Been a World Leader
Janet Kuypers
for the 10/3/12 show with the HA!man of South Africa
6/17/12
(You may have stories about
traveling around the world
from your home in South Africa,
but people can have
an entirely different view about you
if you’re an American traveling abroad...)
People can think
that Americans are cocky and arrogant
because we’ve been a world leader
for so long...
Because even though
our cars are from Korea,
our electronics are from Japan,
and we owe China Billions...
Better beers are from Germany,
better wines and champagnes from France...
Because even though
we’ve been thrust into this global economy
that Al Gore pushed us into
by creating the Internet,
us Americans still seem to
want to rest on our past laurels
through the next millennium...
Once I stopped for a beer
at a dive in Munich
(oh, sorry, München),
where the female bartender
tended bar for three old German men
and one
very
out of place
American.
Barely knowing German,
I figured I could sit here,
say a beer name on a tap,
pay in Euros
and leave it at that.
But at one point
after the juke box in the far corner
(that I never even noticed)
started playing some new
American-sounding pop song,
one of the old German men
turned to me, and started
yelling at me in German.
Holding my Franziskaner draft,
my eyes turned to saucers...
I was unable to say a word
to this old German man
yelling at me
in a language I could not decipher.
That’s when the bartender
yelled back at the old man
in German, then English,
“They didn’t play this song,
I did!”
So I smiled at the bartender
and finished my beer,
realizing that us Americans
can still get into trouble
without saying a word.
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