I can very well imagine what Kathy said about German paperwork. It's sometimes bad enough for Germans. It must be even worse for people with foreign nationality.
I'm not criticizing this border agent, although I did find her "reminder" unnecessary and, for me personally, a little offensive. I think it's also likely that a strong sense of patriotism is encouraged in US border representatives, not surprisingly. But I also would be surprised if a border official from any other country in the world would make a similar comment.
When I visited New York I was taken aback by all the flags I saw there. Of course I knew that it's a lot easier to be proud of the USA than to be proud of Germany. But I had never before seen so many flags. Apart from official buildings I can't think of a place where the German flag would be hauled up. I didn't even know that my school had a German flag before 9/11. The days after this tragedy the flag was at half-mast to indicate our sympathy.
I doubt that any German border agent would have said anything like the American Kathy named. Until recently few people would have dared say "I'm proud to be German", either because it just wasn't true or because they were afraid that anyone would think they were Nazis.
I mean, its quite obvious that the German patriotism is almost non-existing when the Goverment starts a promotion: "You are Germany"
Anyway, Hatman was talking about politics, wasn't he?
Election campaigns in Germany are a bit different, I guess. After all we can't elect certain people, apart from the representative of our district. But that man or woman is hardly going to be a famous politician. We don't elect our chancellor or presidentm we're just voting for the party that should represent us in the parliament.
Of course each of the two largest parties names a person who is supposed to be chancellor. And of course this may influence our dicision, if we're not already sure which party to chose.
The candidate for being the chancellor of the next four years may be very popular, but in the end it's important how popular the whole party is. Maybe other memebers did something to seriously weaken people's trust in the party and then the party including their candidate won't stand a chance.
Since there are almost constantly elections in some part of Germany it's rather easy for members of the parties to make unpopular decisions and I don't guess it would do much good to underline how great a certain candidate is, because there are so many others who can easily mess with their reputation.
Of course the media watches every step of the famous German politicians. They are curious which kind of life they lead, if they sleep with woman other than their wifes and so on. But there are just no celebrities like Obama. I guess it's due to German history that people around here are very careful to proclaim a certain man or woman as a national savior.
