Alex is abroad in Munich, Germany, until August 2009.

On the night of November 4th, a group of Americans from my program, a few of our German friends and neighbors and I stayed up watching the election results come in one state at a time.  We gathered in the common room of one of the small co-op style dorms and closed all the doors, so as not to wake up the rest of the hall. Though we had an abundant supply of beer, the drink of choice was tea and coffee, and everyone was on the edge of their seats, hoping that our fellow citizens back in the states would make the decision we were hoping for: Obama.

The results didn’t start coming in until about 1 a.m., thanks to the time change.  Two German TV stations were reporting the election in a similar fashion to that of American news stations: a giant map in the background with a man in the foreground who would announce results and then turn individual states red or blue.  The entertaining part of watching it from Germany, though, was that sometimes they would get a shot of the announcer’s laptop and CNN.com was running or when the camera went back stage, there was a group of Germans huddled around a TV screen flashing CNN.   The running joke for the evening was that every time “Ergebnisse,” or results, came in the announcer had just refreshed CNN.com, which while funny, was also somewhat truthful.

Obama began taking state after state, and each time there was an enthusiastic cheer from our small American audience.  In between the announcements they showed coverage of the Grant Park rally in Chicago, and the two other NU kids and I would scan the screen for brief glimpses of the many people we knew would be there.  At that moment I got a little homesick: the whole world was watching Chicago, and half of my closest friends were there.  I wanted more than anything to be standing in that crowd watching the results.  As the night progressed, our group numbers waned to about seven very sleepy students, who would give an enthusiastic cheer when Obama won a battleground state.  I think it was the cheer for Ohio that startled me awake, and I decided that it was time for me to go to bed.  I had tried to ride it out, but I had a fever and was about ready to collapse.  When I left our German friends, who affectionately referred to Obama as “Obi,” were completely convinced that he was going to win.  In all reality it was looking pretty good for Obama, but I couldn’t help being a little nervous.  My entire political life has been full of too-close-to-call elections and recounts, so I feel like nervousness is justified.

I stumbled back to my room and flipped open my computer to check CNN one last time before bed.  After hitting refresh for the second time, Virginia and the West Coast turned blue on the map and there was a check mark next to Obama’s name at the top of the screen.  My roommate, who is studying abroad in Italy, was online and we exchanged a few all-capital-letter lines of exclamation on Google chat, and I fell asleep with a smile on my face.

The next morning, Germany awoke to a beautiful sunny day, and when I opened my computer and saw all of the Obama excitement flying at me from Facebook, headlines, emails and blogs, I couldn’t help getting excited all over again.  As I watched Obama giving his speech in Grant Park, I actually started crying.  He talked directly to my generation: “It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.”  The fact that a politician has finally recognized and inspired my generation is absolutely beautiful.  I got on Skype to talk to my American friends here in Germany, and every single one, although they were touched by different lines, also cried out of happiness while watching Obama that morning.  It was a great day to be an American in Europe.

As I walked through Munich that day and passed the newspaper stands and machines, the headlines were different than I had expected.  A few that I saw said, “Good Morning, Mr. President, it’s time to fix the world,” and “Yes We Can, be friends,” or just “Obama!”  Germany was buzzing with the news of Obama, but for the Germans, the US electing Obama was something they thought was bound to happen so many publications were not focusing on the hype of our new president-elect, but on what he was actually going to do now.  It was down to business for Germany, immediately.  Der Spiegel, a popular German magazine, has been particularly US centric for the last few issues: first they had a scathing issue about the failures of the Bush administration, with a harsh depiction of the major leaders of our government on the front cover.  Then they released a special edition about the history of the US, in which they also claim the US is responsible for most of the problems in the world, good and bad.  Finally their latest issue (along with the latest issues of just about every magazine) has Obama on the cover under the headline “The World President: What he wants, what he can (not) do.”

Being abroad has probably made me more patriotic than anything else in my life.  Living in another country, you usually feel a little more pride about where you come from.  Just like when you go to college you magically have an immense amount of hometown pride, even though before you may have hated it there.  In my experience, Europeans do not hate Americans, like everyone likes to think.  They do not like our politics, and in a place where politics is a more popular subject, that tends to get misconstrued as general disdain.  Politics aside, the Europeans I have met enjoy many of our cultural highlights just as much as we do: radios play half American music, MTV is one of the most popular stations here and every party is loaded with our 80’s classics.

I was discussing the Der Spiegel article that blames the US for the world’s problems with my German friend, and he had an interesting take on it.  He said, “You know it’s easy for everyone to turn to America and blame them, because you are more involved in many issues than other countries, but I think it’s better than what we are doing, which is sitting around pointing out faults.”  Now that was a pretty extreme opinion, but he did have a point about America being easy to blame.  My program director gave another good insight: Austria, Germany’s smaller neighbor is always obsessed with what is happening in the German news, in the same way that Germany is obsessed with what’s going on in the much larger US.  In his opinion, smaller countries will always be interested in what’s going on in the larger, more active ones.

For me, I have had a little shift in opinion.  Back in the states, I was the first one to say “yeah the US is really messing up the world right now,” and there is some truth to that statement politically and diplomatically.  But what I think you don’t see if you stay in the states is that we export and influence much more than I ever realized. Our culture influences the world scene just as much as our politics do.  And while I was never in support of the Bush administration, I think that the worst thing that happened in the last eight years is that we got a little reckless and forgot that every move we make influences other countries which was reflected in Bush’s policies.  More than anything else, I hope that Obama can just be conscious of this effect.  If we had a president with an attitude like that, his/her politics would fall into place and be naturally more internationally caring and empathetic.

For now, though, I will continue to enjoy saying I’m an American, because I couldn’t be more proud of the decision we made.

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