When my friend, Holly, told her host parents that she would be going to Disneyland Paris, her host mother replied that Disneyland is “insupportable” (intolerable). The general thoughts that we have gathered on the subject of Disneyland seems to be the same as Parisians’ attitude on the Eiffel Tower, famously negative. The park, renamed in 1995, was called Eurodisney at its inception and is still referred to as such by Americans.

However much Americans love and frequent Disney parks, in France, it is very much a site of controversy. A French director once referred to Disneyland Paris as a “cultural Chernobyl” and Eurodisney, upon opening 1992, ushered in a lot of protest, especially from intellectuals and labor unions. Intellectuals cried cultural imperialism. Labor unions fought Disney’s policies concerning the appearance of “cast members” citing an infringement of personal freedoms and misunderstanding of French standards of individualism and privacy. Despite the protest, the French had fought Spain to get the park and, obviously, won. However, in the beginning, the park turned out to be a failure with massive debts and poor attendance.

After years of poor performance, Disneyland Paris is celebrating its 15th Anniversary this year. Things have certainly turned around. One change that was made to help the business was to allow alcohol to be served inside the park, unlike its American counterparts. Failures were blamed on a misunderstanding of the cultural diversity of Europe. Also, to rejuvenate the park, Space Mountain: Mission 2 opened in 1995.

Going into the park, I expected that it would be full of American and British tourists and to hear mostly English. Much to my surprise, it seems that it truly is Disneyland Paris, and not Eurodisney. While in lines, English is probably the least heard language. Most of the people that I saw throughout the day were French and I heard a lot of Spanish and Italian. I was pleased that most audio on all of the rides is in French only. If anything else, it is in French and English, never just English. It appears that the French have actually embraced Disneyland. In fact, while in a restaurant, speaking French, the host asked us what language we wanted our menus in, French, Spanish, Italian, or English. We asked for one English and one French He was very surprised that we spoke English and were American and said “oh really?” in English with the thickest French accent I have ever heard. According to him, it is very rare to see Americans in the park.

Overall, I felt that Disneyland Paris was a great experience.  The park was not as crowded as the American parks and the weather was beautiful.  Their Space Mountain was new and improved, a little painful, but very enjoyable.  And really most people there were Europeans, surprisingly enough.

Years ago, a propos of the subject of then Eurodisney, one French philosopher said, “It is not America that is invading us. It is we who adore it, who adopt its fashions and above all, its words.” As much as the French criticize America’s consumer culture, and they do, evidence of them consuming it is right there.

My academic director lent me a book, “The Electric Universe: How Electricity Switched on the Modern World” by David Bodanis. It’s the first thing I have read that isn’t about the former Yugoslavia in better than two-and-a-half months. I’m in the final chapters now, somewhere between transistors and electric currents in the human body. With only 50 pages left, there’s been no mention of Nikola Tesla. For your average Croatian, this is as serious an offense as reading a book about the light bulb that neglects to mention Edison.

I didn’t think I knew all that much about Tesla before coming here, just the basics- the Tesla coil, the legal battle with Marconi, possibilities of time travel experiments and a likely assassination for experiments with free energy for all. But when we discussed Tesla one day in Croatian Language class, I was the only one who knew who the guy even was. If we want to use some basic statistics here, 9 in 10 Americans have no idea who Nikola Tesla is. This is the tragedy of small nations.

Did you know the mechanical pencil is a Croatian invention? Or the tie (the French called it Kravat for its Slavic creators)? The heroes and heroics of the nation are forgotten or ignored outside the small nation-state. But then again, small nations do the same thing to other nations. Tesla was born in 1856 to a Serb family in the village of Smiljan, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire but today in Croatian territory (national mythology says he was born precisely at midnight during an electrical storm). He is often quoted as having said “I am equally proud of my Serbian mother and my Croatian homeland.” But both Croatia and Serbia lay claim to Tesla as a hero of their nation. Ivan Meštrović’s contemplative statue of Tesla guards the pedestrian zone in Zagreb, but the Tesla Museum is bolded on every tourist map of Belgrade. Tesla is even on the 100 Dinar bank note in Serbia.

