I started to get hungry on somewhere on the long train journey between Cologne and Baden Baden, and so I flagged down the man pushing a food cart down the aisle.

It became clear that his English was just a bit better than my German. This meant that we were not going to have a detailed conversation, but I communicated my wish for a cheese sandwich and he let me know the price.  “Change, change, I need to find some change,” I muttered to myself, as I rummaged through my wallet. “Change!” he said, loudly, with big bright smile. “Change! Obama!” And he raised his hands over his head in a victory salute.

I grinned back at him. “Yes! Yes! Obama! Yay!” It was just a few months after the inauguration and I was still a little giddy.  We beamed at each other for few minutes, and then he pushed his cart away.

§

As I munched my sandwich and watched the Rhine river unwind out the window, I reflected on how different that exchange was from similar conversations I had during the George W. Bush presidency, when international sentiment had soured. The Pew Global Attitudes Project tracked dramatic drops in US favorability ratings abroad during the Bush years – in Germany, for example, 78% of those polled had a favorable attitude towards the United States in 1999-2000, by 2006, the share had dropped to 30%.  After President Obama’s election, in 2010, the figure rebounded to 63%.  There were similar patterns of throughout the world, most pronounced in Western Europe,  more muted in Asia and Latin America, where positive regard for the US was never as high to begin with.  (As an aside, Muslim countries don’t fit this pattern at all – over the past ten years views on the US  have been consistently and overwhelmingly negative.)

During the Bush administration, any political conversation I had abroad included, invariably, the phrase “your president,” delivered with withering contempt. I was always tempted to say that President Bush was never my president, since I did not vote for him.

But I never did. I’m a US citizen and the president is my president whether I voted for him or not.  During Bush’s first term, I did allow myself to point out that he wasn’t actually elected, and only in office thanks to a partisan decision of the US Supreme Court.  I may have also appended the phrase “among the Court’s darkest hours”. But after Bush’s re-election in 2004, I dropped all of that and simply said “I’m so, so, so sorry.”

§

Of course, not all anti-American sentiment is about our political leaders – some of it is also about the perceived behavior of the 300 million or so of us that are We the People.  In 2005, when international political mistrust of the United States was at peaking, Pew surveyed people in Western countries about their opinions about Americans as Americans. Solid majorities in France, Germany, Great Britain and so on ascribed Americans with two positive characteristics: hardworking and inventive. On the other hand, similar majorities thought Americans were greedy. And although there’s certainly a stereotype about “the rude American abroad”, it turns out that most people in Western countries don’t buy it. Among all the Western countries surveyed, it was only a majority of Canadians that described Americans as rude (53%), followed by Russia at 48%. Just over a third of French respondents said Americans were rude, and just 12% of Germans.

§

I haven’t been out of the country since the Obama-shellacking midterm elections, and so I’m not sure if the midterm elections have changed conversations about US politics, or opinions on the American character. There aren’t any post-midterm figures available from Pew’s Global Attitudes Project yet, and in international newspapers the post-election commentary seems to have focused more on political strategy and less on what the election results say to the rest of the world about Americans.

Still, if I were to have that same encounter with that sandwich man on that German train today, I wonder if he’d still associate Obama with the word “change”.

And the next time I have a conversation about American politics overseas, I wonder if I’ll still be able to smile.

It’s hard to believe, given all that’s happened since I returned home to Christchurch, that only a few months ago I was floating around the Baltic on the Star Princess, taking in the sights, being amazed by the scenery and enthralled by the people.

Visiting Scandinavia was the highlight of the three month long world trip I was taking with my mother, sadly to be cut short by an  illness that resulted in being stranded in Olso for a week.

But that one brief taste of Scandinavia has left me wanting more.

And this recently launched  ’Faces of Scandinavia’  campaign, created by VisitDenmark, Innovation Norway, VisitSweden and Icelandair, only adds to my desire to return to the region.

