Ehi ragazzi! Ho postato qui circa una settimana fa di mio padre, che venne in Germania e se ne andò con la mente completamente sbalordita. Prima di tutto, non mi aspettavo che quel post esplodesse così tanto, ma grazie a tutti coloro che mi hanno inviato messaggi così adorabili! Volevo chiarire alcune cose, dato che c’erano alcune domande (e alcuni commenti scortesi e messaggi diretti che mi dicevano che mio padre sarebbe dovuto morire e bruciare all’inferno) perché, beh, esistono stereotipi da entrambe le parti. Mio padre ha imparato da te; forse puoi imparare qualcosa anche da lui, o almeno andartene con una visione più sfumata di noi americani.
Ciò che ho detto era vero; mio padre ha vissuto nello stesso raggio di due miglia per tutta la sua vita, tranne quando è andato al college (a cui arriverò). Amo i miei nonni, ma non sono stati i migliori genitori per lui. Soprattutto non mio nonno, che è il più conservatore possibile. Picchiava mio padre e lo chiamava stupido o debole o meno uomo perché non era abbastanza forte per fare certe cose in fattoria. C’è stato anche un tempo in cui il nonno ha investito il gatto preferito di mio padre, Butterscotch, perché il gatto non si toglieva di mezzo abbastanza presto. Il nonno si limitò a ridere. E si arrabbiò con papà, che aveva 10 anni, perché piangeva. Questo era normale nella nostra zona, e lo è ancora, in una certa misura. Siamo molto rurali e relativamente isolati dal resto del mondo… mio padre ha anche frequentato una scuola con una sola aula da piccolo, e a volte sembra che siamo ancora bloccati nel 1700.
Mio padre è andato al college dopo un lungo litigio con mio nonno, che pensava che il college fosse per femminucce o liberali (sfortunatamente, questo atteggiamento è ancora comune nella mia zona, soprattutto quando si tratta di ragazzi). Questa scuola era ancora un luogo conservatore poiché, beh, siamo uno stato conservatore. Mio padre voleva diventare un insegnante e ha lavorato come insegnante di geografia nella mia città natale per molti anni… ma i tagli al budget operati dallo stato hanno costretto la scuola a sbarazzarsi della geografia come materia. Ad oggi, non ci sono molte materie offerte a scuola. Non avevo alcun governo, discorso, letteratura (a parte le lezioni di inglese) e non ho imparato sport come il calcio o l’hockey. Avevamo la classe Ag. Quando avevo 14 anni mi trasferii in un’altra scuola in una città più grande a circa 30 minuti di distanza e ricevetti immediatamente un’istruzione molto migliore. Ora anche la scuola sta affrontando tagli al budget e sta eliminando le lezioni di tedesco e di alcune altre materie umanistiche.
Quindi sì, mio padre non ha molta esperienza al di fuori del nostro piccolo angolo di bosco. Ha anche radicato in lui che il nostro modo di vivere è il miglior modo di vivere. E tutta la comunicazione di massa nella nostra zona è conservatrice. Accendi la TV a pranzo e avrai la TV via cavo che parla dell’Iran, di Fox News, di Bill O’Reilly o, se sei fortunato, dei film di John Wayne o Clint Eastwood. Le stazioni radio a lunga distanza trasmettono talk show conservatori. Viviamo in una camera d’eco. Ha lo scopo di renderci e mantenerci tutti come stupidi agricoltori contenti di vivere come pecore e servi.
Ma papà è stato un buon padre con me. Mi ha incoraggiato ad andare al college e a fare qualcosa nella mia vita. Penso davvero di avergli spezzato il cuore quando mi sono trasferita qui perché sono sempre stata la sua figlia preferita, e mi chiama a caso solo per sentire la mia voce. Ho lavorato con mio padre, cercando di convincerlo a vedere le cose di più dall’esterno della bolla, e lentamente le cose stanno migliorando. È diventato un fan del vero cibo messicano e si è appassionato alle pupusas delle pupuserias salvadoregne. Ha anche scoperto di amare il cibo cinese. E ha capito subito che Putin era un’operaia e ha avuto conversazioni rabbiose con me su come quel diavolo stia cercando di riportare indietro l’Unione Sovietica. È molto contrario al comunismo, ma in realtà ha guardato alcuni discorsi di Bernie Sanders e ha detto: ehi, non penso che quel ragazzo sia malvagio. Disinformato, ma in realtà sembra un bravo ragazzo. E il suo odio per il comunismo mi ha aiutato a spiegargli durante la sua visita perché l’ex DDR oggi è così di destra. Gli ho detto che molte persone della sua generazione ricordano solo la Jägerschnitzel e sono sempre felici e al sicuro perché erano bambini. Vogliono tornare ai “bei vecchi tempi” che non esistevano. E penso di aver visto le ruote girare nella sua testa. Anche papà è rimasto colpito dal fenomeno dell’energia solare in corso in Baviera e ha adorato il sistema Pfand. Ha detto che avremmo voluto avere entrambe le cose a casa.
