| Eowyn Jones, '95:
After a year of integration at the Univerisity of Konstanz, West Germany, I was able to experience life in the former East. My intention of getting a summer job to help pay for the next school year turned into the opportunity of a life time. I got a job as a German teacher for U.S. exchange students planning on staying in the country for a year with the Youth for Understanding organization, which offered a language and orientation class to prepare them for living with local families, going
to German school and getting used to a new setting. I was assigned to a small town near Chemnitz, formerly called Karl-Marx-Stadt, in Saxony. "What is really different about the East?" was the question I asked myself as I saw a huge, modern Coca-Cola factory with hundreds of 16-wheelers ready to deliver the unbeatable feeling of Coke throughout the country. The wrinkles on the Eastern side of the curtain are rapidly being ironed out by the hot steam of westernizing capitalism. What cannot be smoothed out as fast, however, are the culture, mentality, and convictions of the people resulting from years of education in a hermetic political and ideological system. There was a rush of acquiring material goods. A car was the first big purchase for most, although many spoke affectionately of their "Trabi." Taste buds are challenged as exotic products flood the supermarket shelves. Banks are popping up and spreading like mushrooms. American-style shopping malls are the greatest attraction in town. Times are flourishing for those who have jobs. Unfortunately employment security has disappeared. Although authorities are still investigating Stasi files and punishing criminal acts, most people are trying to forget and get on with everyday life. Those who submitted to the system and its ideology had a relatively peaceful life and now enjoy the best of both worlds. But those who, out of conviction, had to live in opposition to the socialist regime, had a very rough time of it indeed and still suffer from it.
More than half of my students decided to stay in the East for the whole year. I would like to wish them all a year of many rich experiences and a fun time with what Mark Twain called "die schreckliche deutsche Sprache."
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