and a Finding Nemo review (thumbs way up) or Alton Brown cooking tips on the other. It has also been a remarkably personal journal. I'll keep reading Andreas' blog when he moves back to Germany.


anonymous: Siebenviertel
The anonymous author of "Siebenviertel" (which means seven quarters*) has lived in the Los Angeles area for the last few years, and describes the blog as

perhaps the only German language Weblog from Los Angeles and an unordered chronicle of what's different about my new life in America from my old one in Europe.

By e-mail, siebenviertel expressed the reluctance, mentioned in one way or another by all four bloggers, to speak of living "abroad":

I find the notion of living abroad or calling any place the ultimate (as in ‘true’) home questionable, mainly because ‘home’ seems to be defined differently depending on where one currently resides. Ask someone in Europe where they’re from and you’ll get their current place of residence. In America the same question is an attempt to find out where one was born. So what then makes one place a ‘real’ home whereas another place isn’t? [...] I do consider myself an Angeleno at present, though that might change.

"Siebenviertel's" ambition in part is to be a written, German "This American Life" (the often fantastic NPR radio show**) for the L.A. region to readers who can wait two or three weeks between ca. 1000 word "episodes." A fascinated and fascinating portrait emerges, one that is at least very near book-quality, and one I think would be well worth translating in full for an American audience:

Totally normal anglicisms: If you follow the fourteen lane highway through the mountains, snake down into the desert, and twitch past mobile homes and isolated road signs, you finally see something light up starkly in the endless desolation. A train line begins to swing itself along the freeway, but those are no train lights flickering in the distance. What's growing ever larger are the rudders of hundreds of passenger planes, whose white color seems to glow in the glaring desert sun. They grow larger and larger, until a small town seems to appear out of nowhere.

The things bloom in November: There's also this unspeakable coastal fog, that likes to move in from the coast on summer mornings all the way to the freeways and turns the airport into a laundry room, and that's always surprising tourists. California isn't always sunny. In November roses and oleanders suddenly start blooming everywhere. Some locals call it L.A.'s little spring. That was no typo: the things really bloom in November. [...]

If you drive on a clear night to a place like the Griffith Observatory, you begin to suspect how big this city really is, with its yellow lights that seem to reach to the other end of the continent. You see an endless pearl necklace of airplane lights on their way down to LAX, surrounded by the mosquito-like dartings of the many helicopters that seem to be above the city day and night. And when the evening is particularly clear, you can maybe even see the stars despite all the lights shooting up from the ground and dimming the view of the sky. Once a year, high up over the city.

Hollywood ending: I really couldn't explain to her what I was looking for in America. LA was just another waypoint for me when I moved, a hotel room, maybe a chapter in a long book or a course in an evening's menu. Slowly it dawned on me, though, that I've now lived longer here than in my three previous residences put together, that I'm not just a mere guest, but could call myself an Angeleno without putting on airs. The thought seems funny to me, maybe because LA is different from any other big city that I've ever lived in. There's no center here of the European sort, no unique city identity, no unity between the many corners. This city is no melting pot of different cultures, but a mixed salad, in which the different little groups live next to eachother instead of mixing with eachother. California is only really fascinating for outside observers, if you live here you see it more soberly.

But you can still wind up fascinated all over again, as much of “siebenviertel’s” writing conveys. A great number of very striking photographs -- I have the impression this is "siebenviertel's" day job -- round out one of the better blogs I've come across in any language.

I'll publish the next two posts, about Konstantin Klein and Scott Hanson, when they're ready -- soon.


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* Two good lists of expatriate bloggers are at Armin Grewe's "Ministry of Propaganda" blog, under "bloggers who blog abroad," and the Expat Express Blog Ring.
** My e-mailed questions:

Where do you live abroad? For how long? Where do you come from? Why did you decide to live abroad?

When did you take up blogging -- before or after moving abroad? Was being an expatriate a reason for blogging?

Do you enjoy living abroad? How long do you think you’ll stay?

Do you feel “in touch” with the country you’ve left behind? Do you feel “in touch” with the country you’re in now?

Can you point to political or other views that have been changed or deepened by being an expatriate? How do you think living abroad has affected you and your writing?

Please feel free to change the questions above to more interesting ones if you like! Write about anything else you think is relevant. [Links appreciated.]

* [Andreas] My own comment about this particular item of Andreas' does me no great credit in retrospect, although it was more in annoyed symmetrical response to another commenter than to Andreas. For those following in German, note that I got a factual question wrong by forgetting Syria. Likewise, I was a bit snarkier about Andreas' item on my own blog than I'm happy to read now.
* [siebenviertel] By e-mail: ...needed to come up with something for the domain name. had seven quarters on my table, looked like two dollars, looked closer, wasn't. details, distance, europe-america... get it? Sure.
** This week, for instance, I happened to listen to a show that managed to plausibly tie Amerigo Vespucci, a p0rn video shop, and a painter named Milton Reid together under the heading "Give The People What They Want" -- which might be California's motto, come to think of it. The Vespucci one was gold. But I digress.

TRANSLATION NOTES: mellowness: das Lockere. glaring: knallend, lit. explosive, banging. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:09:00 PM -- |