- 1. Stranger of Council Bluffs -

Current Mission: Auckland, New Zealand

This TravelBug was taken in September 2015 by a member of the Browny-Gang to the USA. Our Member stays for one year as a pupil of the High School of Council Bluffs / Iowa / USA. The TB returns to Germany in august 2016. Now the TB is on the way to Asia, Australia and USA and should after that return to Germany again. Please look at the actual mission you see at the top.

We thank all the cachers who transport our TravelBug. Please do not retain the TB more than two weeks in your possession, unless you transport it over 1000 miles in the predetermined direction.

Now something about the view of most Americans about us Germans. The US-Americans considered with Germany as the land of mountains, where potbellied man with leather pants and hat drinking beer, sitting next to their wooden cottages with a view to Sleeping Beauty Castle. This group of Germans lives in a small part in the south of the country and call themselves Bavarian. The rest of the German population smiled at this region, because it shows actually a very untypical picture of Germany (red = Bavaria). 

As the American president says that he has forgotten his leather pants during a visit in Germany in 2015, 85% of all Germans think how embarrassing that is for Germany. This would be the same as if the Germans think that all people in the USA were Indians and a German wearing a feather headdress during a visit in the United States.

The US-Americans are not only very important partners due to the same ancestors,German and Americans have in many respects similar views. Times when German citizens living under a Nazi government passed since 3 generations and the people in Germany know this history from books. How in every country that caused a war, also the German descendants are very unpleasant what happened back then. But for the deeds of their ancestors, the following generations couldn't be anything, they can only do everything to ensure that such things does not happen again. Of course in Germany, as in every country in the world, we have a few stupid people with fundamentalist right or left disposition, but the majority of the German population is to be settled in the middle, like the Americans.

We Germans are very grateful that other countries (like the United States) have ended the Nazi regime. In the same way we are grateful that our ancestors got the chance of rebuilding, also by the US-Americans. Otherwise we would't be there today, where we are now.

Certainly the German history is much older than the American history. But that does not mean that the Germans are therefore wiser and more experienced. The people in the USA, which have their origin to a large extent also in German, had in the course of their time many cultures unite in itself. This results a much larger view over all boundaries, as it's the case in Europe.

Travel Bug Origins - United States