by Judy Jones
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW IF YOU’RE DATING AN ETHIOPIAN: Don’t bother to write; your date can’t read. Despite a couple of decades of hand-wringing and a few actual attempts at school construction, Ethiopia’s literacy rate still hovers around 43 percent—that is, pretty much where it was a couple of decades ago. To be fair, educating the populace has its challenges. Even where there are schools, there are likely to be no roads leading to them, no teachers to run them, and certainly no hot lunch to fortify anyone for an afternoon’s slog through some donated textbook about the songbirds of eastern Maine. Nevertheless, in rural areas, Ethiopian kids who do attend school tend to view the experience favorably, since getting there each day offers them the opportunity to practice marathon running, which is something of a national sport.
If your date’s a girl, of course, literacy will be less of an issue than sex. You’ll both have plenty to think about before you jump into bed, such as Ethiopia’s dizzying HIV infection rate; an absence of birth control so widespread that, despite an average life expectancy of forty, the population has nearly doubled since the famine of 1984; and certain complications resulting from your date’s personal experience with genital mutilation.
Oh well, every relationship has its difficulties. You will at least be able to enjoy a good cup of coffee together. (And who needs food when you’re in love?) Ethiopia, as every Starbucks regular can tell you, is famous for producing the world’s best coffee. However, since the bottom dropped out of the world coffee market, your date may, like many others, have turned to raising the narcotic khat instead, which yields at least three times the profit. Either way, you’ll be buzzin.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO MEET YOUR DATE’S PARENTS: First, don’t bother trying to make small talk, unless you’re fluent in Amharic (the official language), Galligna, Tigrigna, or one of nearly a hundred local dialects. Second, do get your prejudices straight: the Ethiopians resent the Eritreans, who consider themselves Arabs and who, after a really, really long civil war, finally won the right to secede from the Ethiopian Republic in 1993. They left, taking with them Ethiopia’s only access to the sea, but the divorce seems to have left neither party feeling freer or happier. Landlocked Ethiopia no longer has access to shipping routes, Eritrea has the seaport but lacks anything to ship, and an unresolved border dispute between the two countries perennially threatens the uneasy peace. Ethiopians look down on the local Somalis (the Muslim residents of Somaliland, a southeastern province, which you have every right to confuse with Muslim Somalia next door), whom their nineteenth-century Emperor Menelik labeled “the cattlekeepers for the Ethiopians.” The Amhara, light-skinned aristocrats from the northern highlands, feel superior to all other Ethiopians and resentful of their perennial rivals, the Tigreans. The Tigreans, also from the north, feel underappreciated; they were the ones who led the final assault on Mengistu, yet their efforts at peaceful, pluralistic nation-building are drawing fire from all sides. The southern Oromo, who comprise about 40 percent of the population, have been poor and powerless for centuries; now they’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore, although as far as anyone can tell, they have no agenda. If your date’s parents are among the Amhara or Tigrean elite, you might try currying favor with stories of your days as an altar boy. Christianity, in the form of the ancient, powerful, and once staggeringly rich Ethiopian Orthodox Church, was the official state religion and, for sixteen centuries, the foundation of upper-class Ethiopian life, right up until Selassie’s downfall. Proceed with caution, however: Mengistu did a pretty good job of discrediting the Church by nationalizing its vast land holdings and killing, cowing, or co-opting most of its priests. And if your date’s parents are peasants, they’re probably Muslim converts anyway. Don’t expect to win any points by gushing about Mengistu’s defeat or rhapsodizing about the prospect—however dim—of democratic rule. If you really want to make a good impression, just bring lunch. FRANCE
THE LAYOUT: The location’s lovely—friendly neighbors, water views on three sides—but of course, the facilities are hardly modern. The five famous rivers, for instance (the Seine, Loire, Rhine, Rhône, and Garonne), aren’t the great commercial waterways they were back when boats were smaller, and despite recent efforts at decentralization, all roads still lead, culturally and administratively, to Paris. Still, the place has character. And it has undergone extensive renovation: It’s now officially divided into twenty-two regions, ninety-six administrative départements, and 36,000 communes, although mentally everyone continues to carve it into the same geographically distinct anciens provinces (Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, Gascony, etc.) they were pledging fealty to back in the Middle Ages. (When chatting up the waiter at your local bistro, remember that Provence is the name of a particular province—the one with the Riviera in it—and that, to a Frenchman, everything that isn’t Paris is “les provinces.”). In addition to the main property, a wide variety of time-shares are available in exotic locales—on the island of Corsica, for instance, which is officially a region of France, and in any number of former possessions that still maintain administrative ties to the mother country, from Guadeloupe and Martinique to New Caledonia, French Polynesia, and Adélie Land. The latter, by the way, is located in Antarctica and usually has openings even in high season.
