The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

I haven't gotten to unpack yet because the summer sublettor is still in the room. That's ok though, because she's very nice and was helpful in telling us all about the apartment (how to turn on the heat, how to take out the garbage, etc.) And anyway, she's leaving tomorrow.

My roommate and I get along great. Which surprises both of us, since we're both decidedly independent people. But because we're going through the same program, and also have the same personality wiring, we find each other fairly compatible.

Yesterday we wandered around the city a bit going microwave shopping. We found one to buy and will go back to get it in the next day or so. But what was fun is that it didn't take long to get the hang of the subway (U-Bahn) and begin to feel like we lived here. To the many people who ask why I'm doing this study abroad program, a partial answer is that there is no substitute for living in a foreign country. All the travel in the world won't give you that intimate connection with another people and place that living there full-time provides.

My roommate is of Indian descent, which made our Hamburg adventures more interesting than they would have been otherwise. Near our apartment is a small produce store, and in the morning on the way to orientation we passed by some yummy-looking fresh peas on display outside. We stopped in to buy a 1/4 kilo for breakfast. The man there spoke enough English for us to communicate, but he seemed particularly fascinated with my roommate. "What land are you from?" he asked her. When she told him India, he said "Me too!" And then he proceeded to speak Hindi to her. He seemed so happy to have made a connection with someone else of his ancestry. In fact, today when we went back for more peas and I was struggling to find a 50 cent coin to pay for them, he waved it off, pointing proudly at my roommate and smiling, "My land!"

At school we've gone through two days of orientation, taking care of lots of paperwork, meeting the other foreign students, and some of the German ones. Last night there was a barbecue where we could mix and mingle and drink beer... My buddy and his friend showed me the foosball table in the basement. I'm embarrassingly rusty, but it seems like I may not have been too far afield when I contemplated adding my foosball skills to my legal resume...

Posted 9/2/05

The law school where I am doing my semester is Bucerius Law School, the first private law school in Germany. From what I understand it's a big deal to have a private law school, and I believe it's attempting to wrest some control of the legal field from the exclusive domain of the State. Which compares interestingly to the United States, where the tension between public and private interests manifests in different places.

But one thing this law school emphasizes particularly is training a cosmopolitan, internationally-aware lawyer. Towards that end all their pupils go away one semester to some other country for their studies, and in return law schools around the world (like mine) send their students to Germany for a semester. The school then runs a special program for us. We could, if we wanted to and spoke enough German, take classes with the German students. And I think they can, if they want, take classes with us, with our special catalog of English-speaking classes to choose from.

The school itself is in an old building – a former botanical institute, I think – settled in a park area with a large, quiet lawn and a fully modern interior. It is also within easy walking distance from downtown and its shops, restaurants, and train stations. And it's an easy subway ride from our apartment.

I'm sure I'll have more to add about the school and the experience, but I will save it for other posts.

Posted 9/2/05.

This summer when I drove across the country I tried to learn German from CDs. I went through one set on my way out west, but then came back east too quickly to be able to do any more. (Trying to get through a thousand miles a day seemed inconducive to paying attention to German lessons. And paying attention to German lessons seemed incompatible with not crashing the car. So I opted to skip the German...)

Which was too bad, because I really had very little in terms of local language skills to work with when I got here. This is unfortunate, and pales to my experience moving to France when I had the basics of the language and a reasonable vocabulary under my belt already to build upon. Now I'm starting just a little bit ahead of square one.

On the other hand, I can say things like, "Excuse me, I would like something to eat," and "The opera is here." And I have some idea how the language works, having taken an intensive three-week course when I was 13. Plus I've studied Latin, Spanish, Russian, and French, and have lots of faith in my ability to learn languages. Still, I've got my work cut out for me. Today I took a placement test for the language classes offered by Bucerius and it was all I could do not to completely fail the thing. On the plus side, however, I placed out of the most basic class, and if I make a lot of progress they'll let me go into the next class up. I wonder how much I can cram this weekend...?

But the best thing has been the instances when I've been out and about and managed to use German in conversation. In one case I asked if a store had a little street map. In another instance I asked where something was. The hazard in both cases was that I couldn't really understand the answers when they came at me in German. On the other hand, it was flattering that the answers DID come at me in German, and I don't think they were saying that they didn't understand me – I think they were answers appropriate for the context.

That is the most amazing feeling, to be understood in another language, and it's a huge motivating force to keep doing this, to work as hard as I need to build up this skill. The effort involved is well worth the reward.

Posted 9/2/05.

I hate not being able to blog. It makes me very cranky when I don't get to write, and the last bunch of days with all the travel and moving in left me with little opportunity to sit down and still my thoughts enough to get them down. Then once I could, I was further stymied by not being able to get online. But at least I got a few posts queued up, and I've now added them and backdated then to when they were created. (You should read them in chronological order for the best sense of my character development...)

It does bug me that there were things I wanted to say that I never got a chance to sit down and write. Things that I think were important to write down as part of the documentation of my Great Change, but are now impossible to write about because even just a few days later I've moved on too far past where I would be emotionally able to accurately capture and chronicle how I originally felt when the urge to write had hit.

(Meanwhile I have obviously not gotten around to updating the blog software, and it will be further hampered by the lack of Internet at home, so I think I will leave the comments off for a while longer. Please email me though if you would like to have one manually added – I'd be glad to do that and get good discussions going.)

One of the "get-to-know-each-other" group activities the school planned was a running dinner. I had never heard of one before, although I guess it's a bit like a progressive dinner. Except in this case it took place all over Hamburg, which resulted in as much running as it did dinner...

My buddy and I met at 4pm to go shopping for the course we were to prepare. At my suggestion we made chili, with my mom's recipe, doubled, and then converted to metric approximated. Amazingly, it came out pretty good given all that, the fact that German ingredients are not quite the same as the American ones I'm used to, and the miniscule amount of time we actually had to cook it. (And the fact that the part of my brain that does math seems to have withered. I was heard saying to my buddy, "3/4 of a pound of chopped meat, doubled, is, what? 3 kilos?") I'm also amazed I didn't slice off a finger with all the chopping I did, especially because when I did the onions and couldn't see through all my tears. But we got everything together and thrown into a pot, which we then let simmer while we raced out of the house and to another part of Hamburg (via foot and subway) for the appetizer course. Another foreign student and his German buddy had prepared a finely-made bruchetta, so we joined them and another pair for that.

