That Queer Expatriate

It’s starting to sink in that tomorrow night I must pack my suitcase yet again.

This time it’s a holiday trip—off to see the folks for Thanksgiving. This will be my first Thanksgiving in America in a very, very long time. I can’t actually be sure when I was last in the States for Thanksgiving. Before moving to Germany, I used to vacation in Europe during this week. Honestly, although I am looking forward to the trip, I have to say that flying four consecutive Sundays in a row is a bit exhausting—and I’m only half way through the adventure.

December will be great—a month without travel. I’ve been buying up DVDs to watch on the long winter nights, along with supplies of tea bags, hot chocolate, and other warm movie snacks.

Sent as a part of the Join The Impact Project Postcard. Airmail postcards from Germany to the US cost 1€.

My postcard to Obama

President-elect Barack Obama
Presidential Transition Office
Kluczynski Federal Building
230 S. Dearborn St., 38th Floor
Chicago, IL 60604
United States of America

Dear President-Elect Obama

Please repeal D.O.M.A.! All Americans should have the right to marry. Thanks in advance for advocating for the civil rights of your LGBT citizens.

Sincerely,

Adam Lederer
Weimar, Germany
Votes in Indiana

I’m back in Weimar, and I really wish the ICE trains would get fixed. ICs are uncomfortable (especially aged Swiss ICs) and late (30 minutes today).

My east-bound trip over the pond last night was highly unusual. Despite leaving on-time, we arrived a few minutes late because we took an extremely northerly route that involved crossing over Greenland and over then northern parts of Iceland. The only previous times that I’ve been over Greenland, it was westbound, and we passed south of Iceland. Apparently the weather further south was pretty bad causing much turbulence.

Anyhow, usually when I fly, I don’t make use of the movie system onboard—I have a book or magazine to read and that is all I need to be content.

This month I’ve been watching movies. Westbound I watched both Little Miss Sunshine and Miss Congeniality. The former was better than I remembered, and the later was… as bad as I remembered. Eastbound I watched a charming movie, Gachi Boy: Wrestling with a Memory, a Japanese film about a young man who loses his memory, but decides to become a professional wrestler anyway. It’s quite sweet and, I feel, well put together. Possibly the best film I’ve seen in the last week (and I’ve seen six).

Probably the best thing I did this week was give gifts to the flight attendants onboard all my flights—boxes of Merci Chocolates. It certainly made a positive impression, casting me as hero—even as I slept through most of two flights.

This has been an incredibly great trip—productive on the one hand, fun on the other.

Unfortunately it has to come to an end and I am heading back to Weimar today—getting home Monday morning. Home is, of course, a wonderful place and I although I slept in excellent beds at two different Hiltons, there is nothing quite like my own bed. I am eagerly anticipating sleeping under its covers.

There’s been a lot to blog about, but I am behind and given that I am returning home, I might never get around to writing out everything I want to write, so here are some bullet point highlights. Each point is worthy of a blog entry in and of itself, but because I didn’t have unlimited time—my apologies

• Pittsburgh was fantastic, and I had a nice time at the Carnegie Museum of Art. Their special exhibit, “Life on Mars” fully engaged me for three hours, including a powerful documentary on language as a tool for oppression and racial hatred. By the time I finished wandering the special exhibit, I was mentally exhausted and unable to really absorb the rest of the art museum, and I barely glanced at the natural history museum that shares space with the art museum.
• The Andy Warhol Museum was quite interesting—it’s hard for me to see all of his work as art, but it is all interesting. The top floor of the museum had a special exhibit on 1958 that focused on “As Seen on TV” products like the pocket fisherman and the veg-o-matic. TV advertising from the 1970s is engaging and I was ready to buy.
• Breakfast with the Amiexpat was really enjoyable. We travel out to somewhere in suburban Virginia in the vicinity of Dulles Airport. Breakfast was great and the restaurant’s décor was egg-cellent—Moist, even.
• The Washington Capitals played the New Jersey Devils at home on November 18^th. They also played them, at home, on October 18^th. There’s an amusing (and expensive) story there.
• I was able to reconnect with an old friend from my University of Wyoming days—somebody I haven’t seen in over a decade. We hung out Saturday morning, wandering briefly through Air & Space. It was really great meeting her fiancé and learning about what’s been going on in her life.
• Starbucks is evil, but gosh darn it—I adore the Pumpkin Spice Latte at least once a year. I also tried the Gingerbread Latte, which was most awesome.
• McCain-Palin T-Shirts can be had cheap. Obama merchandise is expensive—but I did break down and buy one Obama T-Shirt—it’s Warhol-esque, so it happens to fit both Pittsburgh and Washington—a two for one souvenir.
• Finally, my Sony Cybershot DSC-T100 camera officially has epilepsy. It has occasionally had this problem in the past—thus screwing up a day of phototaking on trips, but in the past, I merely had to give it a night’s rest and it was fine the next day.  Didn’t work this trip—and thus I have few decent photos to share. At the camera store the clerk was impressed, remarking “you can’t just feel the vibration, you can hear it!” He thought I wanted to repair it—instead I dropped $150 on a new Nikon Coolpix S52—The optical zoom is only 3x instead of 5x, slightly better Megapixels, and so far epilepsy-free. It’s growing in popularity on Flickr, too!