THE SYSTEM: France is now on its fifth republic. The four earlier republics, dating from the French Revolution, were ended by Napoleons I and III, the collaborationist Vichy government during World War II, and Charles de Gaulle, respectively. Each had its own constitution and a somewhat different internal organization. Given that only de Gaulle, with his imperious personality, his incessant talk of “la gloire de la France,” and his intimidating height, was able to make any of these republics take root, you may be right in suspecting that, however much the French liked the idea of a republic, some part of them still hankered for a king. France is headed by a president elected for five-year terms, who is invested with greater powers than just about any other elected head of state (except for an American president or two who have apparently believed they ruled by Divine Right). Among these are the right to dissolve the National Assembly, to challenge existing laws, and to handpick his prime minister, thus presumably ensuring the latter’s loyalty. However, the major political parties can regroup to form complicated and potent opposition alliances that pit president and prime minister against each other in a hostile “cohabitation,” causing the whole system to strain at its seams.
Throughout most of the Fifth Republic, political power has been divided— though, heaven knows, never neatly—among four major forces: the conservative neo-Gaullists, the non-Gaullist right, the Socialists, and the Communists. Lately however, things have become messier. The neo-Gaullists and most of their former conservative allies have joined forces as the Union for Popular Movement (UMP), a coalition that was formed to win elections but is so fractious and full of rivalries that it may well have the opposite effect. The Communists haven’t had much clout since at least the 1980s, and the Socialists, who, under François Mitterrand, ran the country from 1981 to 1995, have been leading a not-ready-for-prime-time coalition of leftist parties whose agenda, in the midst of major social upheaval, has been largely confined to debating the wisdom of gay marriage. Even the party of the far right, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s stridently xenophobic National Front, which has never been known for the complexity of its platform (Down with Muslims! Down with Jews! Send all the immigrants back where they came from!), has split into two rival factions. Wait for the dust to settle before casting your vote.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO READ THE NEWSPAPERS: It would certainly help to know what a neo-Gaullist is. Unfortunately, no one really does. Gaullism was the political ideology defined by Charles de Gaulle’s presidency (1959–69), but since so much of de Gaulle’s presidency was a matter of personal charisma, being a Gaullist didn’t necessarily mean you subscribed to all of his policies. The heart of Gaullism was and is, however, the insistence that France be able to survive on her own, witho
ut depending on—or taking orders from—any foreign power. The practical effect: Since the end of World War II, France has hardly been what you’d call a team player. Determined, throughout the Cold War, to take what it saw as its rightful place among the superpowers (third on the dais next to the United States and the Soviet Union), it adopted a foreign policy aimed at asserting its independence from both American and Soviet influence and at creating a strong Europe with itself at the helm. It fought for the creation of the Common Market (and fought to keep Britain out); exploded its own atomic bomb back in 1960; withdrew militarily from NATO in 1966, kicking U.S. and NATO forces out of the country; was one of the first to recognize the government of mainland China, long before the United States did; and made a point of maintaining a “special relationship” with—which usually meant selling arms or plutonium to—whichever radical Middle Eastern country nobody else was speaking to at the moment. Merely by saying non to whatever the superpowers wanted, France was able to position itself as a country that stood on principle (which, in a self-serving, self-aggrandizing, semisincere way, it did) and was the champion of nonaligned nations everywhere. The end of the Cold War, however, left France without a fence to sit on and worse, without a cause. (For a brief period in 2003, fierce opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq provided the French with an exhilarating sense of national unity, but it couldn’t last. Sure, the French knew they were right—the French are always right—but was it God or Allah who was on their side?)