Since we got there late, we pretty much ate and ran (literally and figuratively) back to my buddy's place to get ready for the two other pairs who were coming to our dinner course. The chili by then had nicely simmered and, with a 1.39 euro wine from Chile we'd picked out, we served the 5 guests who turned up eventually. It all seemed to go over well.

Then we headed over to another apartment for dessert, which seems to have been some sort of pudding and milkshakes spiked with Bailey's Irish Cream, and met still more foreign students and their German buddies.

Wrapping up around 11, the Hamburg night was still young and everyone headed over to a bar off the Reeperbahn. The Reeperbahn is Hamburg's red light district – it's full of adult establishments – but it's also a place with a lot of more mainstream nightlife. On Friday night it was still buzzing at 4am. Even *I* was still buzzing at 4am, although I kind of wondered what I was thinking – this is not my thing, staying out late drinking and partying. But the summer's almost over (classes start Monday!) and I'm in this new place, so what the hell...

(However, it should be noted that beer seems to be the cure for the common cold. Upon landing in Germany I became plagued by my usual sinus catastrophe, but three beers (and one glass of wine, and a spiked milkshake) later it seems to be gone.)

Posted 9/4/05.

One of my friends here is Turkish, and though she's familiar with the US (having done an exchange there in high school), she's not fluent in all of its nuances, political and cultural. She hadn't before heard, for example, the labels "red state" and "blue state," so I explained to her where the references came from (and how the electoral college worked) and the political cultures they are thought to represent.

She also, like I think many people here, did not grasp the enormity and scope of what has been happening in the Gulf Coast. Even I'm struggling with it, although my struggle is twinged with a shadow of guilt, from feeling like I've run away to this new, exciting place while my country I left behind is in trouble. It was barely a week ago when I spent the weekend in Atlantic City, where on Sunday as I popped in and out of the motel I saw all the news reports queuing up for the storm watch on Monday. On Monday, while it hit, I was driving back up north, packing, and then heading out to the airport. Sitting in the airport that evening, waiting to fly out, the news showed the first glimpses of the aftermath. But I don't think it was until the next day that everyone realized the full enormity of the consequences. And by then I was in Europe, and completely disconnected – geographically and technologically – from everything in the US.

But even without seeing any news, I knew it was going to be bad. I worried in particular about Bay St. Louis, the tiny town on the Gulf shores of Mississippi I'd visited on my trip two years ago. That was such a great trip, one of my Huey Lewis and the News-inspired adventures, rewarding to me in every way possible, not the least of which was the opportunity to meet one of my best friends. And on that trip I not only got to see New Orleans for the first time, but I also took a walk through this Mississippi town. They were having a big street festival that day, with tons of classic cars and hot rods sitting out on display on all the curbs, parades, and children selling lemonade on the sidewalks. I walked through this all, Americana everywhere, all the way to the shore, where I stood on the beach as the Gulf gently lapped at the shores.

But all of that now must surely be gone. And so the region, and the nation, reels. Evacuating New Orleans? An entire city? When I explain to people the enormity of what has happened, I try to make them realize what it means to have everybody leave a city. When they stop and think about it, they start to get it. But I think it's hard, because the scale is unprecedented. I think it's also hard because there's a lot of frustration at America. Our behavior in the world is so brash, perceived to be so arrogant, that I think there are people who are glad to finally see America's bravado tempered.

As a person from a blue state, sharing a blue state sensibility, I tend to agree with the criticisms others in the world lob at the US. I think they are often well-deserved. But I can't bring myself to allow the red and blue political dichotomy cloud my reaction to this disaster. Sure, it's red states that were affected. Red states that politically and culturally I have so little in common with. But they are in my country, and they are not strangers. At least not since 2003, when my plane landed in Gulfport, and these mysterious, strange places on the map turned into places that I knew.

Posted 9/4/05.

I "bought" a bike from the girl I sublet from (I gave her 100 euros, and she'll give it back when I give her the bike). It's an odd bike, an old-style 3-speed that no longer has two of them. It has a handbrake for the front wheel, and a pedal-brake for the back. I can hardly remember when I last rode a bike with a pedal-brake. I think I was 8... Meanwhile it's much heavier than my nice road bike, and much harder to start and stop. In fact, when I first got on it I had a hard time figuring out how to ride it! You'd have thought I'd have never done this before...

But eventually I got the hang of it (er, kind of...), especially after we lowered the seat, and soon we were tooling around Hamburg. Hamburg is an extremely bike-friendly city. Everyone rides. (And most people ride bikes like mine.) It's also mostly flat, so the riding is easy. Plus you are allowed to ride on the sidewalk. (Many sidewalks even have specially-marked sections for bikes.)

Hamburg also has a lot of water. It's on the Elbe river, which is wide enough to have a port, and it has a large lake with connected canals in the middle of the city. We rode our bikes to the north of the lake until we found a place to rent a canoe. Then for an hour we paddled across the lake and through the maze of canals. Some were quiet and still and serene, and others were like the autobahn for light watercraft as hundreds of other people took to the water on one of the last nice summer days for a long while.

I wrote the preceding posts before reading any of the news today. The Katrina news is so awful, and then on top of it is the news about Rehnquist. I can hardly keep up, and it's so weird to be so far away from everything that's happening.

And if I felt a little guilty before, I feel very guilty now... Remember this post from 2003?

"Great. Just great. When I moved to France a few years ago they impeached the President. Then when I moved from California I was hardly gone more than 2 months when they recalled the governor (and installed Arnold Schwarzenegger?!?!? Oy gevalt...).

It just goes to show that if you turn your back on democracy, all hell breaks loose..."

I've been out of the country for less than a week. I really didn't think things would get this bad this soon!

But in all seriousness, I do care about what's going on and feel bad being so detatched. Now that I have more Internet connectivity and more routine I will read the news more regularly, and I'm sure I'll have more things to say about everything soon. But for now, I think I'll just join everyone else in general concern.

(Meanwhile, the big news in Germany is the upcoming election. Apparently tonight there's going to be a big debate with the leading candidates that many of my German friends will be off watching.)

Tulane students in the northeast who are obviously unable to return for their studies can enroll at BU. There was a news bulletin that the school will absorb the undergrads, and my law school will take on 15 law students as well.

Edit: So is UC Berkeley. I think the efforts for these schools to do it are being coordinated through the Association of American Universities. But I am agog at the sidebar on the UC Berkeley news page, "If you know someone who needs to be rescued..." Damn.

Edit 9/6: More.

