Politics may be all the same, but elections in Germany are so vastly different from at home in the United States.

In the U.S., you basically have the Republicans and Democrats battling it out.

Rally with Pirate Party and other minority parties at Brandenburg Gate.

Here in Germany, you have the “main” parties, the SDP (Social Democrats) CDU/SDU (Christian Democratic Union/Social Democratic Union), but those parties generally can’t get things done unless they form coalitions with the smaller, minority parties.  Those include the Greens, the party with an environmental focus.

Whew!  Social studies lesson over.

What’s interesting is what I stumbled across the other day in Berlin:  A rally with several of the minority parties TOGETHER.  The Greens, the Pirate Party (yes, Pirate Party — they’re pro free and open internet) and more.

Can you imagine if the Republicans and the Democrats decided to rally together because they agreed on an issue??  It seems so crazy in U.S. terms.  But I think it’s great.  Coalitions at their best.

That is what lunchtime is like in the German newsroom.  Or at least at the one I’m working at in Hamburg.

At home, around 12:30 in the afternoon, you can generally find editors and reporters around.  They often eat at their desks, plugging along.  (Yes, legally, they are supposed to take a break.  But no one really does.  I’m guilty of it myself.)

But in this German newsroom, it’s like a mass exodus around noon or 12:30pm.  The newsroom empties out.  Completely. It’s elbow-to-elbow at the cafeteria.  The line for food stretches to the door.  The air is filled with excited chatter from the crammed tables.

It’s what the Germans call “Mittagessen.”  Or as Americans call it, “lunch.”

One German reporter jokingly told me that this is the one time of day that they can stop and talk to each other and bounce ideas off each other.  (And have someone’s full attention because you’ve got them cornered at the lunch table.)

He has a point.

Taking an hour out of the middle of the day breaks up the workday.  It gives your brain a rest so it can be more creative later, when you’re cranking out that story on deadline.

It really makes sense.  It’s one part of German life that I wish more American journalists would take up.  And if we do, I promise I won’t yell “Yabba dabba doo” when it’s time to head to lunch.  But I most certainly will be thinking that in my head!

I am doing the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship in Germany.  It is a two-month fellowship designed to allow journalists from the United States and Germany to work in each others’ countries.

I get asked quite a bit, “Um, what exactly IS a fellowship?”  I think people have this vision in their minds of people sitting around a campfire, singing “Kumbaya” and making peace signs with two fingers.  Yes, that’s fellowship.  But that’s not the kind of fellowship I’m doing.

A journalism fellowship generally gives you a chance to learn something new to help with your reporting.  Some fellowships call in experts on a certain topic so you can learn new info to help you find new stories.  But others allow for travel so you can see your job through a different lens.

That’s what the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship is.  You work for a host news outlet, but you also work on your own stories, acting as a short-term foreign correspondent.

But it seems that more often that not, people who do travel fellowships are at a point in their careers or their lives where they need a bit of time to gather their thoughts and gather their energy to move on to bigger and greater things.  The fellowship sort of acts as a cocoon for an emerging butterfly.

The fellowship doesn’t become so much about the work that you are doing, even though it is very interesting and really adds to your understanding of the world.  (And as a result, creates a better, more well-rounded reporter.)  But the fellowship becomes more about your interaction with the people in your host country.  What they say and what you learn from them about life in general becomes the most important part of the experience.

Talking to people about work-life balance or dating or even an unhappy workplace nets advice and insight that you would have never gotten without the fellowship experience.  It gives you a chance to be that little kid, asking questions about everything.  It gives you the silk you need to weave your cocoon and grow.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever have gotten was during a fellowship in Austria last year.  A co-worker during my fellowship told me that if you don’t like your work environment or situation, you need to take the initiative yourself to change it — that YOU have the power.  Want to see your co-workers more?  Invite them over for dinner.  Want to bond as a reporting team and your work won’t create the opportunities to do that?  Create them yourself.  (Maybe organize an outing to a local county fair or whatever.)

I don’t think that co-worker even realized the impact she had.  But those words sunk into my cocoon.  I felt empowered for the first time in years.  Those words (and the words and advice of others during that same trip) gave me the energy to make changes to create life I wanted, even if the changes were baby steps or if the decisions would be tough.

Those words and that Austrian cocoon are what propelled me into the baby butterfly who quit her job and flew into the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship in Germany a year later, ready to spin another cocoon and move on to something even greater.

It’s another cocoon and another opportunity to fly.

One of those songs, “Cherry Tree Lane” with Mr. Banks singing his praises of “precision and order,” fits in Germany in so many ways. While not everything is precise (two late trains in one day for me earlier this week), there’s always some sort of order in Germany.  And Germans can take precision to another level.

Some escalators in Germany change direction based on the flow of traffic.

For example, some of the subway stops in Hannover have these awesome escalators.