I have this modern art catalogue from a gallery here in Zagreb. The entire thing focuses on Tesla. There is this one piece in it, called “Naš Nikola Tesla” (Our Nikola Tesla), by Vlatka Horvat in 1974. It has an outline of Croatia and Serbia, with Serbia blacked out and “Naš Je” (He is ours) printed inside Croatia. Below is the inverse, with Serbia taking ownership of Tesla.

Tesla became an American citizen later in his life. But I think you’d be hard-pressed to find much hero worship of the inventor in the States. But big nations (even if they’re only a little over their 200th birthday) have big mythologies. Maybe one day there will be three nations competing for ownership of the father of the electric motor, but not when American writers are still leaving him out of history books.

hello all:

it’s really getting down to the wire here. i’m assuming that’s why people haven’t been up on posting. i myself started last week off with three papers, two presentations and three finals looming, and after this weekend i guess i’m half done with all that. but who cares, am i right? the point is i have ten damn days left here and the tried and true pre-departure blues are playing soft and slow, but getting hotter. they go like this: “i guess i’ll be leaving soon/ when i just got used to you.”

one neighborhood in particular. it’s called prenzlauerberg, and i’ll say that way back in the throes of winter i had one of my first really spectacular nights there with new friends. the snow was fresh on the sidewalks and i was slip-sliding about, not knowing where in the hell we were going but embracing the adventure and putting my faith in our de facto tour guide, a girl named alexandra who had the unfair advantage of studying here last semester, thus learning all the ropes. she took me and my buddy kevin around.

a quick portrait. prenzlauerberg lies on a hill (berg=hill or mountain, prenzlauer is something having to do with prenzlau), one of the few in the city. what i do is i take the M1 tram from oranienburgerstrasse, about a fifteen minute ride from the west. you go through all the hip spots, and on sunny weekend days the streets are crowded and bustling and you can’t help but notice how well everyone looks. just healthy and well put together. go most other places in the city and you’ll see a different picture. it’s stark, really, how vibrant this area is compared to the vast majority of berlin. the neighborhood is by no means a secret, and by no means did i discover it. but it’s become my baby, and her baby i have become. she’s taught me why people get attached whe they know it can’t last.

for example. take the tram from oranienburgerstrasse, like i told you. trams are the best form of publid transportation because they’re right there on the street. no tunnels, no underground– you see where you’re going and can put everything together. you go through hakescher markt, an area that in the 18th and 19th centuries butchers had their shops, and at the end of the 19th century was mostly inhabited by the pariah of society– jews, poles, artists, etc. there was a workshop there that made brooms and employed exclusively blind jews to make them. the owner of the shop made deals with the nazis to spare his workers, and he saved all of them. i went to a bar once in the same courtyard where they worked.

next part you come to in rosenthaler platz, home of a fine cafe with wireless internet and not too much else. my buddy tony santorella, who some of you might know, and i went there once in the infancy of our stay in berlin, couldn’t find anything to do and went home the long way (which is really long). oh how callow we were. if only we’d walked up the hill to the northeast corner on the platz, we would have been so much better off.

so we’re on the tram going up the hill on a long striaght street called kastanienallee. it’s a beautiful day, not a cloud in the brilliant blue sky and if you really want to, when you’re standing in the sun, you can take off your sweatshirt. you must remember, friend, that this is only one of a handful of gorgeous days you can remember from the past six months, so you and all your fellow residents are treating it accordingly. the street is lined by pretty much everything you’d ever want– cafes, restaurants, bars, combinations of the three, clothes store, kitsch stores, record stores; it’s dense. and crowded with people, the vast majority of which are noticeably under 30. the side streets take you to even more precious gems.

the buildings lining kastanienalle have shops in the bottom and apartments on top, and most are in some way renovated. but some buildings are immediately identifiable as “old” (in this town sometimes a dangerous illusion, in this case it’s the real deal. you can see the 60 year old bullet holes in the facade.)

now i must add as a caveat that prenzlauerberg (effectionatley known as prenzelberg, or p-berg when i’m making coffee in the morning and she’s just waking up) are a young couple, having only gotten serious in the past month or so. for example, the coffee shop with the two lamps and no visible signage on the front, i was there for the first time only three weeks ago. and i’m still scared to try things, scared of what she’ll say if maybe i go into this shop or break this unpoken rule. and scared of course of rejection. we’re still feeling each other out.

