I'm Fulbrighting in Bavaria, it's near Germany.

I was having this discussion last week about how sometimes I don't feel like I'm living in Germany. All of my friends from my language course are. But I'm doing my Fulbright in Bavaria.

Bavaria is often compared to Texas in the US, both my the people here and the people visiting. It's not that there are really any similarities with the people themselves, but more their status in the rest of the country. There's this sense that I've gathered from the few people I've met from Texas which is that Texas is the true America, the other 49 states are lacking on this intangible quality which makes us... well... not Texas.

The difference here is that Bavarians are more of the idea that they are NOT German, but rather Bavarian. There's a Bavarian movie where someone gets asked, in English, where they are from and they respond "We're from Bavaria, it's near Germany." And that's the Bavarian attitude in a nutshell.

But the difference between Bavaria and the rest of the country isn't just in attitude, there are cultural and language differences too. For example, usually when Americans think of a stereotypical German they're actually thinking of a Bavarian. Lederhosen, Dirndl, that silly hat with a feather in it... those are all typical Bavarian things (just like most foreigners think I own cowboy hats and guns). Every region has their own style of traditional dress (in fact every district in Munich has its own style, and I've been told there was once a day where you could tell where someone lived by what kind of Lederhosen they wore), what one normally thinks of as Lederhosen is usually somehow the Bavarian style.What I still find amazing though is that Bavaria is the only region I know of where people still wear their traditional dress for normal occasions... like going out on the town for a night. Other regions have their dress and it appears for festivals once in a while but, at least to my knowledge, it is very rare to be in a state capital at 4 in the morning and see someone leaving a bar in Lederhosen. That's pretty commonplace in Munich.

And Bayrisch is called a dialect but in reality it's more of a separate language. When Ben and Marty came to visit I had to translate menus for them. And they both speak German quite well, but there are just some stark differences. Hähnchen is Hendl, Brötchen is Semmel, you greet people with Grüß Gott or Servus instead of Guten Tag, you start meals with An Guadn instead of Guten Appetit... and those are just the superficial differences. There are postcards that have the same phrase written in English, Standard German, and then Bayrisch and it's pretty weird. "Ich liebe dich" comes out as "I' mog di" in Bayrisch. Native Germans have trouble with this stuff too, not just learners.

I really do love Bayern but I often have trouble justifying it to, well, anyone. Especially non-Bavarian Germans. If you tell a Bavarian you love Bavaria they just accept it, as though you just informed them that water was wet. But the rest of Germany sort of despises Bavaria. I once met a guy from Berlin that had been living in Munich and hating it. And it was interesting because he had spent time in the South in the US and loved it there. So we had this disagreement, where I loved Bavaria for basically the same reasons he loved the South, the regionalism, the cultural pride, the contrast to the rest of the country, but he really didn't like Bavaria and I had no love of the South.

I went to the Nuremberg Christmas Markets a little bit ago and now the real deal is coming up. I'll be spending that in Munich with some friends and then heading out to gallivant around for a couple weeks. I hope this finds you well and you have a wonderful holiday, preferably with snow.

Frohe Weihnachten und einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr from the land of Oktoberfest, Haxe, Weisswurst, and Weissbier,
Shane