Meanwhile, the task of uniting Europe has turned out to be remarkably annoying, requiring all sorts of risks and sacrifices—of jobs, prestige, market shares—the French hadn’t counted on and which further divided public opinion. Look for shifting alliances—particularly with her old nemesis Germany—as France struggles to get a grip on geopolitical reality and jockeys for position in the new balance-of-power game.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW IF YOU’RE DATING A FRENCH PERSON: Be prepared to discuss, for hours and hours on end, politics, philosophy, foreign policy, the politics of philosophy, the philosophy of politics, the politics and philosophy of the French film industry (be sure to let your date take the lead on that one), and that hardy perennial, what’s wrong with America. Be conversant with trendy intellectual theories, keeping in mind that intellectuals are to the French what NASCAR drivers are to your brother-in-law. If you’re lucky, your date will be a student at, or a graduate of, one of the grandes écoles—the elite universities that turn out virtually all of France’s political and industrial leaders—and you’ll do your endless debating over foie gras at some four-star restaurant (but brace yourself for a diatribe against affirmative action in the universities—which your date will cite as another heinous example of Americanization eroding the French way of life). If your date isn’t one of the chosen few, he or she will either attend one of the overcrowded, underfunded schools that constitute the rest of France’s university system (be sure to tuck that headscarf or yarmulke away in your backpack before entering the classroom) or spend his days boning up on the Koran at one of the country’s many madrassas (nearly 10 percent of France’s population is now Arab and Muslim). Given France’s unemployment rate, which is the highest in Europe, your date may not be one of the lucky ones to have landed some low-level office job. In that case, wear comfortable shoes; you’ll be spending a lot of time in the streets, protesting the government’s attempts at reforming the social welfare system.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO MEET YOUR DATE’S PARENTS: That almost anything you say is going to precipitate a history lesson. The French can recall the succession of kings in the Merovingian dynasty or the events that led up to the Third Empire at least as clearly as you can remember your last love affair, and they’re likely to be a good deal more entertaining on the subject; in fact, nothing will give them more pleasure than to share their illustrious past with an ignorant American who hasn’t got one of his or her own. Relax, enjoy your boeuf bourguignon, and hope that the talk doesn’t turn to current events. This will inevitably lead to an anti-American harangue revolving around what your hosts regard as America’s criminally misguided foreign policy and “the serious threat of Anglo-American hegemonism,” as exemplified by Euro Disney, McDonald’s, American television shows (although they may grudgingly appreciate those Golden Girls reruns), and the mess in the Middle East. It will be difficult, but try to have a little compassion. Remember that your date’s parents are struggling with the disconnect between the quasi-mythical France they grew up in—the birthplace of democracy, the most civilized country in the world, a role model for everyone unfortunate enough not to be French—and the present-day reality of chronic unemployment, rising crime rates, and a failing economy. Why, France herself isn’t even French anymore. To be sure, immigrants have been arriving by the hordes for a hundred years, but it was always understood that the main job of the new arrivals was to assimilate, to become true Frenchmen—even if they did end up living in ghettos and working as street sweepers. Today many of the beurs (the country’s six million or so immigrants of Arab descent) are demanding the right to be different; they flatly refuse to eat charcuterie and don’t even bother to learn the language. The whole thing has been a terrible blow to your hosts’ self-image. Try to cheer them up. Engage them in a passionate discussion of French literature, during which, the one time you do manage to get your two centimes in, everyone at the table will gleefully leap to correct your grammar. GERMANY
THE LAYOUT: Even before reunification, in the fall of 1990, West Germany alone had more people (sixty-two million), more neighbors (nine), and a bigger gross national product (well over a trillion dollars) than any other European country except the Soviet Union, at the time still a player, thanks for asking. The merger— funny how corporate-takeover language seems right at home here—added eighteen million enthusiastic, if famously careworn, East Germans to the mix, as well as a long border with Poland and what had been by far the second biggest economy in the Soviet bloc. Flat and Protestant up north, hilly and Catholic down south (the latter tendencies culminate in the Alps of Bavaria), Germany, like Italy, is crawling with cities, including dirndled Munich, pinstriped Frankfurt, minked-out Düsseldorf, and chicly understated Hamburg, all of which have long competed for German cultural, financial, and/or industrial primacy. In 1999, Berlin (she’s the one in the leather miniskirt) became Germany’s capital again, taking over from longtime stand-in Bonn (in something from a mail-order catalog). Meanwhile, in the east, make a note of Leipzig, in a shiny new jogging outfit and a babushka, and Dresden, in a gas mask, the only sensible response to all those industrial fumes from the Czech Republic billowing northward en route to the Baltic Sea. The Ruhr Valley, practically in Holland, is the manufacturing heart of the country; the Rhine flows right through it, carrying cars, chemicals, and automatic coffeemakers to the rest of Europe and the world.
