#4

Blog entry #4 / 12-13-16

(after the) Election:

I have never seriously followed politics in Germany or anywhere else. But I knew this would be interesting so I followed that whole thing for once.

Election night (remember, my birthday): I was surprised. The newspapers I read in advance were more biased than I thought they were. They predicted a 82% chance of win for Clinton. The media obviously wanted to destroy Trump. You can always manipulate statistics in your favor by only considering certain data and leaving other information out. A lot of Trump supporters might have gotten warned and went to the voting boxes. Clinton supporters maybe felt too safe and didn’t move. In retrospect I think that this approach helped Trump to succeed instead of beating him. OUCH!

People couldn’t sleep that night. They screamed, cried, were shocked and in fear. A lot of people are afraid of being thrown out of their country, their home. Canada’s immigration website had crashed during election night because too many people where wanting to find out how to leave the United States. They are terrified and disappointed in their own country.
Two days after the election one of my professors showed me an article about a book that was recently written. It was about Hitler. In this article the author quotes a book and describes certain characteristics Hitler had. For my professor all of those apply to Donal Trump. By the way. Generally Americans are waaay less hesitant in making comparisons to Hitler than we Germans are. For most people (at least people that I got in touch in this collegiate environment) don’t think that Trump has the abilities to lead a country. Or that he deserves being put into the most precious office of it. This professor of mine compares his political knowledge to what a 4th grader would know. Isn’t that devastating? He is afraid of Trump doing something stupid before all the professionals around him can stop him. Sure, there is the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court, but they can’t stop him from picking up the phone and insult someone…
It hurts to see all those people in pain, in fear and in confusion. I just hope that these guys will swallow that shock soon and start working together and develop this country to the best of it’s abilities.

For those of you who are interested, here is a collection of articles that capture this countries emotions after the election:

Change vs Risk “One of Hillary Clintons top aides nailed exactly why she lost” 

Here is a post-election article form a female perspective. Guess who is the “T.rex” she describes.

 http://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/11/10/13580582/leslie-knope-donald-trump

Washington Post article from the reporter who accompanied Trump during his whole campaign.

“What it was like to cover President Elect Donald Trump for the last 14 months“

This article from the “Neue Züricher Zeitung” – a Swiss newspaper analyzes pretty well how the election forecast could be so wrong (in German)
“Trumps Wahlsieg – Ein Fisko für die Prognostiker. Warum wir falsch lagen”

http://www.nzz.ch/meinung/kommentare/trumps-wahlsieg-ein-fiasko-fuer-die-prognostiker- warum-wir-falsch-lagen-ld.128257

A more general perspective written the day after the election “Here is why we grieve today”

http://johnpavlovitz.com/2016/11/09/heres-why-we-grieve-today/

 

american-flag-america-judith-2

How American are you?

Ok, after this heavy topic something to cheer you up again. Here are a few signs that you are American on the inside:

-You are nervous days before the election
-you learn how to throw a football
-you have an American flag in your apartment (or several by now)

-you enjoy fights during Hockey games
-you say hockey when you mean ice hockey

Or to put it like my Music Business teacher would:

What of the following are common greetings in the US?

A „What’s up“?
B „How’re you doing?“
C „How’s it going?“

D All of the above

 

Thanksgiving/St. Louis

Thanksgiving is definitely a thing here in the US (do you smell the sense of understatement floating around here?). Wiki: “It was originally celebrated as a day of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year.“ Or to say it with my roommate’s words: “At this time we are thankful that we are the melting pot of cultures and celebrate that together.“ People told me that on thanksgiving people travel more than on Christmas to come home and spend time with their families.

Spontaneously we got invited into a friend’s house in Nashville a few days before thanksgiving.

friendsgiving     Vanessa, Judith, Avvi, Carleigh, Johanna Photo: Sweet William Photography   11-20-16

So over the break me and 7 Belmont peeps went to see St. Louis. We arrived on Thursday (the day of thanksgiving) and took a walk in the city. Nobody. No other person than us was on the streets. It was literally only us. All the shops were closed. On this day nobody shall be pulled away from his family by selling milk in the grocery store. And they take that seriously. So the walk we took was a quite sad and lonely one. We discovered two things that St. Louis seems to be proud of:

 

1) The Arch

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                                The Arch in St. Louis      Photo by: Johanna Kraus    11-25-16

arch-view

                                      This is the view from up there    11-25-16

 

2) Baseball

baseball-stadium                                                                        11-24-16

There is a whole little village around that enormous baseball stadium to make sure no fan gets bored (or sober) during the time of and around the game.

Other than taking sad and lonely walks through the city we did some Black Friday shopping (there is huge sales on Thursday night and Friday. You can shop from around 6pm on Thursday until 1am on Friday!! And then take a few hours of sleep to be back at 6am and continue on Friday. CRAZY!)

Some of you guys might know how much I hate shopping. I can’t explain either how I spent $244 just on clothes (and an umbrella)… We took a look at the Art Museum of St. Louis and the Science center.

 

 

floating

        Here I am just casually floating around in the St. Louis Science Center    11-27-16

 

homies-st-louis-judith-blog

                                The Homies in St. Louis     11-27-16

 

Driving

When you live in one city and want to see another city you do what in the US? You either fly (which we didn’t this time) or you DRIVE. Of course. Like always. Driving in this country is definitely more dangerous than over in Germany. A friend told me that there are a lot more accidents happening in the US than in the middle European countries. There are less rules that force people to drive safely. Nobody cares about keeping a distance to the car in front. You are not required to stay on the furthest lane to the right when you just travel without passing anybody AND, worst of all, you are allowed to pass cars on both sides. The result is that the fastest car has to slalom around everybody else.

Frisbee

I got invited to play Turkey Tourney (I hear it’s one of the most fun Ultimate Tournaments in the American South!) and played with some of the most amazing Nashville people.

turkey-tourney                                                                     11-20-16

Music

Sorry for letting you wait for the important part for so long. Of course you can still find my weekly update, the “What’s she doin’ Wednesday“ #wsdw here (Link). Early this month I met with a local songwriter who I have been writing songs with during the last semester to record some of them in his studio.

recording               5 songs in 4 hours. German efficiency with Thomm Jutz      12-5-16

Step by step I will share the results with you here on my website and on the different social media streams. So make sure to stop by from time to time.

Merry Christmas

Right now (well, not when you read it, but as I write this) I am sitting in the tiniest airplane on my way to New York. If we survived the what they call “weather“ over there you will be able to read this blog. This will be my first Christmas that I am not in Germany. Y’all be safe and we see each other on the other side.

roomies-christmas

                                                                       12-13-16