They go both ways. So when there’s a hoard of foot traffic leaving the station, the escalator goes up. Traffic stops. Escalator stops. (Saves energy.) Someone then wants to come down into the station and the escalator changes gears and becomes a “down” escalator.  When no one’s around, it stops moving completely.

It’s nifty. It’s efficient. I wish they’d install these in places at home! It makes so much sense!

That’s not the only “precision and order” around. You find it on the German roads, too. Take this rest stop, somewhere between Hamburg and the northeastern island of Ruegen.

Solar panels provide electricity at a rest stop on the Autobahn in northern Germany.

Those are solar panels on the rest stop rooftops. And grass. The only thing missing was toilet paper in the bathrooms.

I guess you can’t have everything.

But Mr. Banks, if you’re looking for precision and order, you might check Germany next time, before waiting for the wind to change and blowing in Mary Poppins.

I may be on a subway, walking down a pathway by a lake or on a busy square.  And I think to myself, “Is that person a native German or are they American?”  Sometimes I have no idea.  But sometimes, it’s obvious.

Take me, for example.  No matter how much I try to blend in, I can’t hide the American accent.  I can try to dress to blend in.  But I somehow still stick out.

Here are some clues:

1) I’m the one wearing the Kelty backpack and Skechers tennis shoes, typically items you’d only see on Americans.  (It seems Wolfskin is the German choice of backpacks here.  I saw a guy with an REI backpack and knew in an instant that he was American.  And I’ve yet to see a Sketchers store in Germany.  Try to go to a store and NOT see Sketchers in the U.S.  Not possible!)

2) I’m the one who orders two ketchup packets (much larger than at home) at the German McDonald’s (where you have to order and pay extra for ketchup).  You can’t have french fries without ketchup.  They’re a vehicle for ketchup consumption!  In some places in the U.S., ketchup is considered a vegetable.  It’s an American necessity!

3) Speaking of vegetables, I’m the one craving them.  Majorly.  I’ve gone from a diet heavy on vegetables and chicken to a one that’s heavy on bread (oh, the bread!) and cured meats and cheeses.  My body is not happy with that.  But the bread is just sooo good!

4) I’m the one walking slowly at the grocery store, fascinated by the different foods and the vast number of cheeses.  Oh, the cheeses!  And the Nutella.  And the different cereals.  The grocery store is a wonderland for me.

5) I’m the one who skips wine or beer at dinner and orders a Coke instead.  (Coke Zero, if I’m lucky.)  Definitely not the German thing to do!

Gummy bears, gummy cherries, gummy cats, gummy vampires, even gummy Smurfs. Germany has them all.

6) I’m the one keeping Haribo in business.  Probably single-handedly.  Gummy bears.  They are my weakness.

7) I’m the one willing to cross the street when there are no cars coming, even if the pedestrian light is red.  Though I try to do this only when other people aren’t around, so I don’t get dirty looks!  Or a ticket!!

8 ) And last, but not least, I am the one who passes you on the street and looks you in the eye and I try my hardest NOT to smile at you.  Don’t smile.  Don’t smile.  Don’t do it!  Fight the urge!  At best, I think I end up with a Mona Lisa-style smirk on my face.  The smile fights to get out.  I’m practically powerless against it.

I can’t help it.  I’m American.

For me, it’s not quite back to school.  I needed a little notebook for making some German language notes.  (If you must know, I want to write out some verb conjugations so I can learn them.  Exciting stuff.)

I thought buying a notebook would be easy.  Step one:  Find store with notebooks.  Step two:  Buy notebook.  Piece of cake.

Wrong.

It turns out there are a billion types of notebooks in Germany.  (Slight exaggeration.)  And perhaps with the back-to-school sales, the selection is even more broad.  Or at least more noticeable.

There are notebooks with graph paper, notebooks with thick lines, notebooks with a line down the middle, notebooks with music lines, notebooks with wide margins, notebooks for learning letters, blank notebooks and on and on.

A notebook display at a German department store in Hannover.

Each notebook is labeled with a number.  Apparently, the back-to-school lists that German parents get each year have which number of notebook you will need for each class.

Everything is very specific and organized.

But you can’t just pop in and find a good ol’ Mead notebook and be on your way.   It’s not that simple.

All I wanted was a simple, lined notebook.  I got a plethora of choices, but none that fit exactly what I wanted.

After a few minutes of flipping through the notebooks, I finally settled on one with wide lines.  It was larger than I was looking for, but it will have to do.

It was an experience to go notebook shopping in Germany.  And the good thing is, I got it on a back-to-school sale. 

Regardless, it happens.

So yesterday, I was waiting for the bus to go to the zoo.  The older woman next to me was eating raisin bread from a local bakery.  She offered me some in German.

My response was pretty standard for when you are offered food from a stranger at a bus stop, “Nein, nein.  Danke.”

She said to me in German, “Take some.  Take some,” insisting.

I had just eaten lunch, so I wasn’t hungry at all.  I take a coin-sized pinch so I won’t seem rude.

