Ms. Eve Bower - International Center for Journalists

“No, no one told me that you were coming. At least you‟re fluent in German, right? We can‟t
really use non-German speakers.”
Two weeks before my memorable first meeting with Rob, I couldn‟t speak any German at all--so
to answer his question, technically, I was not especially fluent in German. Fortunately, that initial
exchange was the low point in my time at Deutsche Welle, and for the most part, things got
consistently better from there. Which is not, however, to say that I learned what I came to learn.
Or that Deutsche Welle played much of a role at all in what I *did learn.
At “home,” my job is in the heart of CNN‟s newsroom. At 2pm as well as 2am, there are dozens
of people running around, shouting questions, orders, and outright dares to peers, superiors,
and subordinates. I was never at Deutsche Welle at 2am, but I‟ve been in libraries that were
noisier and more vivacious than DW‟s 2pm prime. My specific DW workspace was more
hermetic, still: one small room at the end of a quiet hallway with two desks, two windows that
opened, and two very slow computers. For the first two weeks, I had the company of an intern
who knew even less than I did about the German media landscape; for the final two weeks, a
fellow from Tanzania sat across from me and wowed me with her German during phone
interviews. (...German that, for the record, I still didn‟t understand.) For two weeks in the middle,
I was completely alone with my thoughts and my keyboard -- save the lunch hour I desperately
sought to spend engaged in some form of conversation with teacher-colleagues.
Fortunately, the teacher-colleagues were many and willing. About once a week, I ate with
Michael, whom I had immediately hit it off with once we realized we had mutual friends in
Munich, Berlin, and DC. My friendly lunchtime debates with him became something like a way
for me to gauge my own progress in the project of Learning Germany. The first week, I did a lot
more listening than talking, and my questions were things that seem so basic in retrospect.
Things like “why does the SPD enjoy such dominance in the Rhineland?” Michael gave 30-
minute scholarly answers that ensured my ability to hold my own in every bar and dancehall I
visited with non-journalist Germans. By the end, the descriptive held less appeal, and I had
enough of a foundation to engage more normatively: how should the role of the German Foreign
Minister evolve as the Chancellor increasingly represents Germany within the EU--the context
that was oh-so-crucial this summer?
I went into my Burns Fellowship with an interest in issues of migration and integration in
Germany. I didn‟t, ultimately, get to file a piece that faced this issue directly, but my colleagues
in DW‟s Chinese service provided enough fodder for a good novel. Stories about being
chastised by their German neighbors for speaking to their children in Chinese carried the sting
that one might expect after two decades of life spent feeling something less than „at home.‟
Stories about an award-winning college student whose university refused to be associated with
a prize he won because the student‟s name sounded “obviously non-German” exerted an
almost mythical power in the viral re-telling. But for a group that was so united by--and bizarrely
proud of--their non-Germanness, they were awfully prickly and mutually suspicious of each
other. I couldn‟t help but wonder if they experienced the same DW solitude during the regular
work day, and if, year after year, the cultural echo chamber--both within DW, and in society at
large--was to blame for turning them against each other.
As it happened, DW turned out to be less of a „representative experience in a German
newsroom,‟ and more of an anthropological case study in how the looming threat of layoffs; the
absence of a strict profit motive; and the supreme intellectualism of Germany‟s media can

interact. I successfully pitched stories that were more subtle and nuanced--and 50 times longer-
-than anything a parallel department at CNN ever would have even considered. It felt luxurious,
and I reveled in it.
As my time in Bonn came to a close, ideas about possible future projects that would bring me
back to Germany held greater and greater professional appeal. As America languished,
paralyzed by a debt crisis, I started looking more and more longingly at a Germany that--despite
a pretty ominous debt crisis of its own--just seemed to work better, from the Parliament to the
street. All the things I valued, it seemed, Germany had mastered. And what awaited me in
Atlanta was just prosaic.
Against this depressing backdrop, I had my final lunchtime talk with Michael. He asked me what
I had learned during my time there; what I was taking away from my experience. And I slumped
down in my chair, dreading my return to Atlanta, and started in on soliloquy of love for Germany,
he cut me off, visibly unimpressed with my hard-earned affection for his country. “I hated
America--until I spent a year in Atlanta. My internship at CNN? That beautiful part of town
around Georgia State? They were the smartest people I had ever met in my life. It was
AWESOME.”
And on a dime, I realized that my perception of my experience had less to do with the actualities
of the experience -- the people, the office, the job; and everything to do with my perspective. I
resolved to give Atlanta the benefit of every ounce of enthusiasm I could muster.
...and to get back to Germany as soon as I possibly could.