august: cleveland county

2016 is finally coming to an end. I know that I'm not sad to see it go, even though I had some amazing experiences this year. Austria has a good month, but Germany ended the year on a terror-filled note that brought further (in my opinion, unmerited) criticism to the country's asylum system.

Alexander Van der Bellen won the second presidential election in Austria! There were fears that he would lose since the first election was very close and the American election had just occurred. However, many are pointing out that the Austrian presidency is largely ceremonial, and Austria shouldn't overlook the influence of the far-right Freedom Party in the coming year.

In German politics, Angela Merkel was re-elected head of the Christian Democratic Union during that party's meeting in early December. The SPD, however, won't decide who their leader will be in the upcoming elections until January 2017.

Berlin ushered in a red-red-green government comprised of the Left Party, the SPD, and the Greens. Since I wrote my thesis over the possibility of this coalition on the national level, I'm thrilled to see that Berlin has joined Thuringia in this coalition style! Unlike in Thuringia, however, the SPD is the senior partner in this coalition.

"Postfaktisch" was declared the Word of the Year by the Society for German Language in Wiesbaden. Related to that, Buzzfeed released an article talking about how many of the pro-Trump Twitter accounts appeared to be refocusing themselves against Merkel in light of the Berlin attack and the country's upcoming election.

I really truly love the city of Leipzig. If I had to choose between visiting Leipzig or Dresden, Leipzig wins in an instant based on the train station alone. However, I have such mixed feelings about RB Leipzig and their rise to the top of the Bundesliga. This article from The Washington Post manages to voice many of my concerns. Given that my current favorite team is FC Bayern Muenchen, I really don't have room to hate a team for being popular or corporate-owned. It's hard to hate the first Bundesliga team in years from the East Side of Germany. (Hertha Berlin was in West Berlin during the Cold War.) I'm going to try to keep an open mind until I can watch them some more - I didn't get to watch any matches while I was working on the campaign, so I'm out of the loop right now.

Locomore, a crowd-funded train company, just started making long-distance trips. Before they started, German Rail had no competition for long-distance domestic trips, so it will be interesting to see how this progresses! They've naturally been getting a lot of press - arte visited them on their first trip, where they started off late but ended up early in Berlin. Right now, the tickets are cheaper than a German Rail ticket purchased with a 50% discount card; hopefully this keeps up until I can visit and try it for myself!

Now I'll take it over to the less academic, more entertaining part of the Internet.

Michael Buchinger made a video talking about everyday sexism that I enjoyed.

I've really been loving Lucie Kallies's blog as well as Tea and Twigs. It's an easy way to keep up with written German that doesn't feel like homework.


I tend to mention my favorite YouTube channel in every post, but Lena's last video from the US really nails how it feels to leave a country that you've come to love, but still be excited to see friends and family at home.

And since it's almost Silvester....here's Dinner for One.



__________
Photo via Unsplash

Erfurter Weihnachtsmarkt wird mit Botonsperren geschützt. #breitschreidplatz pic.twitter.com/58Uo4Rc0qT

— ZDF Thüringen (@ZDFerfurt) December 20, 2016

As always, I admire how German police and media have responded to this crisis. They are careful to avoid speculation and revealing the identity of suspects. They released a suspect when there was insufficient evidence to hold him. More media and police should follow their example of not airing every conspiracy theory to the general public; it helps ensure dignity for victims as well as innocent bystanders. It's honorable to stick to the law even when a terrible act has occurred to ensure that proper justice can be carried out.

I remember first hearing about the “East Coast Liberal Media Elite” when I was 17 and Sarah Palin was running for Vice President. This was part of her wider point that “real America” was not represented by the media and people in the central and southern parts of the country were not being given a fair shake. I’ve been thinking more about this after reading this article on vox. 

I fall within so many categories of “coastal liberal elite.” I have a BA in German and a MA in International Studies. I’ve lived in Germany while participating in a government-funded program. I’ve well-travelled within U.S. and Europe. In addition to voting for Hillary Clinton in both the primary and general election, I worked on her campaign in Philadelphia. I’m twenty-five and unmarried. I don’t have children. I love public media, and I just drank a smoothie than contained chia seeds. I’m so privileged by both my whiteness and my place in the middle class.

However, most of these qualities are a product of my life in “real America.” I grew up in rural Oklahoma, attended public high school, then went to the Universities of Arkansas and Oklahoma for my degrees. I learned German in Arkansas, and my experiences there were why I was able to live in Europe for a brief time. After I got my BA, I felt that I still hadn’t learned enough, so I went to graduate school in Oklahoma. You can be liberal and experience the world anywhere, especially with the internet. Your location doesn’t determine your life.

I’ve always been a bit different from my high school classmates, and these differences have increased with age. I am in the minority because I have neither a spouse nor children. I can’t see myself living in Oklahoma forever, mostly because job opportunities that I find interesting are generally not located here. I don’t enjoy stereotypical Oklahoman activities such as hunting or going to high school basketball games, but that doesn’t make me less Oklahoman. I’m still as much a product of this state as my classmates who never left my hometown.

Like the vox article says, it’s not a matter of geography; it’s a matter of economics. Growing up, both my parents worked salaried jobs. I was in the minority in my school, since many of my classmates were growing up in single-parent families and didn’t have the privileges that I did. Some people from my parents’ church and extended family have never actually said that I need to grow up and get a normal job with the requisite husband and kids, but they always respond to my stories with a polite awkwardness that shows that my way of life makes them uncomfortable.

One thing that people seem to forget is that “real America” has the same internet that the coastal part of the country has. (There are some exceptions to this; President Obama’s major visit to Oklahoma was to visit areas of the Choctaw Nation where people don’t have internet access.) This country has so many things in common; people are people. No part of this country is more real than any other because any type of person can emerge from any part of this country.