But this woman was like an Italian grandmother.  She said to me in German, “Take more than that!!  It’s good!”

And she ripped off about a quarter of her raisin bread loaf and gave it to me.  It WAS good.

She started to speak to me in German.

I told her in German that I only speak a little bit of German.

I told her I was from Los Angeles.  She was very surprised to find someone from so far away in her Hannover neighborhood.

She told me (in German) she was from Croatia.

She asked why I was her.  I explained (in English, with hand gestures) that I was doing an exchange program for journalists.

She understood.

I told her (back to simple German) I was working at NDR.

She told me (in German) that her son works for a TV station.

Our bus came.  We took our bus ride.  She gave me another piece of raisin bread in the bus.  We then parted ways when I got off at the zoo, “Schoen Tag!”

It seems like such a simple exchange.  But I was proud because 1) I most communicated in German, even if it was simple.  And she understood what I was saying!!  And 2) I think it says a lot about the local community when someone is willing to share food with random people at a bus stop.

It’s similar to what happened to me in 2006, on a bridge in Dresden, Germany, when I knew even LESS German.

I was watching the sunset (Sonnenuntergang!) and it was pretty magical in itself.  An old lady comes up to me.  She had to be in her 80s.  She says something in German that I don’t understand.  I tell her I only speak a little bit of German.  So she simplifies.

In the end, it turns out she had grown up near Dresden.  She was there when it was carpet bombed in World War II by the Americans and British.  In our simple German conversation, she said everything was “kaputt,” signaling to the rebuilt city landscape.  And she said that when the Communists came in, the river through town was all polluted.

It was a simple conversation.  Simple, but powerful.

The woman insisted on walking me to my bus stop, to make sure I got on the right bus.  So there I was, a grown woman, being walked to a bus stop by an 80-something year old!

I got back to Berlin and told friends there what had happened.  They told me that it was really rare for a German in that age group from that area to be so open with an American, given everything that had happened there during the war.  (Thousands of innocent people died in that bombing.)

If I hadn’t been traveling alone, I don’t think I would have ever had that conversation and experience.

But I think being open to experiences like that is the important part.  Whether it’s raisin bread or sunsets, you can learn a lot — in any language.

I choose a table in the McCafe section after ordering from the McMenu (really).  I sit my McButt down on the McChair.  And I notice the McParty going on nearby.  A McDonald’s kids’ birthday party!

The McDonald’s worker breaks out a little chocolate cake and uses a green cigarette lighter to light the candles.

I wait in anticipation.  I get to find out what German kids sing around the birthday cake!  This is so exciting!  I can’t wait!

…

The tune begins, with the kids singing very softly, “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…”

WHAT?!?

German kids sing “Happy Birthday” in English?!?  This just seems so wrong!  I had thought for sure there would be some sort of German birthday song.

I’m really curious how this American tradition managed to infiltrate German culture.  I wonder how long they’ve been singing the American song on birthdays?  Did kids of the 1970s sing the same song or was there some German song that fell to the wayside?

So many questions, that I forgot to look at how many McCandles were on the McBirthday cake.

People line up for tickets Monday morning at NDR in Hannover.

But the concept of public radio is very, very different in Germany.  These are not “news outlets.”  They are cultural institutions.

Take NDR, for example.  It is public radio and TV for northern Germany.  It has its own orchestra (or two!), a big band and a choral group.  It puts on concerts and book readings.  People line up in the mornings to get tickets to the various NDR events.

All of those events air on the public stations.

On top of that, NDR has hour-long radio dramas and documentaries.   I am lucky if I can get five minutes of air time for a story at home, so I’m still floored they can get up to an hour here, if it’s something interesting.

One woman who works at the NDR Kultur bureau in Hannover yesterday was cutting down a reading of a Jane Austen book to fit into its time slot.  Sure, there are “books on tape” at home.  But you’d never hear “books on the radio.”

It’s just such a different concept.

This time, in Germany, it is also like Oz.  On some sort of mind altering drug.

Not being fluent in the German language has been a huge disadvantage this time around.   And I’ve been placed in a German-only newsroom, which makes it extremely difficult to 1) be able to do anything related to radio news and 2) being able to understand anything beyond basic sentences.  “Der Himmel ist blau.  Ich will aus der Strand fahren.”  (“The sky is blue.  I want to go to the beach.”)

Beyond that, I am lost.  And there is no yellow brick road.  (No wicked witch, either.  I guess I am lucky there.)

My problem with German is that I try to pay attention and grasp the words while the people who are native German speakers seem to talk at super speed.  I manage to latch onto some words.  And by that time, we’ve finally come to the end of the sentence, which is sometimes the verb, which makes sense of the whole sentence.  But the sentence was so long that now I’ve forgotten the rest of the words I caught before the verb — and, oh shoot! — now we’re moving on to the next sentence.

Really, Dorothy had it easy.