This unique campaign features famous US-based Scandinavians promoting their favorite local travel destinations around Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

Read their personal travel stories and recommendations to get a local perspective of the place and then leave a comment for a chance to win a three day trip to Scandinavia  for two that includes

two roundtrip tickets with Icelandair to Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm

two nights in a fabulous hotel in each city

overnight cruise from Oslo to Copenhagen

train from Copenhagen to Stockholm

City Cards for sightseeing in each city

Or you could win the 2nd place prize of

a 16GB iPad with Wi-Fi and 3G

the travel application Guidepal

I’d enter but sadly, it’s only open to US residents. 

So what are you waiting for?

 Why not give it a go…

On November 30th, people in Scotland, along with those of Scottish descent and interest in such far flung places as New Zealand, Texas, and Argentina, will celebrate Saint Andrew’s day. Saint Andrew is the patron Saint of Scotland, and his day has long been seen as the beginning of a season of festivity which includes Christmas and culminates with Burns night at the end of January.

Part of any celebration of Scotland has to be music. Take a listen to these recordings as you mark the day — and perhaps as you think about your holiday gift lists, too.

For any Scottish celebration, you have to have pipes, of course. The debut album form rising piping star Lorne MacDougall is a good place to start, especially if you might think you do not like bagpipes. They are, if you give them a chance, quite a melodic and lively instrument, things MacDougall shows to fine effect on Hello World.

The fiddle is a powerful presence in Scottish music as well. Two fiddlers to know, who both draw their music from the highlands in the north of Scotland, are Duncan Chisholm and Sarah Jane Summers. Chisholm’s latest album is called Canaich. Summers, who has been drawn to the strong Nordic connections in the music of Scotland’s north as well as traditional music of the highlands, offers her take on both of those and how they connect on her album Nesta.

Singer Julie Fowlis is from North Uist in the Outer Hebrides, one of the few places where Scottish Gaelic is still a living language. You do not need to understand the language to hear the stories of sea and land and family she shares in the traditional songs she’s included on her album Uam.

Eddi Reader’s career has spanned folk, pop, punk, and country music, but, she points out, always with a storytelling and folk element at the heart of things. A fine songwriter herself, she found herself in recent years returning to the work of Scotland’s national bard, Robert Burns — work that as a schoolchild she’d thought wasn’t for the likes of her — for inspiration and with admiration. A fine place to check out what she’s done with that idea is Eddi Reader Sings the Songs of Robert Burns.

Want to get a quick taste of what all this is like? Take a look at Reader, fiddler John McCusker, flute player Michael McGoldrick, and friends doing a rousing version of Willie Stewart, Robert Burns’ song celebrating friendship.

A candle in the window, a loaf of bread with caraway seeds on the table, a holly wreath at the door: those Christmas traditions each had origin in Ireland. So are the traditions, not unique to Ireland but well celebrated there, of sharing time with family, reaching out to friends old and new, mending differences, and sharing music both joyous and reflective.

Irish musicians are on the road across the United States this holiday season, sharing their traditions and inviting you to join in.

Fiddle player Eileen Ivers has toured the world with her music, with her own band Immigrant Soul and before that as a star of Riverdance and a founding member of Cherish the Ladies For her holiday concerts, though, Ivers stays close to home. Ivers was born and raised in the Bronx, to family strong in faith and strong in connections to Ireland. “Neither of my folks had many material things as they grew up in large families in County Mayo, in the west of Ireland. Family and friends were at the core of Christmas festivities,” Ivers says. She looks at the tunes and songs in her Christmas show and her holiday recording in that same way,connecting the generations, building bridges between friend and stranger, and making the season brighter. In her Christmas show, you are likely to hear reels such as Oiche Nollaig, Christmas Eve, and The High Road to Linton, jigs such as The Frost is All Over, and carols including Hark the Herald Angels Sing. You might also hear a bit of Bach with an Irish fiddler’s twist. Ivers will be on tour with her band through most of December, on dates that will take them from the Pacific Northwest to Arizona to Alabama, to Vermont, and they’ve recorded some of the music they’ll be playing, too on the album An Nollaig.

