The editor would like to thank all involved for their time and effort on this edition of The Voice.

The opinions expressed in any Sweet Briar College publication or other forms of media are not necessarily those of the students, faculty, staff or administration. Therefore, Sweet Briar College is not responsible for its content.

Editorials represent the opinion(s) of the editor(s) and/or staff/guest writer(s).

This site is maintained by Anne Proctor. Please email any questions or comments concerning the web site to her.

Not Oktoberfest
By Janika Carey '07
STAFF WRITER

When people think of my country, they seem to imagine mainly one thing: Oktoberfest.

Me, I’ve never even been to one. From what I’ve seen on TV and heard from friends, it’s just a bunch of German rednecks and tourists from Japan or elsewhere getting drunk on over-priced beer.

When I think of Germany, I think of Turkish Doener Kebap at 4 am, when you’re walking home through the snow from a student party at someone’s friend’s apartment in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg. I think about drinking Berliner Pilsner in the park, about Italian ice-cream on Beusselstrasse, and retro flea markets and brunch buffets on Sundays, when most stores are closed.

Over here, life is different. There is no Doener, but plenty of fast food, and while Lynchburg’s nightlife is hardly existent, I can at least shop any day of the week.

In contrast to my travel-happy country, many people in Amherst seem to have never been outside their county-borders, let alone places where people don’t speak English. But this fear of foreign terrain is quite common in my parents’ town in Southern Germany as well.

With a population of around 1500, not only your direct neighbors know what’s going on in your life; everybody does.

When people heard that I was getting married to an American, they said: “I wonder if he’s black?” Apparently, years of watching the Cosby Show and Will Smith-movies had left the impression that Americans were automatically African-American. Or maybe they just had trouble with the words “Africa” and “America”? It was all the same to them.

I was also pregnant at the time, and one woman came up to my mother and said, curiously: “I wonder what the baby will look like?”

“What do you mean?” my mother asked.

“Well, isn’t the father black?” the woman replied.

“No, in fact he’s got blond hair and blue eyes, just like my daughter.” The woman was stunned. Several minutes later, still fascinated by the idea of an “international baby,” she asked the same question: “I wonder what the baby will look like...?”

When my South African friend Mia went to Iowa for a semester, she was confronted with similar ignorance. People asked her questions like, “Where did you get your clothes? Don’t you guys wear skins and furs?” Mia decided to hop on the cliche-train and started telling her fellow American college students about her tree house and her pet lion, who didn’t always get along so well with her pet giraffe. They were fascinated.

Some of my German friends told me that they had been asked if we had the Dollar in Germany as well, or if the Berlin Wall still existed.

Hearing all that, I was considerably skeptical before I came here. After all, I had never been to the US before, so all I knew were those stories, and TV shows, such as Baywatch or The O.C., and Highschool-Cheerleader movies from the 80s.

Of course, the real world has very little to do with Hollywood, especially in Central Virginia. But although I miss my country, not everything here is as bad as I thought it would be. Americans , especially in the South, are much friendlier than Germans, and I like the fact that I can go to Wal-Mart at 4 am, if I want to – even if I never do.

A lot of the stuff I expected turned out to be different. Not all American girls look like Pamela Anderson, and not everybody here is as narrow-minded as those students in Iowa. In fact, there are lots of people here who travel quite a bit and who know that Germans don’t wear Lederhosen every day – or ever.

That makes me feel good. After all, this is not a different planet (although parts of Nelson County might qualify for that), just another part of the same world.

If we only had Doener here!