The Blog of armine

A few years back, the states of Berlin and Brandenburg voted on whether to reunite as one state; they overwhelmingly voted against it. Geographically, Berlin is an 'island state' within the state of Brandenburg - still, the citizens didn't want reunification. What does this have to do with Obama? As people should know, he gave a big speech in Berlin last week to a large and mesmerized crowd. But here is something the average American citizen may not know: Berlin does not represent Germany any more than San Francisco represents the United States. People probably do not know that, 20 miles outside Berlin (in cities like Potsdam, for instance), citizens of a neighboring state thumb their noses up at 'the kooky Berliners' and poke fun at their 'wacky' neighbors. In many ways, Germany is much like the US; it has its pockets of liberals, but if you venture into the heartland you will find very conservative people. So the bottom line is this: while I am glad that Obama's trip to Berlin was such a success, I would also caution observers to remember that he was in BERLIN. Most of Germany is not like Berlin - unless we are talking about Frankfurt. And even that is only a 'maybe', in terms of its liberal slantings.