Oisín Mac Diarmada of the band Téada is the man behind the Irish Christmas in America tour. The men of the band, along with guests including harper Grainne Hambly, piper Tommy Martin (if you’ve seen the Celtic Woman shows, you’ve seen his work), singer Séamus Begley, and Irish dancer Brian Cunningham, offer a welcoming evening of music, dance, songs, and stories that get at the heart of the family feeling of Ireland at Christmas. You could hear a story about a 19th century Irish emigrant’s letter home back to Ireland trying to describe tea bags, or learn about the idea, common in Ireland and in Irish American homes as well, of having a candle in the window on Christmas eve. “There’s always a bit of narrative in any concert of traditional music,” Mac Diarmada says, “ but I thought it would be nice to bring in a bit more of the informality of it. a bit more of the culture and the excitement.” Music, dance, and stories in the program cover the of days leading up to Christmas, Christmas Eve, the day itself, and St. Stephen’s Day, which in Ireland is a big day for socializing, visiting, and getting together for playing music.

Begley will no doubt be bringing along some of his dry West Kerry wit, as well as songs and tunes. Irish Christmas in America is going into its sixth year, “and the singers we’ve had — Michael Londra, Cara Dillon, Karan Casey, Cathie Ryan, Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh — just the top singers,” Mac Diarmada says. “Séamus is with us for the second year now. I get the position of driver on the tour, and Séamus would sit up in the passenger seat telling stories and singing all the day’s journey — I didn’t think I could do without that again this year!”

The Irish Christmas in America tour will begin on the west coast, and travel to dates along the eastern seaboard. There’s a recording out of winter themed tunes from the show, as well, and all the singers mentioned above have their own recordings out as well.

If you are in the New England area at the holidays, another holiday tour to mark on your calendar is Fine Winter’s Night, from Matt and Shannon Heaton. The couple offer a program that includes carols, popular Christmas songs, and quite a few original songs and tunes as well. This, too, is a family friendly show. It is as engaging and welcoming of the spirit of the winter season, and of the connections at this time of year between Ireland and America, as are the larger band based tours. Their holiday album, also called Fine Winter’s Night, is a good taste of what you may hear.

You could, in fact, have a very fine winter season taking in a concert from each of these groups. Traditional music fan, occasional listener, or just looking for a bit of seasonal warmth, these musicians have got you covered. “Being the time of year that it is, I like the fact that people might come out who aren’t die hard traditional music fans,” Oisín Mac Diarmada says. “They’ll come because it’s a Christmas program, and the whole family will come, and it might be a way of introducing people to traditional music and dance.”

In the US today it is the Thanksgiving national holiday, where we reflect on our lives, our friends and our family and are thankful for the good things in all of them.

After a short trip to Loudoun County, Virginia for the first-ever Symposium on Social Media in Tourism (SoMeT,) I’m really thankful for those visionaries who can look at broken-down, bedraggled old buildings, see possibilities for them, bring them miraculously back to life and then let all of us enjoy their living history.

In Broadlands, Virginia, I’m thinking of Clyde’s Willow Creek Farm, where we had dinner and did some minor carousing during the conference. It’s a series of gorgeous old timber barns, houses and taverns from the 18th and 19th centuries that have been preserved and brought together to form a rambling complex of restaurant rooms and bars (complete with restored carriages hanging from the ceiling in one of the bars.)

In Clarksdale, Mississippi, I’m thinking of the Shack Up Inn, a motley-looking and history-soaked collection of converted sharecropper shacks brought together at the old Hopson plantation and now serving as the state’s most famous B&B (“Bed and Beer.”)  All because a few nutball guys who love the blues and the Delta decided throw all sense to the winds and preserve what they loved (and yes, they did install indoor plumbing, heating and air conditioning.)

Thank you to all of those who preserve history for the rest of us….even if they don’t really think of themselves as preservationists or belong to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The people who can see a future for the things from our past are themselves a national treasure.

(If you like this post, please consider subscribing to the blog via RSS feed or by email – the email signup box is at the top of the right sidebar near the Search box. Thanks!)