Most Important Moment

I've been asked to comment on my most interesting or important moment of my trip to Germany, or what did I find surprising or most interesting?

The most important moment for me was when I came upon one of these tiny memorials to the Berlin Wall. The city of Berlin has marked the location of the Wall using these two rows of cobblestones. If you follow them, you will end up at one of the remnants of the Wall or walking through a parking lot or along a busy city street. The Wall went right next to the Reichstag building which is marked by an inlay in the concrete to the River Spree.

As an undergraduate at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, I wrote a paper about the building of the Wall in 1961. I read old Time Magazines and a few issues of Der Spiegel. It wasn't much of a paper, but I like to think that the paper helped define my most significant moment in Germany.

Let the Reflecting Begin

The last few days of the seminar seem to be a blur. Frankfurt am Main is very much a city like New York City, somewhat overwhelming. Even though Berlin is big, it seemed much smaller with a slower pace of life. Frankfurt seems to be much more rushed. I'm not sure how to describe Erfurt.

Now my task is to reflect on my seminar experience. My students will benefit because I have a much greater access to German politics. I know I don't want to teach a class on just German politics and government because I don't think it would attract a lot of students. Maybe I need to participate in similar seminars on British and French politics.

I also volunteered to write a column for the Canyon News. I think my writing will wait until I've more fully recovered from the flight home. Interestingly, the more challenging part of the trip is the Dallas to Amarillo leg. After all it is June in the Texas Panhandle.

Traveling Man

I'm sorry about not blogging for several days. On Sunday, we traveled by bus from now relatively familiar Berlin to Erfurt, the capital of Thuringia. A small group of us then traveled to Weimar. Weimar is an important cultural city in Germany, being the home of Goethe and Schiller. It was behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War (as was Erfurt) so there are a few things that are still being rebuilt and updated.

In Erfurt, we continued meeting with government officials and party officials. In back-to-back meetings, we met with the mayor of Erfurt, a member of the Social Demcrats, and then with a Christian Democrat candidate for the state parliament (Landtag). Both are quite young. Each was well-versed on his party's platform. Both also expressed some concern about the low voter turnout in recent elections. One interesting thing about Erfurt is the larger than expected Catholic community. I would have thought after decades of being in the GDR that most of the Catholics would have disappeared.

Understanding political parties in Germany is both easy and difficult. After meeting with a part of the administration in Thuringia, we traveled by train to Frankfurt. It is a case of moving from small city to very large city. We will be checking out Wiesbaden because it is the seat of government for the state of Hesse.

Random Thoughts about Democracy

Today I did I little unrestrained sightseeing. One of the things I wanted to find was the North Korean embassy. We don't have one of those in Washington. North Korea has the word Democratic in its official name (I was very careful not to photograph any people inside the fence because there were a bunch of Korean children playing behind the building). Of course that alone does not mean that the country is truly democratic as we use the word.

I also visited the Reichstag, where the German Bundestag meets. There are Germans who think that the Bundestag isn't democratic enough. They would like to see more democracy in the form of direct democracy. Interestingly, direct democracy is something that I know a little about. Of course, the proponents of direct democracy don't want free and unfettered direct democracy as it is practiced in about half of the state in the United States. They would like to have regulations. The proponents of direct democracy believe that if you hold several initiative or referendum elections in a year with only about four or five initiatives or referendums on the ballot at one time that turnout will be high. I will ask that question of all of the voters in the November 2009 constitutional amendment referendum in Texas.

Just for "fun" here are parts of a mural located on the building that now houses the Federal Finance Ministry. During World War II, it was the home of the Reich Air Ministry. I can't remember what the East Germans did with it, but it is located pretty close to the Wall. You can see the double row of cobblestones on the other side of the street from the building. I can see the building from my hotel room (I'm in the West, but just barely). There is an East German "workers' paradise" mural on the building.

If you would like to see my photos, please go to this website:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2035377&id=76902250&l=1b972a34bf

Thanks.

Are German Parties Responsible?

Political scientists usually advocate "responsible parties." This idea suggests that parties have a platform, program, or agenda, especially one that is different across a number of parties. The job of voters is to select the party whose platform, program, or agenda, most closely matches their own ideas about what government should or shouldn't be doing. If a party is in government and not doing what the voters think it should be doing, then the voters have the ability to remove that party from power.

How about if a party makes a promise, but is unable to fulfill that promise or blatantly violates that promise? Should the voters remove that party from its majority status?

In 2008, the Social Democratic Party in the German state of Hesse promised voters that it would not enter into a coalition with the Left Party (Die Linke), a successor party to the Party of Democratic Socialism from the old East Germany. After the election when it became clear that the SPD would have to form a coalition with the Left, there was a rebellion within the party. Hesse had to have two state-level elections in a year.

Click here for an article

Shouldn't voters punish a party that decides against following its own policies? Does it matter that the SPD wasn't able to take the majority without a majority or as part of a coalition?

Maybe the problem with the German political parties is the nature of the German political parties.

Do German Parties Have a Right to Exist?

There seems to be a problem with the decline of the average German voter's interest in his or her political parties. The common question so far in the seminar has been, "What can we do to bring the parties to the forefront again?" I'm wondering if maybe the German party system needs a good shock (as if reunification was a shock). It might not be a bad idea to let one of the big parties disappear or get folded into a smaller party. Isn't there survival of the fittest in politics?

Political parties fail when they cannot attract new supporters. One of the reasons why parties do not seem to be picking up lots of new supporters is because the parties don't seem to be offering anything that new voters want. Maybe parties are the problem and the solution would be to let one or more fail to be replaced by more modern, tech-saavy parties.