Dateline: September 4, 1979, Willard School, New Jersey – Today passers-by on Morningside Road could see student Cathy Gellis posing for a picture for her mom before heading inside the brick building and her first day of kindergarten. Wearing a green jumper decorated with little flowers, white kneesocks, and buckle shoes, Cathy then headed into class all by herself because she was a big girl now and was ready for school. Once inside the school she found her cubby hole and then got her own set of crayons. Later that day Cathy was quoted at home as saying that she'd liked school and was looking forward to going back the next day.

Dateline: September 5, 2005, Bucerius Law School, Germany – Today passers-by in Hamburg could see student Cathy Gellis walking to the yellow and white law school building for the first day of her fall semester. Wearing jeans, a blue sweatshirt, and shoes with laces – because Cathy is a big girl now and knows how to tie her own shoes – Cathy arrived at the school all by herself now because she was a third-year law student and was ready for her courses to begin. Once inside the school she found her locker and then booted her laptop to check her email. Later that day Cathy was quoted as saying that she liked law school and was looking forward to going back the next day.

(The above post was inspired when it dawned on me this morning that today is my last first day of school ever...)

I've always loved baseball. I can't quite tell you why, and it seems quite odd that I would at all, since my interest has received such little encouragement from all quarters. My parents themselves are lukewarm about it, although they did sign me up for softball when I was 8. Not a naturally gifted athlete, I had to compensate with enthusiasm and a solid work ethic. This was met with only limited success, as I was not quite popular enough to avoid benchwarming, as certain coaches only played their daughters and their daughters' friends, of whom I was never one.

But I stuck with it because I really really really wanted to play. However, what I really wanted was to play was baseball, like the Yankee players I idolized did. For years I harbored the usual fantasy of wanting to grow up to be a major league ballplayer. As it is for most people, limited athleticism proved to be a barrier. But it was not the only barrier. Nor was it necessarily as limited as some might want to believe.

The most significant barrier to improving my baseball skills was that I didn't get to play baseball. I got to play softball. Now, I like softball. It does contain many of the same elements that baseball has: hitting a ball with a stick, throwing, catching. But it contains several differences, including the tempo of the game, the size of the ball, the throwing style. It's fun on its own, yes, but it's not baseball. But because I was a girl, that's all I got to play.

Initially it was because my parents were afraid I'd get hurt by the faster ball. Eventually, though, they relented and I got to play little league baseball instead of softball for the last two years I was eligible. (It was little league, not Little League, as my town ran its own system.) I wasn't great, but I liked it and worked hard in practices. Indeed, I was not the worst on any of my teams...

Next year was high school, and I wanted to go out for the team. And that's when I ran into a wall. Because I was not allowed to go out for the team. And it had nothing to do with my ability - the tryouts would determine that. It was because I was a girl. And because I was a girl, I was only allowed to go out for softball.

The law says, the school told me, that we have to let girls have the same opportunities that boys do. So if there's only one team, like football, we have to let girls play on it. But when we offer a girls' version and a boys' version, we don't have to let the girls play on the boys' team.

Fine, I said, if they are truly equivalent. But baseball and softball are not equivalent. For heaven's sake, they aren't even CALLED the same thing.

And then began a battle of semantics, as I explained to the head of the sports department for the high school that in this case, girls' softball and boys' baseball were separate and undeniably unequal opportunities. That there was too much difference between the two for girls to feel that they were getting an equal shake when they were essentially banished to their sex's allocated athletic endeavor. (To that the director got defensive. Are you saying there's something wrong with girls wanting to play softball? he demanded. No, I said, but there's something wrong when they don't get the CHOICE.)

And lo and behold, my argument won the day. They let me try out for baseball.

During that tryout period I put in everything I had. I learned skills I'd never before been taught. I ran faster, threw harder, and played smarter than I ever had before. I watched everyone play, and noted where my abilities fell in relation to others' playing. They fell in the middle. Right where the cut was made on who got to make the team.

I didn't make it. I don't know why - it was plausible that my abilities were below the cut-off, and it's just as plausible that the coach really didn't want to deal with having a girl on the team. I'll never know. Because by that point I was physically and emotionally exhausted. The physical part was from the tryouts, but the emotional part was from the battle, of first having to win the argument to even get the chance to try out for the rest. It was like the school stuck a spigot in me, and drained me of my energies, before finally letting me do what I wanted - and was entitled - to do. I look back and wonder what would have happened if I'd pressed the point, if I'd argued that I really was good enough for the team and it was just sexism that had kept me off. But I couldn't, because before the season had even started there was nothing left to give to it.

It isn't the school's fault, of course, that I'm not a Major League ballplayer. Genetics played a part... and so did youth sports, which will someday be the subject of another critical post. But the genetic facet that had absolutely no business playing any role in the sport I got to play was my two X chromosomes. And that goes not only for me, but for any other girl who wants to play whatever sport she wants to play. To be banished to something different or lesser because of them is absolutely wrong, whether it was me not getting to play baseball or another girl in the same town getting to play basketball with regulation-height nets*. She's won her battle, it seems, which is what inspired this post. But it is one (especially 15 years later!) she should not have had to fight.

* The Bergen Record requires registration and removes its stories after about a short time. The relevant excerpts:

An agreement that would allow coed teams was signed late Friday by the Ridgewood Biddy Basketball program, the state Division on Civil Rights and the parents of Caitlin Alvaro, 12, who was barred from playing with boys even though she was considered as good as many of them. ... In late October, Caitlin signed up for the fifth- and sixth-grade boys team mostly because they use a regulation hoop that is 10 feet high. The fifth- and sixth-grade Biddy girls teams shoot at an 8�-foot hoop, which Caitlin said would throw off her game, since she played with a regulation hoop in two other girls basketball leagues.

The board denied Caitlin's request, saying her participation would "undermine the program and would, over time if not immediately, have a negative effect on the quality of opportunity of play with the various leagues," according to papers filed with the state.

Her parents - Joseph Alvaro and Frances Edwards - filed a complaint with the state Division on Civil Rights. After a two-month investigation, the division found that Biddy prohibited Caitlin "simply because she is a female and not for any reason associated with ability or other non-discriminatory basis."

This part of the article really irks me, given that it was the school district that I'd had to fight:

... The civil rights division petitioned the Ridgewood school district in January to intervene, since the games were played in school gyms.

State officials said the school system did not agree to the settlement, and that part of the dispute will be heard by an administrative law judge. District officials would not comment Tuesday.

