My weekend in Anywhere, USA

Err, my weekend in Kaiserslautern, Germany…Mainz too!

Warning: this is a really long entry about the last week of my European vacation. You don’t have to read it all. Pictures are now up on my picasa site, but if you don’t want to scan through the 600+ pictures I took over the whole trip, just go to the Highlights album to see a smattering of my trip.

So, the fam left Paris on New Year’s morning. It was a great visit and it was fun to show them around Paris a little. That same morning, I took an ICE train from Paris Est station to Kaiserslautern, Germany, to meet up with a good friend from AU, Sommer, whom I hadn’t seen since last February (like most college friends…or anyone). Sommer is a Fulbright Scholar teaching English in Mainz, Germany and her boyfriend is in the Air Force (Navy?), stationed nearby. Kaiserslautern (and the surrounding area) is full of Americans due to all of the military bases located in that part of the country. My visit with Sommer and Paul was like a brief weekend trip to America, without the jetlag. His apartment was full of American brands, furniture, and media. We ate well (I now LOVE Banana Nut Crunch Cereal, fyi!), rode in his car, watched a lot of Friends, and just generally relaxed. It was perfect.

Saturday, we went to Speyer, where there is a beautiful, enormous, and super old cathedral, plus a Christmas/New Year’s market. I had a real German winter experience walking around the cute little market (so much calmer than the markets in Senegal, fab!), drinking hot spiced wine, eating a bratwurst, wandering around, drinking coffee and having apple strudel, and freezing my butt off.

However, that cute little German morning quickly turned into an evening in rural America—especially reminiscent of my time in Kansas and Oklahoma. We took a trip to the base, ie America. The base takes US Dollars, has US prices (gas too!), everyone speaks English, and well, for someone coming from Senegal, was crazy, surreal, and a little overwhelming. First, we went to the Commissary, which is basically a large grocery store where military families shop. Paul does most of his shopping there, hence the Banana Nut Crunch. Due to my luggage space constraints, I purchased very little, but couldn’t resist from buying Snapple Apple juice, Cheetos, and Kraft Mac and Cheese. Not even kidding. If there had been a small canister of parmesan cheese, I would have definitely bought that as well to bring back to Kaolack. After being overwhelmed by American food products (we PCVs had just been talking about missing cookie dough ice cream and there it was!), we stopped at a food court and Kmart/Walmart style store, with clothes, jewelry, books, and of course, military paraphernalia—just to look, also overwhelming. We then met up with some of Paul and Sommer’s friends at the movie theater on base (Bedtime Stories was the feature film—very cute!), where they start off every movie by standing for the Star Spangled Banner (which I think is fitting and obviously extremely important in the military community). After the movie, a small group of us went to a…are you ready for this? Country Western Club. Yes. Seriously. The club offered some American cuisine and drinks (reasonably priced, in US$), a variety of country music, line dancing, and a mechanical bull. Many people were wearing boots, cowboy hats, and other Western wear. It was actually quite a bit of fun and people were pretty intense—I didn’t know that many line dances existed, nor that so many people knew them! The whole time, however, boggled my mind to think that we were actually in the middle of Germany, not somewhere out west or south I had once traveled to run mission trips.

The following morning, we went to Faith Baptist Church, a church that reminded me of a lot of different churches I had visited over the years combined with old school TNW music. In the collection bowl, Sommer’s bright euro bill stood out against all of the US greenbacks.

Outside of the line dancing, movies, and American prices, what I most enjoyed about my time in Kaiserslautern was just learning about military family culture. I never really knew much about it (still don’t know a ton), but it was amazing to see how supportive people are of each other. When you are far away from your family in the US, you lean on the people around you, and that’s what makes your family—those are the people you celebrate the holidays with. And there, in the middle of Germany, were people living, working, and raising their kids, while one or both spouses served their country in a way a large portion of the country will never understand but will continue to enjoy the benefits of.

After Kaiserslautern, Sommer and I returned to her “home city” of Mainz. We spent time walking around, strategically stopping inside churches, stores, and coffee shops to warm ourselves from the cold and SNOW! Yay snow! We took a day trip to Koblenz, taking a train ride down the Rhine River, admiring all of the beautiful castles that dot the hills above the river, a UNESCO World Heritage site. In Koblenz, we took a bus and then took a long uphill hike to visit a beautiful bright yellow castle (of which I forget the name). We were given a private tour in English (because we were the only ones silly enough to make the treck and the guide didn’t want us to freeze waiting for the tour to start), however only 4 of 100 (?) rooms were open, due to restoration work (just about EVERYTHING in Europe is under restoration at any point in time…not even kidding). We took a lot of pictures, hiked down, and danced to warm ourselves up waiting for the bus back to town. In town, we made more strategic visits, exploring churches, stores, coffee shops, and everything else to stay warm, before training back to Sommer’s.

Germany was absolutely fabulous, though I constantly felt bad for not speaking German and once tried to reply to a German asking me a question (in English) by speaking Sereer. Oops. This was my third trip to (western) Germany and I really like the country—cute buildings, good food and drink, beautiful landscape (the train ride from Mainz to Paris was GORGEOUS—traditional little hill/mountain villages and trees…soooo pretty!), cold weather, history, good location for travel to the rest of Europe, etc.

The one thing that disturbed me my entire time, however, was a poster at many of the bus stops in Kaiserslautern depicting children dressed as figures from the Nativity (Mary, Joseph, Magi, Angel), with writing I didn’t understand. One of the children had bright blue eyes which glowed freakishly from behind black face (his/her face was painted completely black so that he/she no longer appeared Caucasian). Maybe it’s because I was an RA and had all-too extensive diversity training, which included a very heated debate about “black face,” or maybe it’s because I live in Senegal, but I just found such a depiction appalling. Could the city of Kaiserslautern seriously not find another child for the poster if they felt that they needed racial diversity in the picture enough to paint a kid’s face so that he/she appeared to be a different race altogether. It was ridiculous and I would be ashamed to see it if that was my city.

Anyway, sorry about that rant. Germany was incredible and it was weird to return to Paris (I saw Paris in the snow, a first for me!) not knowing when I would next be back and that I was returning to the land of heat, dust, huts, and teranga (hospitality). My time in Europe has definitely got me thinking about looking into the French teaching assistantship or something like that post-Senegal. I realized that I still dream of having my own little apartment in Europe—as cheesy as that sounds. Mmm, cheese! It will definitely be hard going back to greesy rice, bony fish, and lack of delicious cheese, wine, coffee, and bread.

I want to give a public shout-out of thanks and appreciation to Sommer and Paul for their hospitality during my visit and to my mom for giving me some US$ before they got on the plane. It definitely came in handy on my little trip to America!