My Fifteen Minutes of Fame

In the past two weeks, I became famous. 

Last Thursday I was visited by Jens Spahn, a Bundestag(Germany's equivalent of Congress) representative who oversees the CBYX exchange program between Germany and the USA. That's right, he came to my house. It was really neat to be able to speak with one of the people who is making it possible for me to come to Germany for the year. He even gave me his card and told me to email him before I go to Berlin in May so that we can meet up. That just doesn't seem happen in America.

But how exactly does that make me famous?

It's a pretty big ordeal for someone from the Bundestag to come all the way out to Wettringen. So, why not put it in the newspaper or Internet TV? Last Saturday I was in the Münstersche Zeitung and on VOIS TV, then a few days latter, in the “big newspaper" Westfaelische-Nachrichten. I think everyone reads the newspaper, because Last Saturday night when I was at Wettringen's annual Musiknacht, there were a lot of people who came up to me asking questions about how I liked Germany, why exactly I am here, how long I was staying, etc. All questions answered in the article about me. Maybe everyone only scans the newspaper.

The other bit of fame happened during Musiknacht. Before my friends and I went to the actual event, we met up at Juri's house, a friend on my soccer team who also goes to my school. I was playing his guitar a little to get the music started for the night. One of the songs I played was Tom Petty's “Free Falling”. About 30 minutes later we were at our first stop of the many musical venues. The acoustic duo was doing really well, but I stepped outside since it was really crowded. Before I knew it, I was humming along to “Free Falling” as the band played inside. After the first chorus, the song didn't continue. The same four chord were repeated for a while until Jena found me outside and said “Komm rein. Du singst.” So that's what happened. I went inside and sang the rest of the song with the band playing behind me. That was the highlight of the night for me. Or stopping to eat a pizza with Felix while the others thought I was lost. I also enjoyed that.

I guess there are some perks to being an American in Germany.