O Canada

This is really quite bizarre. It does, indeed, seem as if I woke up Canadian this past Friday, on account of my mother having been a Canadian citizen when I was born. The next brother on down is in the same state, for our youngest brother it will depend on how they interpret it. Since she is now again Canadian by decree, he might still be considered Canadian, too.

So things Canadian are coming back to me - songs, visits to Canada, my mom going on and on about the symbolism in the Canadian maple leaf flag (although, according to the Canadian Heritage site the eleven points do not stand for the 10 provinces and 1 territory), Canadian holidays like Dominion Day, and saying "eh" at the end of every other sentence.

My Mom had to obtain American citizenship in order to teach, and she had to be married to an American for four years in order to apply for citizenship. The Americans at that time, like the Germans today, made people give up their old citizenship. Canada also officially reinstated the citizenship of all Canadians who were forced to give up their citizenship. So it's pretty much just my Dad left out of this!

WiseMan remarked this evening that I change my citizenship more often than WiseKid changes his underpants, which is a gross exaggeration.

Anyway, I printed out a Canadian flag for my office door this morning, and wore Mom's maple leaf pin.

Waking up Canadian

Just discovered that I woke up Canadian on Friday. Rather bizarre.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDeDQpIQFD0

A New Beginning for America

When someone asked me yesterday if I was going to watch "it" on TV I was puzzled - oh, the inauguration? Nah, they'll have pictures on the evening news.

But all day it kept bugging me, so I checked the TV guide and got myself home in time. I turned on CNN (what else do you watch on a day like today) and thought I would work while it ran in the background. I ended up watching up most of it, closely. Just time for a quick blog entry before I get my lecture finished for tomorrow.

Some random thoughts:

• So many people crying, so many people moved by this moment. Just the fact of an African American being sworn in as POTUS is giving people hope for the future. Of course, after 8 years of George W., it can't get much worse.
• I was so happy how people cheered when Hillary was introduced. I do which, though, that she was the one taking the oath.
• Imagine the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court flubbing the oath!
• Cool that they let out the Lincoln bible for the swearing in.
• Aren't those girls just adorable? I hope they are able to enjoy live in the White House. People are almost as excited as they were about Caroline and John John. I do hope they appoint Caroline to replace Hillary.
• CNN ran ads for hair and skin products for people of color. How fitting!
• The Obama family coming out of the White House to get to the stand was just so neat - Daddy, Mommy and the girls heading for some fun and just enjoying themselves.
  
• The marching band from Obama's high school in Hawaii was neat - they were all so *scared* and so *awed* at the honor of playing for the president. And he so enjoyed the show. But what was the thing with his thumb and little finger? He and his girls both did it.
• The drummers and acrobats from Chicago were great!
• There was so much military marching music - and the formations of soldiers rather reminded me of East German parades. But the folks in the box are laughing and joking. And it is an inclusive joking, not jokes made at the cost of someone.
• Neat, all the places Pres or Veep or family went to school gets to send a marching band. What if they don't have one? Okay, right, it's the States.
  
• What shall I do with the talking Bush doll in my office? Retire it? When can I get an Obama doll?
• I got tons of email congratulating me on Obama. Actually, I didn't have anything to do with it. I'm German, and I was for Hillary. Some people write: they wish they were American so they could be proud of having elected this guy. Americans are proud of this moment and of being an American. I think it is great, but I am (still) relieved not to be official American any more. Although, when Aretha Franklin sang "My Country 'Tis of Thee" or the national anthem was played, I did feel moved. Must be all that indoctrination I had in school. I can enjoy this even without being an American, thanks to CNN.
  
• Dr. Jill Biden is a college teacher with a doctorate in Education and now Second Lady. I hope she continues to teach! And the President, the Vice President, and the First Lady have doctorates in law - finally, people who understand something about education in power!
  
• My spelling checker doesn't know Obama yet. Gotta fix that.
• I hope he enjoys today - there's a lot of work his predecessor left on the desk for him. Good luck in getting America restarted. But after looking and listening today, I think he's going to have a lot of people willing to help him.
• Oooh, I got an edit in on one of the Obama pages (the one on the parade) on the Wikipedia. Does that make me famous?
  

US Presidential Candidates

There's a cute poll on over at 2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

My results were:

85% Dennis Kucinich
84% Mike Gravel
77% Barack Obama
75% Chris Dodd
74% Joe Biden
73% John Edwards
73% Hillary Clinton
67% Bill Richardson
45% Rudy Giuliani
39% Ron Paul
39% John McCain
34% Mitt Romney
32% Mike Huckabee
20% Fred Thompson
12% Tom Tancredo

I have never heard of 5 or 6 of these people. At least the colors are sorted right. I am shocked that I agree with Huckabee on about a third of the issues. I wish the results would show me which issues it is that I agree with them.

Lucky me, I'm not voting over there anymore. Although they keep sending me voter registration cards, they don't seem to have a procedure for informing officials when people rescind their citizenship.

Two faces of German culture

I have to sit down. Take a deep breath.

Germany, one would think a cultured country, is hotly debating important topics such as a 100 question test [tagesspiegel.de] to be administered to foreigners daring to want to become German citizens. I haven't actually met a German who could answer all of the questions, but that is beside the point. This test is supposed to give you a good idea of what German culture is.

Then we have "Wo bist Du mein Sonnenlicht". Pomi posts links like this [spreeblick.com] to strange videos he finds on the net. He must spend all day surfing. Stuff like this does not swim on the top if the Internet. I hope. Anyway, Spreeblick was just commenting on a blog entry "The next big thing" [ntropie.de] which has a homemade music video by three young German-Turks. Their singing skills could be improved. The video could, with a lot of work, pass for Dogma. The choreography looks like it was designed by testersterone-choked teenagers (apparently, it was).