I might expand on some of these points later, but I wouldn’t bet on it. They shall probably remain tantalizing points of what might have been.

The Washington Monument and Pride

For the past week, save one incident, I have had the most incredible luck imaginable.

Last Saturday I lucked into Berlin’s mp3 Experiment, Pittsburgh was a far more interesting city than I could have anticipated, and I was in Washington DC for today’s march against California proposition 8, coordinated by Join the Impact. It was exciting to be a part of protests and marches occurring in all 50 United States, plus Washington DC, at the same time.

It’s a bit difficult for me to explain how I feel about all of this—and I have to confess that on November 4^th, I really wished that I could have actually been at home, in the States, to enjoy the Obama victory—to join the spontaneous street joy that erupted in Washington outside the White House. To watch the students of Pittsburgh pour onto the streets to celebrate the victory—something I was told that has only happened for athletic championships in the past, never politics.

There are times that being an expatriate is emotionally difficult.

As I note right at the top of this page, I am an expatriate, not an ex-patriot. I am forced to watch developments on issues close to my heart from afar without a realistic opportunity to be personally involved.

Today busted my drought in political activities: being a part of the crowd was a great experience and emotionally fulfilling. Along the 2 mile march, I talked to an older lesbian couple from the DC area, and they, like me were amazed at the length of our march. When I was passing the Washington Monument on its west side, I looked back I could see just south-east of the monument and I couldn’t see the end of the people in the march.

Midway through the march, we were hit with a massive downpour and, although I had an umbrella, my legs got drenched and my shirt got fairly damp. Said Items are now draped on various objects in my room, hopefully to dry before I pack them into my suitcase (I fly tomorrow).

Although I am about to leave my nation of citizenship, heading back to my nation of residence, I feel proud to have participated in the protest.

There is no place for hate.

My favorite question of the day!

Saturday, November 15, at 1:30p EST / 12:30p CST / 11:30a MST / 10:30a PST, you can Join The Impact, a national protest against California Prop 8 and other anti-gay marriage initiatives.

I’ll be joining the one in DC—but there are protests all across America. You can find a local protest by checking out the Protest listings. There are even some protests outside the USA, including London, Portugal, and Australia.

Dear Mr. Lederer:

Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I appreciate your kind words of support regarding my service in the United States Senate. It is a tremendous honor to represent our state in the Senate, and I have greatly enjoyed this opportunity to serve.

I take my responsibilities as a Senator very seriously and will continue to work to represent Indiana and our nation to the best of my ability.

Thank you, again, for contacting me.

Sincerely,

Richard G. Lugar
United States Senator

RGL/cgc

Yesterday I’d agreed to meet somebody on the CMU campus at noon—so I decided that I would walk to campus, explore it, and then find his office.

I had a handy map from my hotel and I followed the streets thinking that I would end up on campus by walking down a street named Boundary, hanging a right on Schenely Park, then bending left onto Frew Avenue and end up on the campus.

Naturally the hotel supplied map omitted some rather important information (although it was hinted at): There is a deep valley between me and campus and Boundary Street runs through the valley whilst Schenely Park is on a bridge above the valley. Yeah, they cross, just separated by about 50 vertical feet—I should have looked at the area on Google Maps before wandering off. I ended up walking under both Schenely Park and under Forbes Avenue, before walking into a parking garage and taking an elevator up to campus and promptly getting lost.

