Traveling Stories Magazine

Two Heads of State

T. Braunstein — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:46:49 +0000

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

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A Thanksgiving Gift

T. Braunstein — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:26:33 +0000

Admittedly I am jumping the gun a bit because we are nowhere near Thanksgiving just yet, but I felt truly fulfilled the other day and wanted to write about the experience.

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Portrait of an Artist and a Man

T. Braunstein — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:48:54 +0000

A friend of mine from back in Freiburg days has been a full professor of English at the University of Leipzig for a decade or more now. When Elmar of the blue eyes, very curly hair and infectious smile recently emailed me an attachment of a painting he had just finished of a beautiful area called Soest, close to where I now live, I was absolutely astonished – I knew he dabbled in the arts in addition to his work at the university, but I had no idea just how talented he was, nor could I understand how he managed to find the time. So I asked him if he might answer a few questions for me, and thought a portrait of such a versatile personality deserved to find a space here.

Did you ever expect you would be a prof?
Yes, at the age of ten or eleven I wanted to become a professor of history, but then the idea faded away and was replaced by “chemist,” “psychologist,” “writer.”

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Who has more to offer?

T. Braunstein — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:15:05 +0000

Today is quite a big day for the Germans, as today will decide the shape of government for the next four years. I like the fact that the Germans vote on a Sunday, which means that most people do not have to stress on their way to work.

Unlike the US two-party system, the Germans have a huge number of parties. There are the ecologically-minded Greens, special interest parties such as the Grey Panthers (senior citizens), the Bible-Abiding Christians, etc., although there are two parties that emerge as the strongest, the relatively conservative-minded Christian Democratic Union or CDU, epitomized at the moment by Angela Merkel, and the SPD, traditionally known as the party of the working man. Although the parties are supposed to hold more or less antithetical views, they governed jointly in a grand coalition over the past four years as neither was able to gain the majority, so that the televised ‘debates’ a few weeks ago led to yawns all around (one US-born political science teacher who shall remain nameless even dozing off between times). But realistically, what choice did the two parties have but to laud themselves for a job well done? The ‘duel’ became a ‘duet,’ fumed the press, and therefore less than compelling to watch.

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Running Amok

T. Braunstein — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:29:26 +0000

During my first week at school in Dakar, I had heard an odd noise during a meeting with the school’s director and could not resist looking out the window. The sound turned out to be the bleating of a sheep, and I was amused, as this was not the sort of thing that would ever occur during board meetings in New York. This strange noise and the occasional bit of homework not done were memorable among the ‘challenges’ I faced during my time teaching school in Senegal. The students were bright, articulate, rose to greet their teachers and, more astonishing still, usually (though not always) remembered to clean the board without prompting at the beginning of class.

At my first school meeting in Dortmund, on the other hand, two big topics of discussion were a) the swine flu and b) what to do in case a student went amok. Fears re the latter had intensified because of a recent incident in a quaint city of half-timbered houses near Stuttgart. In the usually peaceful haven of Winnenden, Tim Kretschmer killed fifteen people and then himself on March 11, 2009. He was only seventeen and came from a fairly well-to-do background. Talk about culture shock! Such an occurrence would have been simply unthinkable in my Senegalese school, so I decided to conduct a bit of research on such incidents in Germany.

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September 11 in History

T. Braunstein — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:27:05 +0000

It was a shock for me to realize in class today that my present ninth graders were in KINDERGARTEN when the Twin Towers fell. I remember the morning as if it were yesterday – walking from the subway to my workplace on 20^th Street, running into my friend Leah on the way, standing still in astonishment and wondering how any pilot could be so daft as to fly into the World Trade Center. I remember Leah telling me in no uncertain terms that we were witnessing a historic event, when the thought had not yet begun to percolate.

I remember the uneasy atmosphere at work, everyone exchanging stories and trying to find a radio station, attempting to call loved ones to make sure they were all right, trying to find some way to grasp what was going on, some logical explanation for what appeared to be inexplicable.

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On Making a Difference

T. Braunstein — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 13:47:28 +0000

When I first opened the door to my new apartment in Dortmund, Germany (I seem to be curiously drawn to places beginning with a ‘D’?!), I was enormously moved to see that my new next door neighbor, Bettina Broekelschen, an artist, had left me two prints of local scenes as a welcoming gift – the kindness of strangers! As I did not yet have a coffee machine, I suggested that as a thank you perhaps I could invite her to a local cafe where we might sit and get properly acquainted sometime.

Today was that day, and what an inspiring story she has to tell! She can read artwork the way other people read books, she explained, and she often uses the medium to understand troubled young people. She spent years working with a nonprofit organization helping local homeless children. She has great empathy for them, for she grew up in the north of Dortmund, which even today is considered quite rough, and managed to get herself kicked out of school not one, not two, not three, but FOUR times! She excelled in sports and in art. This is how she managed to rally all the kids in her class on her side, to the extent that they did a great deal of her schoolwork for her, which is how she muddled through. She always found school and its restrictions too boring to hold her interest and sought various ways to spice things up, generally to the deep and abiding displeasure of the school’s leadership.