when the weather was really good one saturday a couple months ago, i could tell you the exact date if you want to know, i was particularly down about the changing tides back home and so i started walking and didn’t stop until i’d tied at least three neighborhoods together. i walked for about four hours, stumbling upon little magical vignettes– flea markets, parks, throngs of people just sitting reading or chatting. you could say this is when i really met my new love, having from time to time run into each other for an abbreviated chat.

and in some peripheral way, i have become a part of that scene. just for the past couple of months.

but of course i don’t live here and maybe never will, i’m just passing through. but prenzelberg has taught me something about myself in our short, whirlwind of a relationship. i want to set up shop. it’s become a mantra of sorts for me these last few weeks. that neighborhood, the neighborhood that takes me up to an hour to get to from my house, has made me feel more at home than almost anywhere else.

it’s made me excited to grow up, i guess. to lay down roots, stop jumping around. it’s shown me that no matter where i am, where i end up, i want to fully commit and not look back. and if i’m really lucky, maybe i’ll have a little apartment above a bakery, with a window overlooking a bustling street of beautiful people.

The presidential elections in france are only six weeks away and are really starting to heat up.  Their elections are quite different from our own in electoral format, in that there are almost always two rounds, basically a run-off.  So the primary objective of candidates right now is to get into the second round.  You may remember that in 2002, there was an international uproar because Jean Marie Le-Pen, head of the Front National (extreme right/fascist party) made it into the second round and was of course defeated by Chirac.  It was a national embarassment, but once again Le-Pen is in the race and is polling at about 13%.  That’s not bad considering the front-runners are polling between 20-35%.

That’s not really an issue though, because Le-Pen will never win the presidency.  However, he definitely does bring far-right issues to the fore of the campaign season.  Immigration is probably the largest issue now.  One of my professors here argues that politicians in recent years have come to use Immigrants as a scapegoat for all of France’s problem, especially economic and that the public buys that assertion that immigration is the problem.  I can definitely see her reasoning.

Currently, the front-runner is Nicolas Sarkozy, still.  He is center-right, but last week caused quite a stir by annoncing that as president he wishes to create a Ministry of Immigration and National Identity. I find this to be particularly troubling.  Sarkozy is in favor of “Immigration chosi,” that is, France picks-and-chooses who is allowed to stay.  His reasoning for wanting to create this new ministry, he said, is that immigration is handled by multiple authorities and should be stream-lined.  Fine, make your own INS.  What is scary, though, is the addition of the National Identity aspect in the very same ministry.  I recently read an article detailing France’s crisis of identity; they do seem to care about fixing their national identity.  But I think that combining Immigration and National Identity definitely blames immigrants for the malaise.  Immigration policy is definitely becoming stricter.  Though Le-Pen will not be president, his influence on national politics is not lost.

I’m just rather uncomfortable with the idea of a fixed/determined national identity.  To me, and perhaps this is very American, national identity is constantly evolving.  Of course every nation has sovereignty over its identity, but is that really the job of a government institution?  With rapid change, an institution can not easily control how culture evolves.  Lord knows France is big on keeping their culture French, especially their language, but they can’t stop the flood.  For example, I have rarely heard a French person refer to “e-mail” as “courriel” (the French word invented for e-mail). Maybe they do have an identity under seige, but I don’t think that far-right rhetoric masked as moderate is the answer.

hey guys:

long time no chat. i take full responsibility. but i think i have a handle on it now.

it’s hailing now, by the way.

so i haven’t the energy to fully explain my point on this, but since i haven’t posted anything in a while i’ll force something out.

i’ve been thinking a lot lately about culture and what that means and everything, and how sometimes people say that americans don’t really have a culture, just a bunch of appropriations and bastardizations of other cultures. i mean, in a way that’s kind of true, but i’m not conviced that’s a bad thing. mostly, pull your head out of your ass, i can’t help it. my country’s a baby.