I don't tend to have good experiences purchasing cell phones. Hamburg has been no exception...

The apartment where we live has two phone lines. Great. But the one in my room has no voicemail. So it wasn't quite the set-up that I would need. Thinking that in Europe prepaid cell phones would be cheap, we went shopping. Whereupon we found out that they were not.

The best plan we could find was at the O2 store. If you prepaid 30 euros, for the next 4 weeks your calls would cost only 19 cents – whether or not it was to a landline or a cell phone on another carrier. But the phone selection was pretty grim. And expensive. So we decided it wasn't worth it, and I decided instead to get an answering machine for my room.

But then my roommate reported that because our phone is ISDN and not analog (huh?), a new phone with an answering machine, which I thought might be about $20, would be more like $80. Not a good plan. So what to do?

All that was last week. Then Saturday at 9pm I saw my roommate and she had a cell phone. "I thought you weren't getting one?" I queried. "Didn't I tell you?" she responded. "Saturn [an electronics superstore] has O2 phones for 40 euros." She showed me her phone. It was worth 40 euros to me. "But that special rate plan expired tonight at 8pm." Damn! Damn damn! I was too late!

Or was I? On Monday I got up early to go to school to get my passport. They had collected passports the week before to send out for our residency permits. Word had it though that they weren't going out until Monday, so maybe I could get mine real quick, run out to the store, and then bring it right back. Why? Because word also had it that you needed to show a passport to buy a cell phone. The gossip chain was a little uncertain about how strict this requirement was, but just in case, I thought I'd go get my passport before going to Saturn. Except I was too late, and when I got there to school the passports had already gone out.

I rushed to Saturn anyway, though, to see if I could still get the deal. I found a clerk who spoke English. "Where are your 40 euro phones?" "We don't have any 40 euro phones." "But my friend just bought one here!" "No, we don't have any 40 euro phones."

Of course, it turned out he was wrong, and he just hadn't noticed the 100 or so of the 40 euro phones piled behind him... But he assured me that the promotion continued. "Great, I'll take one then."

But without my passport, he wouldn't give me one. It was never fully explained why the passport was required and how hard and fast this rule was, but he did seem to mumble that only German residents could buy the phone. Of course, my passport wouldn't say I was a German resident. Still, maybe I could give them the next best thing and so the next day when I went back I brought with me a copy of my passport, a copy of my lease (residency in Germany!), and a letter from the school saying I was a student there. But they still wouldn't sell me the phone.

Fortunately my German friend had come with me, and so we used his passport to buy the phone. Which is dumb, because now my phone is registered to him. But if that's how Germany wants to do it... The sad thing is, I would suspect this nonsense is probably due to 9/11 and the terrorist cells hanging out in Harburg, coordinating their plots with disposable cell phones. I suppose this registration requirement is designed to keep that from happening again. But like many other anti-terrorist measures, it has its greatest effect on innocent behaviors.

So I bought the phone, after some discussion about which rate plan to get. I thought about a different one, but in the end I opted for the 19 cents/minute one. But even with the phone in hand there was nothing I could do to set it up because the battery was dead. So they sent me away to charge it overnight, and I could come back the next day to set it up.

The next day I did. The clerk turned on the phone, helped me put the SIM chip in, and set the interface for English. This I needed him to do, because the manual was all in German. But that was all he would do. For voicemail set-up he sent me to one of the O2 shops. So across downtown I went, back to the O2 shop. (This was now the second time I'd been there, and the third I'd been to Saturn for this so far.) The clerk there helped me set up my voicemail, which unfortunately is also all in German, and load in my prepaid cards. There was some concern that Saturn had sold me three 10 euro cards and not one 30 euro card, but it turned out to be fine. What was not fine is that I realized I was not on the 19 cent plan - I was on a different plan. And it was going to cost 5 euros to change it, despite the Saturn guy having said that the first call to change it would be free.

So once again I had to enlist the help of my German friend to go back to Saturn to have them fix this. Fortunately my friend, speaking German, was easily able to get them to agree to do it. Unfortunately, it couldn't be done that day. It would happen overnight, the clerk said, and I would get an SMS message in the morning when it was fixed. More delay... but ok. Only the next day my friend wouldn't be there. What if I didn't get the SMS? Still, they were willing to fix the problem so my friend said "Great! But please put that in writing." Only the clerk refused, saying that his telling us this should be enough. However my friend – a lawyer in training – dug his heels in and insisted. And a short time later the clerk acquiesced and hand-wrote a letter for me. I think his change of heart was in part because of my friend's fine lawyering skills. And in part because at that point the clerk would probably have done whatever he needed to make sure he never saw me again...

This morning the SMS did arrive, and I now am properly cell phone endowed. I've since used it to make and receive a call or two, but I've mostly been playing with SMS. We don't use SMS much in the US, but because in Europe it costs money to check your own voicemail, people use SMS instead.

In retrospect, however, I'm not entirely thrilled with the phone. My first cell phone ever was a kludgy Nokia, and I was excited to upgrade to my current US-based Audiovox. Unfortunately, though it improves on a few of the Nokia features, it's also worse on others. So despite it being a newer model with a few more features, I feel like I traded down. But now I got to get a snazzy, evolved European phone, a Siemens model. And it's even worse! Even with the menu in English I can't understand what's going on. This is so aggravating – cell phone technology has made great strides in advancement, yet all the cell phones I get keep getting more stupid.

Oh well. All I really ask from my portable telephony is that it be easily portable, and this phone does fit into my pocket. And makes and receives calls. And SMS. So it will work for me for the next few months. I hope.

Three of my four law classes have met twice this week – the last, a German law survey course, will start next week. That one and one of the other ones will run the whole semester; the other two will be replaced by two new courses in November.

The one that runs the whole time is International Conflict of Laws. (Not "ConflictS of Laws," which my professor insisted was something else.) The course is, at least so far, a civil procedure course. We're going over a lot of what I learned as a 1L involving jurisdiction, venue, choice of law, etc. In the United States if you want to sue someone you can't just sue them anywhere and in any court. There's rules about where people can be sued having to do with place (for instance, it may not be fair to a defendant to sue them in a place that's far from where they live, especially if they have no significant connection to that place) and subject matter (not all courts can hear cases on any subject) and choice of law (the court that hears the case may need to use the local law of another place in making its ruling). Complicated? Well, that's just in the US! All these issues are magnified when you put them on the global stage. Then we are no longer talking about whether a plaintiff in California can sue a defendant from New Jersey in a California court – we're talking about whether a plaintiff in Germany can sue a defendant from New Jersey in a German court. And when we start asking these questions, we run into a difference of philosophy (for instance, the US tends to be more concerned about fairness to the defendant, and Europe more about fairness to the plaintiff) plus differences in the rules about whether and where people can be sued. Also, it's not like the systems in any of these places have been worked out to precision: many legal disputes in the US still take place over these issues, as do they in Europe, where there is another level of complication because in Europe there are both national rules on the subject and EU rules, and then there are more rules about when one or the other applies.