Ora non credo che mio padre sia tornato in America tutto comunista, ma i miei nonni mi hanno chiamato, un po’ confusi, per dirmi quanto mio padre amava quel posto. A quanto pare non sta zitto a riguardo. Ha anche guardato un video di allenamento del Bayern e ha pensato 🤠 questi ragazzi fanno gli stessi esercizi che allenavo io nel basket! Mi piacerebbe parlare con quell’allenatore o come lo chiamate 🤠. Quindi, immagino, le persone possono cambiare. Noi americani possiamo sfuggire alle nostre camere di risonanza. E per favore, Germania, per l’amor di Dio e per quella strana mascotte della fetta di pane, NON COSTRUIRE LE STESSE CAMERE DELL’ECO.
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1va2i4t
di Senior_Fig7845
30 commenti
You’re a good son. Keep building on what you already have started with your dad. He sounds like a really good man and someone I could see drinking beers with. But only German/Bavarian beers…. 😜
That was a nice read, thanks.
Reading this made my day.
It is so beautiful to see someone getting out of the corner life has put them in and to see that there are things that aren’t so different between us, no matter where we are born.
Which is an important part.
I wish you and your father the best, and I hope he can come visit again in the future. We may turn him Democrat yet 😉
Thanks for Sharing.
Is he still in germany? Because if he likes churches we have plenty nice ones.
I already enjoyed the first post, since it reminded me of people I met over the years. At the end of the day I was surprised how positive the majority of the comments were in the first place. This is the internet after all and people are always more inclined to write things when on a negative mindset. Rarely people take the time to share their positivity. Same reason you will always hear more people complaining than praising something. Those happy are doing something else.
Don’t worry too much about stupid DMs. The moment a post blows up, you are bound to get people in between who just want to rile you up.
[Für Bernd das Brot!](https://imgflip.com/i/axpa3k)
Much love to your dad from this European leftist, and a glare to your grandpa.
Maybe dad can start a local DSA chapter. *I kid, I kid… Or not?* 👀
Unfortunately flying all the consevatives to Europe is not doable, such a shame their leders like Ted Cruz are gatekeeping how much of a nice time they have here while his constituens struggle.
Wholesome. Nothing but the best wishes for you and your dad. 🙂
weird bread slice mascot…Ah! You mean: Bernd das Brot
Good read and good son! I remember your first post.
Maybe your dad is able to learn that there is a lot more between Conservative/ right wing and communism or between us and them.
As I have friends over there i know (partly as well here of course but not to that extent) how deeply separated the US are, sometimes even within families. And maybe the knowledge about that contributes in healing your country (as soon as you get rid of your mango mussolini of course)
Sorry to hear about the rude comments and DMs. What is wrong with some people, calling for death and hellfire for humans they don’t know anything about?
But I’m happy that you and your Dad had a good time in Germany and have a good relationship. Hopefully there’s many more visits and a long and happy life for both of you.
I am so sorry for those hate messages you got. I hope their beds will always be damp!
And I also read your previous post and loved it. Thank you very much for the update. I very much hope your father had time to see (and hopefully like) Nurembeg as well. 🙂 All the best,
I think your Dad is a great human being. Sure he is settled in his ways but he doesn’t refuse to make new experiences and think about them. And that’s about all what people should do: Keep an open mind, see things for themselves and learn new things.
Your paragraph about funding cuts to public education where you grew up has absolutely gutted me. Congrats on branching out from what you were taught was the best way of life. I’m glad your father had such a great time.
Nothing evaporates prejudice like exposure in my experience. My (also American) family was convinced that I was putting my life into peril by moving to Germany. Eventually convinced my Mother to come visit and she did a full 180 and still talks about how great it was. My step-father almost refused to come on my engagement trip because we had a few nights planned in Turkey which was “too dangerous.” He ended up loving it and kept correspondence for years after with some locals that he met there.