so when i say american culture, i’m talking the one that’s exported, the one that everyone sees. not an activist punk community, for example, which has a culture in and of itself, or chris dewitt’s specific set of beliefs and things. i’m talking about culture in terms of an entire country’s shared set of customs, beliefs and whatnot. if you still have your ninth grade social studies book, look up the definition in the glossary. it’s hard to peg in the states, because our whole deal is to be a melting pot, if everyone else gets to have one, i’d like to have one too. but i’m becoming more and more sure that as americans, we can’t really have our own, specific stuff. art, music, language, all that.

being here in europe, it’s really obvious how much american stuff is here. words, products, habits, everything. you listen to the radio and it’s 85% american or english language music. go to the KaDeWe (kaufhaus des westens, a huge department store in former west berlin) and there, in a place of prominence, is a section of american breakfast cereals. that’s an exception, but american products are definitely not hard to find. english words have weaseled themselves into almost every aspect of german language. to say “my flight was cancelled,’ you use the verb “gecancelled.” when you say, “i checked my email,” you say, “ich habe meine Email gechecked.” like, come on. i’m pretty sure that’s the same way across europe, english words used in other languages. (not to say that english is inherently american, but it’s one more thing that’s not ours, that we share. indeed, english is becoming so unbound by nationality that it’s just as likely to be used by non-native speakers as a common denominator than by native speakers in foreign countries.)

thing is, how many german words are there in the english language? words that aren’t food? um, two? maybe? this highlights the fact that america doesn’t really have a culture per se, but in an unexpected, at least for me, way. germans, the french, czechs, greeks, they all have, arguably, a very specific culture, a laundry list of things you can only truely understand if you are german or french or czech or greek. americans ahve those for sure, but we export them, so they’re not our own but in a way commodities in a one-sided economy.

as for american exports (”cultural” exports), those other cultures can pick and choose what they want to borrow, take, and/or make their own. economics aside, if you’re a german radio station, for example, you can choose to play to an american pop hit on the radio, but you can also play german music. and they do. in addition to the myriad hollywood movies in theaters here, there are also german ones at the multiplexes.

in this way, the culture that we have in america is really becoming everyone’s culture. we have no say anymore. and it doesn’t go both ways. greece doesn’t really export pop hits, and with exception of nena and modern talking (both from the ’80s, i’ll note), neither does germany, the third largest economy in the world.

point is, european nations have there own cutlure, plus the ability to more or less pick and choose what american stuff they want. we just have the american stuff. and mexican food, i guess.

this turned out to be longer than expected. but i more than welcome perspectives from the other folks, and from our loyal readers (do you even exist??) who may think this is a crock.

a few anecdotes:

so i think that i am constantly judged by the way i look.  and mostly i mean, my freckles and light hair. the word for freckles in french is taches de rousseurs.  this literally translates to redhead’s spots.  because of my british features, people keep asking me “est-ce que vous etes anglaise?” (are you english).

i mean, i people asking me if i’m english by heritage all the time at home, but here it’s strange because i’m asked very often in paris.  a few weeks ago, i was buying a copy of Pariscope which is a little book that holds movie times, concerts, and cultural events for the week.  my dear friend, ross, was with me and we spoke english amongst ourselves.  the guy who worked at the newsstand asked if i was english.  i said, no we’re american.  he insisted still that i must be english because i look it.  i said, oh yeah because of my freckles and skin.  he said “of course.”

this morning, lauren, me, and our friend holly were talking to two polish guys who are both named Bartak (sp?).  they know lauren from a shared class.  holly and i were talking to them and met one of them just today. holly is going to disneyland paris this weekend and bartak 1 asked why as there is one in the US.  we said, of course, there are two and they are grand, but disneyland paris is a must.  bartak 2 asked if we lived near california or florida.  so after all of this talk of the US, bartak 2 said to lauren later “they’re english, right?”

this is really not that rare.  it’s pretty odd to be mistaken for the wrong nationality all the time.

on an unrelated note, today in french, we did an exercise in groups of three where one person was the role of journalist, one was being interviewed, and one had to transcribe.  holly and i worked with a girl named Quina who is apparently nuts.  everyone was supposed to play roles and come up with themes and questions that related to one another.  Quina first asked to be the journalist, so we agreed and she posed questions to holly as i transcribed.  so we could overhear other groups coming up with hypothetical situations like witnesses to an accident, and Quina just asked, “what do you do, in general?”  and after that, “what worries you?”  it was fairly obvious that she didn’t understand the exercise, but she didn’t want to do either of the other tasks.  so holly was answering the best she could.  next question “qu’est ce qui te derange?” is a little harder to translate, but basically meant, “what disturbs you?” to which holly answered horses for me.  now the craziest yet was:

“qui est-ce qui est responsable pour l’onze septembre?” (who is responsible for Sept. 11th?)