The video would be a great joke, if the German popular media industry had not descended like a plague of locusts. The boys suddenly are on TV. Bunte (a German bored-housewife rag) is writing about them. Record labels and handy ring tone companies are hunting them down. No self-respecting blog can do without a link to this (this blog included). This is popular culture in Germany today.

If they aren't already German citizens, I vote they be given honorary citizenship. Without having to take the test.

How German it is

So now I am German. It is official. It says so on the nice certificate I picked up this morning and on the temporary ID card I was issued. It was just another administrative task. Get up, have breakfast, brush your teeth, fill out some more papers, pay some money, get your citizenship, go shopping, get the mail, make dinner.

"Did you do anything special, today, honey?" "Oh, I'm now a citizen of Germany". "That's nice, pass the salt".

No ceremony, the lady at the desk for the IDs just wanted to see my "abgesiegeltes Passbild" and kept a dour expression on her face the entire time. They must have training for this at adminstrative school. How to keep a scowl on your face for the entire transaction. No "Welcome!", no fanfare, no Lord Mayor with a handshake. Okay, the Beamte handing me my certificate gave me a handshake. But that was it.

So I had to do something, and thus I went out and bought a dirndl (a decent one, no colored flowers and no apron, although an apron would look nice with this) and wore it this evening. No one wanted to dance polka with me, but at least the friends helping me empty two bottles of bubbly said "Welcome". Well, to be honest, one said "My deepest sympathy" and another one said "I hope you know what you are doing". Really comforting, guys.

Stateless for real

The deed is done.

The US consulate played all sorts of cute games with me in the interim (see my blog entry "A Woman Without a Country"). Oh, you need this form. Didn't we send that to you? Call for an appointment. No, we can't talk to you on the phone without you sending in all the paperwork first. You are missing a paper. No appointments for the next 3 weeks.

But today was the day. The paperwork - an awesome pile of 20 documents (The informed consent page, the oath page, the renunciation of citizenship block of forms and the witness page, each with 5 copies) was prepared, typed and printed with today's date and each page embossed with a seal.

The vice consul read one to me, then he read one having me repeat it after him with my right hand raised (it was on a paper in front of me, I can *read*, you know). Having signed that one, I was officially stateless. I handed in my passport (which would have expired in March, I made good use of that!), the vice consul wished me luck in this new portion of my life (hey, I've lived here for 28 years!) and they got up to leave. I made a point of shaking hands all around a second time, remarking that I am a German now, I shake hands a lot.

It only took 15 minutes, and I was back at the gate collecting my 17 different electrical and battery-operated and deadly devices that I had to check with the guard. They didn't take my Swiss Army Office from me, a little pen knife with a USB stick in it, or my metal toothpick that I once had to forfeit on a flight. I am pretty sure the whole visitation stuff is a fake.

Back out in the cold and snow I asked myself: do you feel any different now? The answer is no. Just like having a birthday, it is something that just happens. You do not feel magically transformed. I have no desire to go out and buy a dirndl. I still don't like beer. I will not eat a Schweinshaxe. But wait, one little triumph: when Bush marches into Iran, it will no longer be in my name. And that is a relief.

A Woman Without a Country

I went to the American Consulate last Tuesday to give up my citizenship. I stood outside in the drizzle as only the Germans are allowed through security early to stand in line indoors, since there are soldiers guarding their line. Citizens get to go upstairs without a soldier, so they are only let in on the dot of 8.30. Fit my mood.

I had left my computer and PDA at home, but they didn't like my mobile phone, so I had to lock that into a little locker before going through the "security" area. Strangely enough, I had been observing the people working at the embassy go through the same thing without a bell or whistle sounding, and they don't have to take off their coats or empty their pockets. So maybe the whole thing is just a fake, and the bell sounds randomly. Everyone always has some sort of metal left on them - keys, belt buckle, necklace - so there is always something else to take off.

I got upstairs to the hushed atmosphere of the consulate, and there was a guy there before me. Hmm, how did he get in? I spoke with a consular officer - a German (!) who couldn't pronounce English properly - who spent 10 minutes rustling together papers. Then he quizzed me on whethere I was doing this for tax purposes. I said no, I want to be a German. He harangued me for about 15 minutes telling me how irrevokable this all is, gave me the papers (I will have to sign 5 times in the presence of witnesses) and then said that I couldn't do it today, as only a consul or vice consul can take the oath an they are on holiday.

Great.

Then he told me that I will have to surrender my passport immediately, but the paper confirming my revocation will take about 6 months. So I called the German office to ask if just the submission paper will be enough for me to get the German citizenship. No, it will not be. I have to have the revocation papers. *And* they will re-check if I am still an upstanding citizen, not on welfare, not in jail, still living in my apartment and getting paid every month. I mean, with Hartz IV, lots of people will not meet the criteria!

This means that I will be a woman without a country or a passport for about 6 months. What fun, our son went through this for 3 years until the adoption was final. You apply for a "Reisedocument" at the Friedrich-Krause-Ufer (takes all day). Then you have to apply for a visa for every country you want to visit. I currently plan on visiting Sweden, Italy and Austria during the next 6 months, there may be more to come. For each visa you spend a day at the consulate. Getting on planes is tough, becuase the border guards have only ever seen a document like this in their education and are so thrilled to finally see one that they take it into their little rooms to examine every page while the lines behind me get more impatient with every passing minute.

Why does it have to be so difficult? Why can't people be memebers of two countries - there are many people with two passports out there, what's the problem? And why, in the name of avoiding double citizenship, do these two countries force me to be the member of no country for so long a period?

Stay tuned for further installments.....