I find this kind of thing really interesting though because I really like contemplating process and thinking about the structural issues of fairness and balance. I also think, particularly if I do have an international career, it would be useful to understand more about the practicalities of how international litigation would unfold.

One of my other classes is Comparative Tort Law. In a way I sort of enjoy these flashbacks to 1L year because the first time all these things came at me, they came a bit too fast and without any real context (it was only the first time I'd considered them, after all). Now that I have my legal faculties about me, I'm enjoying contemplating them much more. And I like the course because it addresses where we got some of these notions of tort law from (Rome!) and will (I think) compare US notions with those around the world. The Roman law itself is really interesting, and in the last few classes we've been reviewing the Lex Aquilia - comments by Roman legal thinkers explaining how Roman law applied to various tortuous injuries.

The other class is Comparative IP. In one sense this class is disappointing – I think if I took it in the US, it would have presupposed that the students had a background in IP law already, so that we could build on that background entirely. Unfortunately, there was no prerequisite for the course here and some students are taking it as their first taste in IP law, so the professor needs to make sure more of the basics are covered. She told me she wouldn't be offended if I dropped it, but I've decided to keep it. For one, it won't hurt me to brush up on some of my basics. For another, as I told her, I eat sleep and breathe this stuff... If there is anything to be gleaned from her course – and I think there will be, as there will be more focus on comparison of international IP paradigms than there were in my US classes where they were mentioned more in passing – I'll glean it and add it to my arsenal of policy arguments.

It's also interesting, because in the US law school is hard. At least BU is hard. And I think I do ok – I'm not a legal dullard – but there's so much, so new that it always feels like I'm always running in place, trying to keep up. It does feel different now to actually know what's going on and to have MY notes be the ones being shared. I have offered, and it's come up, to do review sessions for my friends in the class who have not had this background, and that itself is good practice for me because I will need to know how to explain these things well if I push for policy changes.

It is possible that this semester won't be as academically challenging as the ones I've had in BU. In a way that's frustrating, because I'm used to that kind of academic demand and have come to appreciate it in its own, annoying way... But in a way it's also a nice change, and I don't think it will cause me to learn any less. In fact it may help me learn more. In the US I'm always under such pressure to do readings and prepare, that there's no time left to think about what I'm learning. Here there's more time (and an absence of so much thought-squelching pressure) to think about it, to let all these things stew in my head so that I can come away with grander realizations about how things work together than I necessarily have the luxury of doing at BU.

I am very frustrated with my complete lack of German skills. Even when I first moved to France I had the basics to work with. But here, almost nothing.

That said, I'm learning it as fast as I can. I take 3 hours of German at the law school a week; next week I'll take (I think) another 3 hours at the Colon Institute; I read a chapter of my textbook every night (actually I read it two times: the first to see what it's talking about and the second, the next day, to review and learn what I didn't catch the first time); and my friend sends me how-to-speak-German tidbits every so often in emails.

What I'm not really doing is having conversations with people, though. Even the most simple questions – if I can manage them – get answered in English. And the complicated ones I can't even attempt. All the German students in the law school are happy to speak English; my German friends are happy to speak English; my other friends are happy to speak English; and my classes are all in English. (My blog is all in English!) So my English is great! But my German suffers. It's just so hard, though, to try to speak with what I do have, because I have so little.

On the other hand, I've come to the realization that my French is also terrific! Most conversations I attempt (and fail) in German could be done in French. Now, my French may not be perfect – I don't know if I say things the right way – but I can be understood in most instances. Plus I have the vocabulary to at least get started in most instances, and the ability to learn the rest of what the circumstance calls for at the time. I also – and this is what I think is amazing – have the ability to start speaking French instinctively. Being in Germany has really reminded me of that, because during the times when I'm determined not to speak English, I succeed – because I speak French instead. Fluidly, automatically, contextually.

In a way, I feel good about that. I really like being able to speak another language. It gives me this magical feeling of empowerment like nothing else. I do, actually, want to practice the French here. There may be a conversation group I can join, and there are some Quebecoises students who are very happy to speak French with me. (In fact, one said that my French was better than her English.) I don't want to lose this hard-won skill.

But this isn't a French-speaking country, and my lack of German is tremendously disempowering. I shouldn't have needed my friend to fix my cell phone for me. I shouldn't have to walk around being essentially a deaf mute, unable to participate in the world around me unless it's on my terms. I want to participate on their terms! That's what I'm here for! I want to BE here, not observing Germany from the sidelines, but really BEING here as much as I can be, to live the local life as much as possible in four months.

I just bought a dictionary, which I'm very tempted to read cover to cover. I need to start participating in the world around me – so it's time to start collecting the tools.

For my job this summer I got one of the PIP grants ($4000 for 400 hours of work). The PIP organization required that we send an email to our dean thanking her for supporting this problem.

This exercise sort of reminds me of the parental admonitions, "Thank your grandma for her birthday card!" which, though an appropriate instruction, always seemed to leave the resulting thank you note a little hollow and insincere, since it was written under external pressure and not one's own internal sense of gratitude...

But I actually did want to publicly commend the school, and the dean, for the efforts they've put in to enhancing institutional support for public interest lawyering. So she hasn't gotten my email yet (it will be relayed to her by the PIP project), but when she does it will say this:

Dear Dean O'Rourke,

Thank you for your initiative in supporting students' public interest activities. This appreciation extends not only to the PIP grants but also the other forms of support you've championed as well, such as the enhancement of the loan forgiveness program. Your efforts help make BUSL stand out as an institution willing to develop lawyers able to achieve more than just an extensive tally of billable hours. And we, as students, as well as a school and a society, benefit greatly by it.

Sincerely,
Cathy Gellis

The writing style may suffer from the circumstances, but the sentiment is sincere.

I'm going to wait until MoveableType figures out how to properly document the upgrading before I attempt it. So in the meantime I've cautiously turned back on the comments, because I hate not getting real ones. (Although it's been a lovely break from the spam ones...) Comments still require approval, though, just to keep it from getting out of hand. I'll try to get on them as soon as I can though.