WTF??  holly and i were freaking out and were absolutely shocked. i just don’t understand what this girl was getting at.  and i think it seems that in general people have a feeling towards americans that we don’t have a care in the world/are completely numb.  do you guys find this at all as an american abroad? i can’t get over this event- it was just such a bizarre thing to say.

i’m still kind of dumbfounded.

The sky was overcast and I was staring at these bombed-out buldings.
A ministry of defense, or something
more like a beached whale,
lying/dying, ribs exposed,
a scar that may take seven more years to heal.

Belgrade was uncomfortable and mostly I tried not to speak English too loudly. It made me want to go to Kosovo badly. The NATO bombs fell on Belgrade for 78 days in 1999. That is not too long ago and 78 days is a long time. It isn’t guilt, it is just knowing that you are blamed for that. It is just uncomfortable.

Храм Светог Саве (The Temple of St. Sava) dominates the city skyline. Construction began in 1935, 340 years to the day after the burning of Saint Sava, the founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Temple, today, is still unfinished. The inside is all exposed concrete and scafolding and constant hammering. It was used as a warehouse during the SFR Yugoslavia, until construction began again in 1984.

The thing about Orthodox churches is that there aren’t really seats. Worshipers stand for the duration of the service. So, despite the fact that the floor is covered with dust and the only holy images are propped up on the scafolding, there are services in the Temple on high holy days.

I didn’t get a chance to hear an Orthodox choir while in Serbia, but I was told they are beautiful.

writing in response to Chris’ piece on the Berlin metro and his wider thoughts on German culture. In the Parisian metro, there are plenty of street (underground?) performers.  There are the stereotypical accordion players who play the music that comes to mind when envisioning Paris.  There are young dudes who play things like REM and Bob Marley.  As for my personal favorite, there is a group of kids on Ligne 4. I have seen a kid as young as 12 and as old as about 17 in this group.  They bring a CD player with them and play the backing track of Dr. Dre’s “The Next Episode” over which they rap in French.  The track cuts short and fades into a quicker dance beat to which they show off their dancing (including belly dancing) skills and flip over bars in the metro.

None of these performers seem to be particularly welcome.  While passing a performer in the tunnels of the metro stations, one is advised to just look away and walk on.  When performers enter on to cars during the train ride, riders don’t pay attention to them or make a point to put on their mp3 players and generally also don’t pay them.  The boys of Ligne 4, who I have now come across twice, are received with laughter.  As students, we were told not to pay attention to performers as Parisians do.

I can’t imagine ever stopping in the middle of one of the metro’s winding tunnels to watch a performer.  I don’t know why the Parisian metro is like that, but often on the metro one can feel ill at ease.  That’s probably because harassment on the metro is widespread; every passenger wants to be as inconspicuous as possible.  It seems that performers are just another nuisance on the metro that the urban dweller deals with on a daily basis.  Nothing more, nothing less.  I think that all passengers of the Metro feel a little ruffled everyday and just want to get home.
-holly

The above title is the French equivalent of “Mind the gap.”

Sometimes it is hard not to believe in fate. I went to a gallery opening the other night here in Zagreb, a group from Chicago called Temporary Service. Jane and I spoke to the artists some, mostly about squats and public space and bambus and art bullshit. It was strange how easy it was to speak to other Americans. I rarely meet Americans in Zagreb, outside of representatives from the international community who lead some of our lectures during the week. But when I spoke to these folks, it was this immediate connection and community. It calls into question whether ‘American’ really is separate from ‘nation-ness,’ if this supra-family is so readily created.

