Viva Colonia!
Last weekend while at the debating workshop, I fell in love with a coat.
Generally I try to save such profound feelings for animate beings rather than insentient things, but this was stronger than reason or will power, and my next door neighbor offered to take me back to Cologne in her car to go get it, as I had successfully resisted the initial impulse as both too expensive and too impractical for a bicycle-riding schoolteacher with no social life to speak of.
The Great Debate
I have only just returned from an incredibly inspiring two-day seminar on school debating held just outside of Cologne (a city infamous for having created one of the - to my mind - most unpleasant fragrances of all time, 4711 http://www.4711.com ).
A teacher in training had approached me about doing the workshop, and as a newly-appointed teacher in the social sciences myself, I could immediately see a number of advantages to incorporating the practice of formal debate in the classroom, so I agreed enthusiastically. (The other reason I agreed with such alacrity was that I would get to miss school on a Friday, a day when I teach eight hours back to back, so what could be bad?)
Two Heads of State
It was quite exciting for me to see Merkel chatting easily with Obama in the White House during her historic trip to address the US Congress; in some way, as the daughter of a German mother and American father, I was pleased and proud to see the leaders of my two homelands coming together in this fashion. As is good and proper, she thanked the Americans for their help during two critical periods in German history: the end of WWII and the fall of the Berlin wall, which led to the reunification of Germany twenty years ago.
Yet Merkel was in a bit of a pickle because she was also supposed to address two key issues at which Germany is slightly at odds with the US - ticklish themes such as Afghanistan and united action against global warming (to the consternation of the international community, the US, one of the world’s biggest polluters, has still not yet signed the Kyoto protocol). As far as Afghanistan is concerned, the Germans, like most Europeans, are critical of the notion that America is the world’s policeman, and would have preferred not to become involved in the war. However, having acknowledged US help in the past and expressed gratitude for it, Merkel had very little choice but to announce continued support for a foreign policy that is actively disliked by most German voters. Similarly, in the guise of a grateful guest, it was difficult for her to exert much pressure on her hosts to mend the error of their ways and radically cut their outrageous carbon dioxide emissions