(I also reserve the right to give up and turn them off again if I need to. Hopefully this upgrade will forstall some of this nonsense though...)

Edited 9/12

Not only am I deaf and dumb, here in Germany, but I'm also functionally illiterate.

That's truly an eye-opening experience, and relates a lot to the work I did this summer.

In one sense, a native English speaker in America is a little better off than I am – he can at least ask questions if he can't otherwise glean the information he needs. That's difficult for me.

(However, the other day I did manage to ask someone in the grocery store the other day which of the butters contained salt. German uses so many compound words that even though I might have recognized "saltz" in the word, for all I would know it could be in a word saying "no salt." But then today I tried, and failed, to buy facial soap since I couldn't be sure what it was what the clerk suggested I buy really belonged on my face... Sometimes I get lucky and the packaging includes alternative versions in French – and I tend to reward those products with my purchase – but it's fairly rare and only slightly more common than packaging in English.)

But it's still very debilitating, being locked out of visual language. I think literate people may not even realize how hard it is, since normally we interact with writing so seamlessly, so automatically. Consequently it can be hard for literate people to realize just how writing-dependant modern life is. For those who can't though, their faces are pressed up against the glass of a world they can see but not enter.

This summer when I wrote my housing self-help documentation I did it with the intention that it be understandable to people with low literacy levels. It was hard to write that way, though, since the law that I was explaining was very precise and required precise language to explain. Such language is hard to make understandable to someone whose reading skills are at an elementary school level.

Had I had this experience first, though, I wonder if I would have done it differently, or at least done so with less hypothetical empathy and more actual empathy. In that I've now been there too, being locked out of the words I need to know, and know first hand it's not an easy place to be.

My roommate and I were discussing traveling to Russia. She was interested in going but didn't know what was involved. I, however, have been there three times (mostly to St. Petersburg).

I told her that she'd need to get a visa, and she'd probably want to go with a tour because there wouldn't be a lot of English spoken there, etc.

She blurted out that she hadn't realized it was such a shlep to go to Russia.

To which I exclaimed, "You think going to Russia's a shlep??? At least it's POSSIBLE!"

And therein was the generation gap. She was born in 1980, and by the time she'd attained her global consciousness, maybe around age 9 or 10, Russia was already opening up. It was now a country under construction, an eager recipient of foreign aid. That it was still so difficult to travel there all these years later must have seemed to her somewhat inexcusable.

Whereas for me, at the same age, Russia (as the Soviet Union) was still an Avowed Enemy Ronald Reagan kept giving me nightmares about. Notorious for being closed off from outsiders, the idea that one could now go in and out even remotely freely strikes me, by contrast, to be an enormous achievement to celebrate.

Yesterday's Conflict of Laws class discussed questions of European jurisdiction: in which nation could a case be heard? There is something called "general jurisdiction," or, generally, where may a party be sued, and something called "specific jurisdiction," which means, more narrowly, where can this party be sued on a specific matter. You can always sue where there's general jurisdiction of a court over a party, but you can only sue in a different place if there's specific jurisdiction of the court over the defendant in that matter.

In Europe, general jurisdiction is allowed by Article 2 of (one of) the Brussels Convention(s). It says that you can always sue a person in the EU state where they are domiciled. (The term "domiciled" is a technical term, but it roughly means where the defendant comes from.) Whether you can sue them in a EU state other than where they're domiciled is a question of specific jurisdiction, and for this Article 5 explains that in matters of contract, the place of performance of the contract dictates where there can be specific jurisdiction. For example, if the contract says Fancy Widget Maker will deliver 2000 widgets to Widgets R Us in Germany, then Germany is the place of performance. (As with everything, there are complexities and exceptions, but this is generally the way it works.)

However, you can only sue about matters connected to that contract. Additional torts or other claims cannot be combined with a contract claim. This differs from the US, where they more often can be. Generally speaking, while the US courts are generally more into the value of judicial economy (in other words, as long as it's fair to have the defendant before this court at all, let's get all these related matters taken care of all at once), in Europe the balance of interests is different. It's ok to take care of business (contract) matters where that business took place, but as far as Europe is concerned people only exposed themselves to that particular jurisdiction for the sake of that particular business. You can't use the occasion of a contract suit to now go after them for other things, forcing them have to contend with a different country, different laws, and different language than that of where they are from.

Still, even in an international business agreement (in other words, a contract), figuring out the place of performance can be complicated, and in some instances you could be looking at several different countries as possible places. There may be some value, then, in incorporating into the contract an agreement designating where, should a dispute arise, it would be adjudicated.

The simplest arrangement, if the parties agree, would be to articulate within the contract where the "place of performance" should be considered to be. As long as the designation has some connection to the transaction, it will probably be ok. But even this designation might not offer enough certainty to the parties, and they might instead choose to include a "choice of court" clause.

Such a clause, however, would end up supplanting Article 2 general jurisdiction. Meaning that issues broader than just those related to adjudication of the contract can now be heard in this chosen court. I think there may be a requirement that these other issues at least be peripherally connected to the contract, as in "but for" the contract this tort wouldn't have occurred, but unlike specific jurisdiction in the EU generally, this clause can now allow tort claims to be heard in that chosen court, irrespective of the defendant's domicile. So by writing in such a clause any Article 2 protections that might have been available to a defendant, to limit his exposure to suit in a foreign place, will now be undermined.

Arguably, as long as there wasn't uneven bargaining power in forming the contract, this situation may not necessarily lead to unjust results. But it does raise the issue, as many things do, of whether and if parties should be able to negotiate around the law, particularly law designed to protect one or more of the parties. Of course, there's lots of law that serves a protective purpose. Articles 2 and 5 are from European Community treaties, but contract interpretation is a matter of national law, and each nation also has its own rules.

So you could find yourself with a vicious cycle, where the contract may specify a court to adjudicate it in that wouldn't find the contract valid enough to enforce for that choice of court clause to even be valid. But because that clause exists at all, the Article 2 rules on general jurisdiction would no longer apply. So you could conceivably have a defendant be haled into a foreign court over a potentially invalid contract and/or invalid choice of court clause and still have to defend against it using that court's law.

One thing that can help alleviate this kind of situation is to also include a "choice of law" clause in the contract as well. This kind of clause tells whatever court the suit is brought in whose law to use to interpret the contract and choice of court's validity.