THE SYSTEM: Federal republic, made up of thirteen Länder, or lands, and three Freistaaten, or free states, all with powers similar to those of American states (no accident, this; the United States was the postwar influence in West Germany), and a two-house legislature, the important—and elected—half of which is the Bundestag. There’s a president, but the big deal is to be chancellor (like Konrad Adenauer; Willy Brandt; and the two Helmuts, Schmidt and Kohl; and, as of this writing, Angela Merkel, the first woman, and the first former citizen of East Germany, to lead the country). As in so many European countries, the vicissitudes of coalition—rather than the reversals of head-to-head elections—are the basis for the shifts in political power. Here the major players are the moderate, leftward-drifting Social Democrats, the conservative, pro-Atlantic Christian Democrats (who, allied with the far-right Christian Socialists of Bavaria, held power from the early 1980s to 1997), plus the liberal Free Democrats and the Greens (both fewer in number but with the power to make or break elections). Also to be factored in: a whole slew of ultra-nationalist parties, of which the neo-fascist skinheads are only the most photogenic.
WHAT YOU NEED
TO KNOW TO READ THE NEWSPAPERS: That Germany turns out to be a lot less Western than we’d all been thinking it was. In fact, it’s only since 1945 and the three-power Allied occupation that anybody’s been lumping it together with its Atlantic-looking neighbors and assuming that the Germans want roughly what the English, French, Dutch, etc. do. Before that, the country seemed merely “other,” neither Western (all craft guilds and splashing fountains) nor Eastern (all onion domes and howling wolves). Granted, Germany has done itself proud with its imitation of the American model in matters of government and industry; its close collaboration with traditional-enemy France in matters of culture and commerce; and its integration into the European Union, in the course of which it became somebody you could once more invite to family gatherings. Moreover, its long-standing policy of Ostpolitik (ost means “east,” by the way), of attempting to take the pulse of and preserve the dialogue with its other traditional enemy, Russia, may actually have paid off; when the Wall came down and the borders were opened, the two countries were already practiced schmoozers. In fact, with a constitution that specifically forbids military involvement beyond the boundaries of NATO, those are the only foreign affairs the Germans, lacking France’s nuclear capability, blue-water navy, long-standing African and Mideast interests, and silver tongue, could legally conduct. Today, all that’s changing. It was Germany who blew its allies’ minds by waking up one morning and deciding to recognize Slovenia and Croatia, and it was Germany who pressed for a broadening of NATO and the European Union to take in Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, and so on, thereby shoring up its security, as well as winning points, and customers, throughout Mitteleuropa. And it was Germany who first spoke out in opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq—although she then stood prudently at the back of the room while the French hogged the spotlight and took the heat. Even the pacifism the Germans have embraced with near-religious fervor since the end of World War II has begun to give a little, with German forces participating in NATO’s 1995 intervention in Bosnia and later in Afghanistan. Paranoiacs take heart: The need to underwrite all those reunification costs, resettle all those Balkan asylum seekers, and deal with a huge and increasingly restive jobless population should suffice to keep Germany busy—and homebound—for the foreseeable future.