The CMU campus gives the impression that it’s big and filled with students, but it actually has about 10,000 students, making it the size of, roughly speaking, the University of Wyoming, when I attended. There is one big different: just under half of the students are graduate students. I was about knocked over with a feather when I found this out considering that it is an incredibly densely packed campus with lots of buildings, hallways, and construction.

I have to confess that after the University of Wyoming and Indiana University, I had assumed that all college campuses were beautiful places with incredible architecture and pretty open spaces. I guess I knew there were exceptions (Colorado State University), and some less nice campuses, but these were general truths. The wheels started coming off of that stereotype after visiting Purdue (seriously, not physically attractive), and it has completely vanished in light of walking through the University of Pittsburgh (basically an urban-dense campus) and across CMU. It turns out that not all college campuses are physically attractive.

CMU is built over a valley and up the side of a steep hill, resulting buildings with multiple ground floors (Germans would go bonkers trying to label the levels). I walked into one building on the fourth floor and because I didn’t know where to go or what to do, I left through the door I entered. Later I realized that had I gone up to the fifth floor, I could have gone out the other side of the building. Had I taken the elevator to the first floor I would have been at the ground level for a third side of the building.

I spent 30 minutes trying to find the office, and I am now convinced that in order to earn a CMU Bachelor’s degree one must show campus knowledge—the ability to navigate through 5 buildings without getting lost and without ever going outside (I hear its possible), while for an MA, one must master 10 buildings and for PhDs, the entire campus must be at your finger tips, including not just the buildings still under construction, but also the buildings where fundraising is just starting.

We met, had lunch, and I had an incredibly enjoyable afternoon at the Carnegie Museum of Art, which had only three distinct levels and one ground floor.

More on that later.

One of my few American weaknesses that I’ve managed to retain in Germany is my subscription to Rolling Stone.

Not that it’s easy—I have a $99 lifetime subscription that is valid only in the States, so I must rely upon a friend to receive the magazine and then to forward it to me a few times a year. It doesn’t really matter to me, I still devour it and love reading it. It must have been in one of the more recent issues of Rolling Stone where I read a review of a movie and decided I wanted to see it—something about making a porno.

So last night, when I ended up at a nearby movie theater complex with no idea what I wanted to see, the name “Zach and Miri Make a Porno” struck a bell. We were really lucky in that we arrived at the movie theater at 5:23 for a movie that started at 5:20—meaning that we could buy our tickets, visit the restrooms, and then make our way into the theater and miss most of the advertisement. I have to admit that I was really stunned when I realized that tickets were only $5 on Mondays, so it was pretty darned cheap!

Now here’s the thing, from the review I loosely remembered the plot: a couple of roommates run short of cash, can’t pay the bills, and decide to make a porno. It’s a film that perfectly echoes the hard economic times that we are currently experiencing.

Seriously, this morning I had the TV on for a tiny bit and on CBS there was a report about a woman who now is paying for everything with cash while also trying to pay off their $20,000 in credit card debt. After that story they went to commercial and I switched to ABC which featuring a woman holding a garage sale in order to make her next mortgage payment. She made $200 during her sale, and told us that it wasn’t enough—if she’d sold her $650 rocking chair, she could make her mortgage payment.

Given what I remembered about the film, I settled into my chair and as the opening titles started, I thought to myself, “Geesh, that looks a lot like the area around Pittsburgh, but it can’t be!” Then the camera came down and we saw a car driving away from us, license plate in view, and I thought to myself, “Geesh, that’s a Pennsylvania license plate!”

Sure enough, it is actually set right here in Pittsburgh.

This is not the first time I’ve had one of these random coincidental movie happenings. In February 2006, I was winging my way across the ocean when I decided to watch a movie I’d never heard of, Elizabethtown, only to discover that not only was it set in Louisville, where I was headed, but it featured the hotel I was staying in, the Brown.

The film was quite charming and memorable—although some of the memories emblazoned in my mind are a bit disturbing—in particular a scene where… errr… since I didn’t label this as NSFW… never mind.

I have to say that the story is fairly well constructed from start to finish, with appropriate foreshadowing (although I missed one obvious foreshadowing) and well thought out plot. This is one that I want to own on DVD when it finally makes it there. I bet the extras on the DVD will be well worth it.