German-US-American Youth Exchanges – USA-Special 2022
Short nights, long discussions and a piece of the US in the mid- dle of Berlin Second stop: Berlin. The U.S. Embassy, the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, the Jew- ish Museum Berlin – our itinerary sparked numerous discussions. Our evening talks in Berlin grew longer and longer and the nights shorter and shorter. "Because of the EU, Germany is simply a few steps ahead of us" is how one young American summed up the situation in Germany from his perspec- tive. Unconditional US patriotism? Far from it! Even though not everyone would endorse this view, it triggered some interesting discus- sions about the advantages and disadvantag- es of the EU. Once inside the U.S. Embassy, we were imme- diately hit by the cool a/c air and knew we had entered US-American territory. We talked to Cultural Attaché David Mees about how the diplomatic service can influence the human rights situation in other countries. Although the interview taught me a lot about the
importance of this work, I came to the con- clusion that this wouldn’t be a job for me. Lat- er on, we sat down with the initiators of the Free Interrail initiative and the activist duo Herr&Speer to discuss European identity and how men, too, can be feminists. Enthusiasm and passion for vol- unteering Four weeks after the Germany program, we flew to the US. Everywhere in Ann Arbor, we saw the big yellow or blue “M” logo, which stands for the University of Michigan (UoM) and its sports teams. But US-Americans aren’t just into sport, they’re also heavily involved in their communities. Interest in voluntary work seems much stronger in the US than in Ger- many. US citizens often have a lower tax bill, but this means the government has less mon- ey at its disposal so many areas of life depend on the involvement of individual people. One example is voluntary participation in a com- mittee that develops proposals for environ- mental protection measures, which are then discussed and voted on by the local council. →
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