Father's Day

One of my plans was to send Father's Day cards to my father and father-in-law from Germany. Father's Day in the U.S. is Sunday, June 21. When I visited Austria during the Summer of 1987, Father's Day in Austria was about a week earlier than Father's Day in the U.S. I missed part of the explanation, however.

Father's Day in some countries is celebrated on Ascension Sunday which was back in May (check out this link).

It was a nice thought.

New Findings

Americans are familiar with the state quarters. From 1999 through 2008, the United States Mint released quarters with similar faces but with something representing each state on the back of the coin. My father, for example, continues to collect the Pennsylvania quarter because he lives in Pennsylvania.

Europeans have the ability to do something similar. While all of the bills of paper currency is the same across the Eurozone, the coins all have images on the back representing something about each country. When Mary and I visited Germany in March 2002, the coins had not circulated enough to have different coins in different countries. For example, every coin we saw during that 10-day visit was from Germany.

Today, I picked up two coins from two different countries. One is a 1 Euro coin from Austria and the second is a 20 cent coin from Italy. I had to google all of the countries that start with "I" to try to figure out what was on the back of the Italian 20 cent piece.

I also made a few new findings of my own today. I learned about the German social market economy. Interestingly, it is not really socialist and it is not really free market and I realized that I need to do a little more detailed reading before I teach another class in which I mention the German social market economy. We also were treated to a rather revealing look at Germany's role in Europe. Probably the most interesting (and empirically testable) idea I learned relates to national identity.

When I was a college student, I had the opportunity to travel to Whitehorse, Yukon, in Canada. I remember when we headed back into the United States on our way back to Fairbanks, we were asked by the U.S. Customs officer where we were from. Each of us responded Alaska. This may have been because to say the United States would have been too obvious or we were proud to be from Alaska. I've responded "Texas" when asked a similar question upon entering Canada.

Europeans have layers of nationality. When they are in South America for example, they may identify themselves as Europeans. When a German is in France, she is a German. From there, the German may be a resident of one of the German states and then a locality in that state. It is a matter of perspective.

I regularly participate in an online survey where I am asked the following question:

Do you consider yourself (select one):

A citizen of the world
An American
A Texan
A resident of Canyon.

Interestingly, I am forced to pick one of these. I usually skip the question because I'm not sure. Being a citizen of the world is a little too "big" for me.

Do Europeans think of themselves as Europeans? Do Texans think of themselves as Texans first and then Americans?

I also learned that thunderstorms in Berlin can be quite similar to those in the Texas Panhandle, but you can't see them coming from as far away.

The First Day of School, or Learning at Germany Camp

Today was the first day of "school" in Germany. We were introducted to the currently changing German political party system. We also learned about flexible voters, took a brief tourn of Berlin, and talked with a Free Democratic Party member of the Bundestag. Interestingly, he didn't sound all that much like a classic liberal, but he did say that the government needs to be doing a better of enforcing tax fairness. There are a number of wealthy Germans who are able to avoid paying taxes by earning their money outside the country. The FDP parliamentarian argued that the parties in Germany should adopt something similar to our direct primaries. Having primary elections would create new images of the parties as they would try to present the information several times to different groups of partisans.

Rainy Berlin

It's a little rainy here today in Berlin. Big cities have a tendency to look even more dreary in the rain. I think it is all the wet concrete.

The 2009 Fulbright German Studies Seminar meets for the first time. I had dinner with two of the other participants last evening. Their German is much better than mine. Today we have an introductory meeting followed by a buffet dinner. We start the seminar in earnest tomorrow.

With the rain, I guess I'll be bringing my friendly umbrella around with me today. The hotel lends umbrellas, a very nice touch. If mine doesn't do the trick, I may have to borrow one.

The Day Before

We have reached that most challenging of days: the day before the big flight. I used to be a great traveler. Through the undergraduate years, I flew from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Newark, New Jersey, to get back to good old Bernville, Pennsylvania. In fact, the first time I flew was the flight back home for my first Christmas break.

Not too long before a friend was to take me to the airport, I heard a rumor that there was heavy fog in Seattle and that planes were not making it into Anchorage. As a well-practiced worrier, this news had me concerned. I was able to make it from Fairbanks to Anchorage on Alaska Airlines with no problems. I boarded the Seattle-bound flight in Anchorage. It was on this part of the trip that I encountered the "small" problem.

The airport at Seattle was closed because of fog so we had to divert to Portland. Several people on the plane cheered the news because they were heading to Portland and they would get there about two hours early. Having never flown before, I wasn't entirely sure what I needed to do, so I did the most adult thing I could think of: I asked someone when I got off the plane. The gate agent suggested that I talk with customer service located about halfway down the concourse. I did and I was given a ticket on the next flight from Portland to Minneapolis. I also received a voucher to pay for breakfast (this was 1985). I ate breakfast and then settled in to wait. I was going to spend the next six or so hours in Portland (with the University of Alaska Anchorage hockey team) before the next flight to Minneapolis. I arrived in Newark, about 8 or 9 hours behind schedule. Of course, my luggage did not arrive with me. It was delivered the next day.

A similar thing happened in either my junior or senior year in Alaska. My flight overflew Seattle and landed in Portland. I remember hearing that the pilot said the diversion might be as far as San Francisco, a place I had not visited before. I was kind of excited. When we landed, I strode confidently to the ticket counter, outside security because the best breakfast places usually are outside security, and asked to be rerouted to "somewhere on the East Coast." The ticket agent gave me a ticket to Newark, but through Detroit, and not Minneapolis, and another voucher for a fine Portland airport breakfast.

With a number of years of flying experiences under my belt, I'm not becoming a more happy flyer. I do it, but I don't have to enjoy it. I like going places, but I don't like GOING places.

This evening will be filled with packing (after I cut the grass) and double-checking the weather forecasts for the Texas Panhandle and Dallas.