This was a great read, don’t let the hateful people get to you. As a German i have friends in the US that are very nice, smart, generous and kind people. Funnily almost all of them conservatives, even though I consider myself to be very liberal / left leaning. They are open minded people that travel the world to broaden their mind and experience and embrace cultural differences. I also travelled through the US a lot and frankly loved every bit of it. Are things over there differently compared to Europe? Sure, but that is what I love about it. I do not travel abroad to see the same people and things that I have at home, that would be boring. Do I want everything I saw over there here at home, all the time, no. I saw things that I liked better and I saw things that I did not like at all. For an American traveling Europe it will be the same way. Live and let live. I would love to see that we could stop the hating and embrace being different again.
Can I ask what US state you’re from?
Those echo chambers are just communities of people rationalizing their own misery and inability to keep up with the rest of the world. They tell themselves that their way is better because they cannot accept that the world has moved on without them.
Your grandfather hitting your father is simply an expression of his own misery. He hits him to feel less miserable about his own upbringing and life by making someone else suffer even more. Him killing the cat and laughing about it is the height of this behavior. He has to make others miserable to feel powerful because, otherwise, he has to confront that he has no power over his own life.
It is pathetic and hypocritical.
Dein Vater ist toll! Weil er offen, interessiert und bereit ist neues zu lernen, zu erleben und zu tolerieren.
Und du bist ein toller Sohn!
Wie sagt man in Deutschland…der Apfel fällt nicht weit vom Stamm. Liebe Grüße, ich mag übrigens die Weite der USA, man fühlt sich dort wie ein kleines Sandkorn:)
This is wholesome, thank you! 🙂
Greetings to Papa from a rather left person! He sounds so nice and i am so sorry for butterscotch and 10 year old him!
Will he be back?
I loved your first post and I loved this one, too. Is dad planning to visit again?
Your dad’s story reminds me of the book Educated by Tara Westover. It’s her memoir growing up in a survivalist and religious family in Idaho, and eventually being able to leave her home and to qualify for college, after teaching herself math and english.
I like the parts where she paints a picture of her fundamentalist family background and the childhood struggles she had to deal with like not knowing her own birthday, not having a birth certificate, and never been to a hospital or school.
Anyway, I hope your dad can convince your grandparents to visit as well.
Love the relationship you two have! Traveling to other countries is the best way to open the mind. I’m a 1980 baby and the indoctrination of the USA is the best country ever and everything we do is good was and is still strong. If you never leave it you don’t know what you don’t know. I’m happy your dad has expanded his thinking! It’s the little cracks that have a big impact if he keeps moving forward.
I am German and was on a work trip to Texas last year just after Trump got inaugurated. The trip felt quite sad. Most of our American colleagues were extremely depressed about the political situation. But then I went with a German colleague for lunch in a restaurant and suddenly somebody at the next table started talking to us in fluent German.
Turned out he used to be an American soldier stationed in Germany and loved it so much that he learned fluent German.
After the whole week of depressing politics in a small restaurant we met the counter example to all the cliches about right wing politics in Texas.
That reminded me then and still reminds me now that even with the horrible news the USA is full of good and wonderful people and eventually decency will win again.
And your father willingly opening his mind and wanting to learn about the world is another example of this decency.
Mark Twain put it succinctly: “
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
Have a similar experience with my own dad (a three time Trump voter). Talking about no go zones and all sorts of things he’d get from Fox News, Drudge, Mark Levin or somewhere like that. And, while to a much lesser extent, I experience the flip from some friends in Europe who visit me at home in the States. People of all persuasions do it to varying degrees (myself included).
I don’t know what’s more commendable: the persistence of the ripped guy at the gym or the courage of the pudgy one doing the first painful steps on the treadmill..
Kudos to your dad for stepping out of his comfort zone, and thanks to you for gently nudging him there.
As a German who is not at all fond of the US, and is utterly disgusted by your current administration (God, how I miss Obama! I still remember the minute I learned he actually got elected. I was so filled with hope for the world!), I would like to leave two comments here for you:
1. I loved your previous post, I loved this one, and I think you and your dad are really decent people. Especially because your dad is still able to question himself and his learned beliefs, and change his mind, when seeing a different world with his own eyes.
1. Those people (Germans? Or whoever else…) who messaged you, saying your dad should burn in hell, they are just as bad (or worse) than the Americans they look down on. Please shrug that off. It‘s not worth being bothered by such people.
May you and your dad live a long and happy life! May you never lose the fun of learning new things! And may your french fries always be crispy!
Edited for spelling…
Is it normal to cry when reading this? Asking for a friend.