But it still seems problematic that these clauses can supplant Article 2. They may be perfectly fine - perhaps even clearer than the default law - when everything goes smoothly. But then, if things always went smoothly, no one would ever need to go to court at all.

In my Conflict of Laws course we (also) have been discussing not only how US and EU law differs in judicial procedures, but also how these differences create conflicts that may arise in a particular matter.

Today's discussion focused on recognition of judgments. Say a French court awards you $20,000. Can you go to an American court and have the American court enforce the order? Generally, yes. But then it can get complicated.

If you had an injury worth $100,000 in damages, you could go to court and either sue for the whole thing, or you could "test the waters" and only ask for $20,000. This kind of "testing" may often happen in Europe because of the matter of legal fees: they are frequently awarded to the winner and are calculated based on the damages asserted. In other words, the bigger the damage claim, the more attorneys' fees. Which is great if you win, and not great if you lose. So it may be worth filing a small claim as a test balloon, so that if you lose, you won't have to pay so much in fees. And then if you win, in France (as an example, as this is true in other places), you can go back and sue again for the rest of the amount.

Such a strategy is unheard of in the US, however, because of our notion of res judicata. Res judicata basically means that you get one change to have the issue heard on the merits. After that, you are precluded from raising the issue again. This not only applies to issues actually raised, but also issues that were so related they could have (and should have) been raised too. A similar situation played out in the US would mean that a plaintiff with a $100,000 injury who only asks for $20,000, and wins, would be stuck with a $20,000 award and have forfeited any claim to the other $80,000. (I suppose clever lawyers might find creative procedural ways of getting around this, but this is the general way things work.)

But in terms of foreign judgments, the complication arises. The plaintiff who won in France might come to the US to enforce the judgment. But because in France he could still sue for the other $80,000, he could still do that in the US too. In fact, if he had jurisdiction to sue for the whole $100,000 in the US, he could conceivably win an $100,000 award PLUS also enforce the $20,000 French judgment. The American concept of res judicata wouldn't apply, and only unjust enrichment (to prevent double collection) would be available to keep the plaintiff from getting $120,000 off of an $100,000 injury. (In a trial situation, a defense lawyer would raise the issue and it would probably get sorted out. However, if the defendant didn't appear – as may well happen for jurisdictional and procedural reasons – it would only be a very lengthy, after the fact, action by the defendant that could set things right.)

I find this situation problematic. Without commenting on the French logic of allowing test balloon cases, it seems like a more just way of dealing with these judgments in the US would be to treat the French judgments as final entities. A US court could then say, "France says you are entitled to $20,000? OK, we'll help you get it." Then if the plaintiff went back to France for the other $80,000, it would look to an American court like a discrete judgment also enforceable in the US. The problems, I think, arise when the US courts instead have to apply French law on the finality of judgments (they are much less final there than they are in the US) in order to enforce them in the US, which leads to American courts having to enforce results that would otherwise be impermissible under American jurisdiction.

Note, I'm not saying that the US shouldn't recognize French decisions as binding and valid, or refuse to enforce them at all. I just think that allowing their enforcement in the US should be a much more narrow judicial enterprise, dealing with each judgment as a finite result and not a piece of an entire process.

My buddy has been very helpful getting me set up in Hamburg, so I thought I'd return the favor last week by getting his bike flat fixed. "I can fix a flat!" I declared. Which was technically true. I have done it before. But a long time ago, and not often. And not on a 3-speed non-roadbike. And never in Germany...

There is this bike shop on the campus of the University of Hamburg though that provides a workshop for fixing your own bikes, cheap spare parts, and a staff of helpers who can lend a hand if you're stuck. Another German student had shown me where it was, so when my buddy left me his bike, I figured I was set and ready to impress him with my fine bike repair skills.

Unfortunately, I couldn't remember where the bike shop was. And I lacked the German vocabulary to ask anyone. Plus those whom I could ask in English didn't know. After a long while I did eventually find it, and, already flustered, I got to work.

And immediately stopped because I couldn't figure out how to get the wheel off. I was looking for a brake release, but these bikes don't have them. Neither a little lever or a bolt that the cable loops over. Apparently, though, you don't need to release them. As long as you empty the air out of the tire it should slip right off.

Only it didn't. And even the bike repair helpers there (all decked out in their bright red overalls) were stymied. Unfortunately it was really crowded and while I was waiting, these "helpful" girls insisted on taking the bolts all the way off. Which meant I couldn't keep track of all the parts that were now falling off the wheel everywhere. Um, this isn't my bike you're screwing up, ok...?

Eventually, wheel off, I found the leak and applied the patch. Only I didn't wait quite long enough for the glue to dry, so it didn't hold. One of the helpers made the next attempt for me, and then, patch all perfect, I remounted the tire and the wheel, pumped it up, and was on my way. I stopped for lunch and an errand, and then came back to discover that the wheel was flat again. How could that be? We did everything right with that patch! We sanded the tube, we applied enough glue, we waited enough time to apply the patch, we waited enough time to inflate the tire... Unfortunately we neglected to place this wonderful patch OVER the hole, and instead made attached it beautifully beside it.

At this point the level of ambient exasperation was palpable. The helpers towards me for my extreme incompetance and complete inability to communicate effectively, and me towards the helpers for not really helping and to the bike for still needing more fixing, even after the expenditure of all that energy already. But now suddenly confident as inspired by my frustration, I quickly took off the wheel, peeled off the tire, did the patch all by myself (managing to put it OVER the hole...) and then remounted the wheel. Sadly, the step I forgot in my annoyed haste was the one where you are supposed to tighten the wheel bolts to keep it from coming off... I think this pretty much constitutes bike repair malpractice (and here I was, trying to be so helpful and impress my buddy on my fine bike repair skills - apparently I'm a fraud...) However, as far as I know my patch is still holding, and I did at least disclose the bolt problem to my buddy...

Anyway, that was Bike Adventure A. Today was Bike Adventure B, when I took MY bike back there to get a generator for the lamp. The visit then, however, turned into a complete tune-up, replete with a new chain guard (the old one was cracked and rubbed the chain), a new gear shifter (it had three gears but no cable - I was perennially in the highest gear, which explained why I always nearly fell on my face when starting up at intersections, trying to peddle a lump of steel that would barely roll), the dynamo, and a cleaning/greasing of the entire rear gear mechanism, a tweaking of the front wheel (and bolting it securely onto the rest of the bike...), and an adjustment of the front brakes.

