Reasons Why Germany Rocks

1.) German people are pretty cool, and I speak some of their language. This means that from time to time, I can converse with them without feeling self-conscious or like an angry American.

2.) Their country is not absurdly expensive. No, I will not pay 4 euros for a coke. That is a six dollar soda, lady. For that price it had better come with a coupon redeemable for a real fucking polar bear.

3.) German cities have room to move around. This is probably a result of us bombing them, and not something the Germans want to talk about, but I still enjoy it.

4.) The Doner. If you have not eaten one of these, you have not lived.

5.) German girls, are in general pretty cute and pretty down to earth. They are also significantly more alluring than drunk English/Irish/American girls. I would make an additional comment on sober English/Irish/American girls, but so far I haven’t met many of those.

I’ve also discovered that I don’t particularly like just showing up in a place and walking around. Sure, it’s interesting to tell people that “yeah, I liked the Netherlands…I was there this summer. Oh, you worked for your dad’s construction company? In Virginia? Awesome. I bet you made money. Minimum wage? Really? That sucks, man. Well, at least you weren’t in Rome – expensive there.”

In the future, I would prefer to settle down in one place or area for a while and start to speak some of the language. I feel like I’ve really only scratched the surface of Berlin, and I’ve loved it. Perhaps I’ve committed the fatal flaw of visiting the best city first, or perhaps the rest of my city traveling experiences will be seen through Pilsener tinted lenses. Uncertain, but I really enjoyed my experience there. I would like to see more of Germany to determine if this is the right decision. If my mom can effectively change my flight, I will probably try and reverse course and head back through Germany to Frankfurt.

I’m listening to the Dutch language and it’s effectively a moon language. I’m thinking of Derrida’s work on language, and the notion of le diference. German no longer sounds like an ugly language to me, perhaps because I can understand the words and the breaks. What I meant with that rather cryptic French connection (puunnnn) was that when we conceive a system of language, it doesn’t acquire meaning through a concrete definition of words, but rather their relations to others. A necessary part of understanding any language is the knowledge of what role a particular word or symbol plays in relation to other, larger pieces. This is the same in many things, and is perhaps tying in to a larger body of work in semiotics. I’m reading a great piece by Zizek (Holla, Dawson G!) about Robespierre and the Divine Terror of Resolution, where he deals in part with notions of legality.

Another “inhuman” dimension of the couple Virtue-Terror promoted by Robespierre is the rejection of habit (in the sense of the agency of realistic compromises). Every legal order (or every order of explicit normativity) has to rely on a complex “reflexive” network of informal rules which tells us how are we to relate to the explicit norms, how are we to apply them: to what extent are we to take them literally, how and when are we allowed, solicited even, to disregard them, etc. – and this is the domain of habit. To know the habits of a society is to know the meta-rules of how to apply its explicit norms: when to use them or not use them; when to violate them; when not to use a choice which is offered; when we are effectively obliged to do something, but have to pretend that we are doing it as a free choice (like in the case of potlatch). Recall the polite offer-meant-to-be-refused: it is a “habit” to refuse such an offer, and anyone who accepts such an offer commits a vulgar blunder. The same goes for many political situations in which a choice is given on condition that we make the right choice: we are solemnly reminded that we can say no – but we are expected to we reject this offer and enthusiastically say yes. With many sexual prohibitions, the situation is the opposite one: the explicit “no” effectively functions as the implicit injunction “do it, but in a discreet way!”

Applying a similar notion, it is difficult to make a judgement on a european culture/society/people/law without understanding the larger context within which it operates. As such, I’m not in a position to assess marijuana’s position in Dutch culture, or even Amsterdam relative to other cities because I lack even a rough framework to stick it in. Thus, I’m forced to conjecture – something which drives the people around me crazy, as I tend to use the scientific method as a means to understanding, rather than a means of. This infuriates people with rigid ideology, because my conclusions are by nature based upon hypotheses from observed evidence. I am not a supercomputer, and as such I can’t keep all of the possibilities straight at one time. I pick one that seems the most likely, and I change it when more evidence presents itself. Toby, however, can’t stand this. Toby also just bailed on the hostel room on my credit card, so right now, I don’t care if she can stand it or not.

More to come on hostels.