But anyways, the connection proved valuable. I saw one of the guys the next day, a chance meeting in the street. He was on his way to a second hand record store not 2 minutes from my program’s office. I accompanied him, and the guy that owned the record store soon became an invaluable resource for my independent study project on Slovene punk and youth resistance in Yugoslavia.

I bought three records from this Slovene industrial metal band, Laibach (Laibach is German for Ljubljana). These guys were the vanguard of Neue Slowenische Kunst (New Slovenian Art, again German). Laibach was one of the major reasons that Slovenian punk was labeled as fascist and Nazi. They have one album that is 8 different versions of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil.’ NSK these days claims status as a micro-nation and even issues passports.

From wikipedia:

Laibach are emphatic about their work being collective rather than individual. Laibach’s original songs and arrangements are always credited to the group collectively; the individual artists are not named on their album covers; at one point, there were even two separate Laibach groups touring at the same time, both with members of the original group. Similarly, the IRWIN artists never sign their work individually; instead, they are “signed” with a stamp or certificate indicating approval as a work from the Irwin collective.

NSK art often draws on symbols drawn from totalitarian or extreme nationalist movements, often reappropriating totalitarian kitsch in a visual style reminiscent of Dada. NSK artists often juxtapose symbols from different (and often incompatible) political ideologies. For example, a 1987 NSK-designed poster caused a scandal by winning a competition for the Yugoslavian Youth Day Celebration. The poster appropriated a painting by Nazi artist Richard Klein, replacing the flag of Nazi Germany with the Yugoslav flag and the German eagle with a dove. [Hackett, 2004]

So one thing I will definitely be looking at is the politicization of punk from outside sources (The League of Communists of Yugoslavia), and how this played a crucial role in the development of punk as a counterculture rather than a subculture.

More on punk when I get back from Serbia.
-JL

friends:

berlin is a helluva a place for street musicians, or, my personal favorite, subway musicians.   three or four stops from mine on the S-1, musicians get on from time to time, play a song, then walk the length of the car.  there are a few different ones i’ve seen so far:

there’s the guitar and clarinet duo that plays  gypsy folk music; there’s the young looking fellow who plays guitar and sings opera songs; and last night i saw a new one– guitar and saxophone playing ’80s soft rock jams.

the thing that blows my mind is that everytime, no matter what, people throw money at them. people always dig out some change to give to the musicians.  it never fails.

i took this german cultural history class last semester (it was in german, it was hard), and we spent an unusual amount of time talking about german values.  duty, honor, valor, etc.  we were studying it in the context of knights and medieval things, but it turns out they carry on to today.

like, someone plays a song on a train.  they’re a captive audience– they have to listen, but they don’t have to pay.  but they do.  it’s fun to watch all these people reaching for wallets after these people play.  never fails.  and it works for other things, too.  there’s this newspaper tabloid called “strassenfeger” (translates to comething like “street sweeper”) in berlin, which is sort of a charity organization that gives money to homeless folks.  the homeless folks sell it on the subways and things.  they step on, wait for the doors to close, say a little speech about how they’re trying to turn their lives around and the newspaper is 1.20 euro thank you very much.  and i’ve never seen somebody take a magazine, but always people give them money.   and i feel ilke if a german read this, they wouldn’t understand how heartless i am.  like, of course i’m going to give them money.  why not?  and indeed, i’m not sure why it strikes me as odd.

but i’m pretty sure it’s a different kind of generosity than the kind we find in the States or other places.  it seems almost mechanic, driven by a sense of medieval duty and honor.  you see a bum on the street and where in DC people would either pretend not to see him or her, or mutter a “next time,” i’ve seen people line up to put some change in a cup.  maybe it has to do with a collective sense of needing to help out the 18% unemployed of the city, or maybe it comes from a collective guilt from the past, and the need to reconcile that with small favors, or maybe it stems from the european socialist ideal of looking after everyone.  who knows.

also, public confession: i met this douchebag from LA last night at this bar.  by the end of the night i was so tense and angry about him and his smarmy laugh and idiot ways that i started correcting his german grammar.  like, that’s rude, i’d say, but the worst thing about it is that my corrections were wrong.  whoops.