It took 2-3 hours and 30 euros to complete but then I was set. The bike was at last roadworthy and I was ready to roll. Just as it started raining...

Edited.

Don't put off going shopping (particularly for things like umbrellas) in a place where it rains. Often.

(In Hambug's defense - and I suppose my own - the first two weeks I was here the weather was fabulous. All to lull me into a false sense of weather-security, I suppose. This is where my Californization was my undoing, because in California, if it's sunny one day, it will likely be sunny for the next 159...)

This CNN article talks about a new federal law requiring that all schools receiving federal money must make a point of educating their students on the US Constitution. I accept what the article asserts, that there is a lack of civic awareness that such a law might, perhaps even effectively, address.

On the other hand, I'm very concerned about the issue of compelled speech it seems to implicate. And I fear the indoctrination quality such mandates can so easily entail. "You WILL pledge your allegiance! USA uber alles!" Bad things happen when patriotism becomes mandated, and I'm not sure what keeps this law from being, or becoming, something like that.

Particularly since it doesn't just apply to primary and secondary schools, apparently. I got this email from BU's Dean of Students the other day:

"Constitution Day and Citizenship Day

Pursuant to a new law, Congress requires Boston University and all other educational institutions receiving Federal funding to hold an educational program pertaining to the United States Constitution on or about September 17 each year. You should consider one of the following informational resources pertaining to the Constitution: The Library of Congress’ repositories for Constitutional documents and information may be accessed at: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/bdsds/bdsdhome.html; and the National Archives also has a web site with a scan of the U.S. Constitution available online at: http://www.archives.gov/national_archives_experience/charters/constitution.html."

So while I can see this law as being well-intentioned, I nevertheless don't feel comfortable praising it as a great legislative accomplishment.

Edit 9/19: George Mason University, on Constitution Day, is holding a forum on whether Constitution Day is constitutional.

I hope this event does not turn out to be the train wreck I anticipate, but based on the way it was advertised there's no reason to believe it will be otherwise.

The advertisement (which I didn't even see until about an hour ago, when I was looking through my email for something else):

"On Friday, September 16 at 2 p.m. in the George Sherman Union’s Metcalf Hall, I will host the first Coffee and Conversation for the 2005/2006 academic year. I have selected the topic of peer-to-peer file sharing to be discussed at this event. This topic is of concern to University students and I hope to facilitate a discussion between experts and advocates. Dean Garfield will join this discussion. Mr. Garfield is Vice President and Director, Legal Affairs, Worldwide Anti-Piracy at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Prior to joining the MPAA, Mr. Garfield was Vice President of Legal Affairs at the Recording Industry of America Association.

The Coffee and Conversation event will also include producer, and DJ, Cheap Cologne. He has produced and recorded tracks with The Lordz of Brooklyn featuring Busta Rhymes, Atmosphere, DJ Quest, The Shapeshifters, Pigeon John, Braille, DJ T-Rock, Slim Kid Tre (Pharcyde). Cheap Cologne will also provide a brief performance during the program."

The email I just sent back, cc'd to the BUSL copyright faculty in case they can show up...

"Dear [Dean of Students],

I am concerned that the Coffee and Conversation you have scheduled for today will not be a fair and balanced discussion of the file-sharing issue. Your listed speakers include a musician, of indeterminate qualifications or position, and a powerful legal representative of an organization with a particularly slanted view on what the law currently is on this matter, and also on what it believes it should be. Certainly the MPAA is entitled to its opinions, but it, along with the RIAA with whom your speaker also worked, frequently represents as absolute fact what it merely wishes the law to be. Furthermore, the MPAA's willingness to speak at universities should not be taken as a favor to the school; it has been quite candid about the "education" campaigns it wants to sponsor at universities across the country. But do not be fooled by this "education" -- it is as educational as a panel filled with only Republicans or only Democrats would be. Though they don't track typical party lines, its positions are no less political than tax cuts or foreign policy would be.

What it advocates, and has advocated, is a fundamental shift in the balance between how users have traditionally been able to enjoy creative works for decades, even centuries, in the United States, and the ability of copyright owners to control that usage. Even if the MPAA's position were most correct and should ultimately win the day, it still should be fully vetted since the implications on society are enormous. And I put to you that these implications are not at all benign, and led to their logical conclusion will stifle the future development of knowledge and culture -- the very things it would seem the university is dedicated to promoting.

Before you dismiss my comments as hyperbolic, I will add that these issues were the singularly most-compelling issue that motivated me to go to law school, and thereby join the BU community. There are few issues I care about more strongly or believe warrant more credible and balanced attention than this.

However I will not be able to personally attend to provide balance to this event because I am currently doing my semester abroad. Still, I do wish that there had been more than two days' notice, and that the notice had not been buried deep in another email. For an issue as important than this interested parties within the BU community should have had - yet did not have - an opportunity to prepare a response that this event appears to so desperately need.

Please note my objections.

Thank you,
Cathy Gellis
BUSL 2006"

This is the downside to going abroad. I can't believe stuff like this is happening right under where my nose used to be! The best I can do is complain as loudly as I can and hope for the best, since at this point I have no ability to organize anything better.

One of my German friends yesterday took me to a Joshka Fischer rally at Gaensemarkt, a plaza near the school. Joshka Fischer is the head of the Green party, and also currently the German foreign minister and deputy chancellor as a result of the coalition between his party and Chancellor Gerard Schroeder's currently-ruling labor party. He's a very popular politician because he's so very un-politician-like. As a result it's probably easier for him, more so than for other politicians, to be candid in his public statements.

He spoke for maybe 45 minutes, his voice somewhat hoarse from the intense schedule the campaign and his public duties have demanded over the last few weeks. But he patiently painted his picture of his view of Germany, of where it is and where he thinks it should be. He addressed the basics – economic policy, unemployment, the environment – and then he talked about America.

"It was very difficult to say 'no' to the US [when it asked about invading Iraq]," my friend translated him as saying. The mood in the crowd became somber and serious as people listened intently. "We will never forget what America did for us 60 years ago."

I listened to him say these things, standing in the middle of a city that had been almost completely destroyed by the Allies at the end of World War II. Everything around me had to have been rebuilt. Countless people lost their lives, and hundreds of years of history in architecture and artifacts were surely lost. And yet, the prevailing German attitude to the party that wrought all this destruction seems to be one of undeniable gratitude for having been saved, I guess you could say, from themselves.

But a true friend, Fischer continued, is one who can say "no" to one's friends when it needs to be said.