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D is for Dortmund

T. Braunstein — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:10:25 +0000

Leaving Dakar for Dortmund was slightly scary in more ways than one. Though I had a firm job offer to teach at a German high school, no contract had yet been signed. On the strength of what amounted to little more than a solemn promise, I had bought a plane ticket and put down a month’s rent on a furnished apartment I had located on the internet but not actually seen. I was really quite petrified, but I argued to myself this way: the rainy season was coming to Dakar, so I could deal with the electricity cuts, the sweltering days and the ever-determined mosquitoes or take my chances, head to Europe, visit friends and family and see what happened.

I had not actually been overly eager to come to Dortmund, located in
North Rhine Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state. The region in
general is affectionately, if also somewhat pejoratively, referred to
as the “Ruhrpott,” a reference to the region’s thriving coal mining
industry. The auto industry was also a huge one here, with Opel
headquartered in nearby Bochum, so in my imagination I saw a huge
metropolis characterized by blackened buildings and smokestacks, huge
commercial centers and buildings and very little charm. Thankfully,
that has not turned out to be the case – I live in what is called the
“Kreuzviertel,” right near Dortmund’s TU, or technical university. The
neighborhood is full of pleasant cafes and restaurants, immaculately
clean, tree-lined streets, and quaint buildings so that I am reminded
a bit of the brownstones I used to enjoy so much as I would wander
around Brooklyn Heights after a walk across the Bridge.

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A Memorable Weekend

T. Braunstein — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:13:45 +0000

So last Saturday was an exciting day, as I hosted a nine-year old friend from the nearby island of Goree. I was not entirely sure how it would go, as we’d never spent quite so much time together before, plus there is a bit of a language barrier (her native language is Wolof, see ), but I wanted to introduce her to my world since I had been a frequent visitor to hers.
I met her at the ferry depot and she then took her first taxi ride ever (her usual means of transportation is of course the car rapide), so she peered rapturously out the window the entire time. She was fascinated when we came to the school in which I live, too, no doubt imagining herself seated behind one of the little wooden desks or playing in the yard at recess.
We then went to the beach around the corner from me, at the surf school at the Ngor restaurant, where the water can be quite rough. My little friend was cautious, as she does not know how to swim, though we did splash in the waves a bit. When she spied her first ‘chapeau de chinois’ (apparently these are called ‘limpets’ in English and are a type of saltwater snail. I had never heard of them before, but the locals enjoy eating them), she at once became very industrious, prying an inordinate number of them off the rocks and wrapping them solicitously in a tissue.
I cautiously asked her what she intended to do with them. “Take them home and cook them, of course!’ she responded brightly. “Oh,” I said, with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. I spent the remainder of the afternoon trying to find ways to distract her enough so that she would forget to take them home, but she was astonishingly single-minded about it: she was a girl with a mission.

Once we arrived home, she set the dread things to boil and said that we must have a ‘sauce’ to accompany them, a ‘sauce’ that accompanies a variety of different Senegalese dishes. It consists of chopped raw onion, mustard, vinegar, lime juice, salt, pepper, and Maggi (a sort of consommé cube that is basically pure MSG, used in virtually every dish throughout the country, including the famous tangana sandwiches). Despite what you may think, it was absolutely delicious and the perfect accompaniment to our, um, sea snails. As she was chopping the onions on my counter (which she was just tall enough to reach), she spied a little plastic bag full of ‘pain de singe,’ or monkey bread, and gleefully announced that she would now prepare a local drink called bouye. She added soursop extract, milk and banana to make a truly luscious beverage and beamed shyly when I told her how impressed I was with her mastery in the kitchen – I had been matter-of-factly relegated to the role of spectator, which was perfectly fine by me.

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A Day at the Zoo

T. Braunstein — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:26:46 +0000

According to Tamara Vodovoz, a trained veterinarian I know here who volunteers at a local zoo, most African zoos offer animals the worst imaginable conditions. Though the management willingly takes your money, there is hardly any subsequent investment in the zoo; there are neither clear objectives nor a plan to improve the park in order to reach international captive wildlife wellbeing standards.

There are few tools available to conduct any meaningful work. Though
there is a veterinary technician on staff, he has spent far too much
of his time reading the newspaper because there are neither medicines
nor resources for him to carry out de-worming or vaccination for the
animals. Any zoo should have basic equipment such as a blow dart and
anesthesia and a staff that knows how to use them, yet here they do
not. In one disheartening example, five little jackals that were kept
in far too small a cage escaped, but not for long: one of them ended
up with neurological damage because a keeper hit him on the head with
a shovel in order to return him to his cage.

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