Die (Aus)Wahl von Keks

As has been widely pointed out, the recent German election was a bit on the dry side. (Barely related side story: I hung out (briefly) with Roger Cohen at the reception following a foreign policy panel discussion I attended this week (making him my second New York Times columnist sighting in Berlin! He was next to me in the buffet line and asked me what I did for a living. I think I was the only non-politics person in the room (if you don't count that silly bachelor's degree or my brief stint saving children) and he seemed rather amused to talk about something besides the boring election). In any case, there was an election going on here. I suppose it wasn't all that different from elections at home, except that we didn't get phone calls during dinner from Bill Clinton (or Merkel for that matter) and because we don't have a television we were't subject to nonstop political ads (though I hear they are not so pervasive here). There were a lot of posters up around town for the various parties. Mostly they serve to illustrate that German politicians do not use stylists (or it would seem, professional photographers). One poster in particular illustrates the ability of the German people to take some things more lightly than Americans. This poster displays the cleavage of Chancellor Angela Merkel and another politician from her CDU party, claiming: we have more to offer. While I can't say that I find this poster particularly convincing, remember what a fuss they made about Michelle Obama showing her arms?! (In the end, she lost.)


For the most part, I leave the German politicking to mein Mann, but I did see fit to make one (fairly neutral) contribution to the election. We went to a little election party to watch the results come in (Germany only has one time zone (and only tiny scandals) so you can actually find out the results and then go have dinner!). I brought along some election-themed cookies - the different sprinkles represent the colors associated with the four main parties. Freakily enough, most of the red (red being the color of the SPD, which lost badly) cookies turned out really poorly (weird holes in the centers and melting around the edges) and yellow (of the co-winning FDP) turned out perfectly. Hmmmmmmmmmm....