Washintong DC

The

Adventurous

Danes

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Today's Golden Words

1. Shutdown can't stop us

2. Johannes V. Langkilde is awesome!

3. Mahatma gave us an interesting lesson on racism in America today

4. Can't find no ***damn Chipotle :(

5. Now: The Bowling Danes

6. We would pay one hundred dollar for a single beer right now...

 

Washington DC

 

Shutdown of Government - No Adventure In Washington DC?

 

The conflict between the republicans and democrats, started due to the fact that the two chambers in congress could not agree upon a legislation, to raise the debt ceiling in the United States. This was mainly because the republicans wanted to cut fundings for Obamacare, while Obama did not want to do this. So on october 1. the shutdown started and it did not end until deadline day for a decision on october 16.. This meant that every single day we were in Washington, there was government shutdown (except congress). The shutdown meant that every government runned building was closed, this for some reason also included the public parks. It actually didn't make any sense, since we were told that it cost more to have the parks closed then to have them open which is just silly. Due to the this shutdown most of the trips our teachers had planned were not possible. This really sucked because a lot of us, were actually really looking forward to seeing some of the museum we had planned to visit. The Adventurous Danes were not pleased with the situation, yet there is no doubt that we will find an adventure in Washington DC!

 

Georgetown

 

While we were in Washington DC there weren’t much to do, due to the shutdown, therefore The Adventurous Danes were so happy to be able to go to such an exciting place as Georgetown. The historic district Georgetown is an upscale neighborhood, which has been home to plenty of top politicians over the years, including Thomas Jefferson and John F. Kennedy just before he moved in to the white house, even the current secretary of state John Kerry lives here. The district is beautiful, it is right next to the river and the area is filled with well kept historic places, such as the City Tavern club, which a lot of the founding fathers would visit frequently once upon a time.

 

Georgetown is filled with beautiful buildings all around. On the mainstreet is the style of the buildings victorian, some even dating back to the civil-war. Now a days the buildings on this street mostly serve the purpose of shopping but they have chosen to keep the buildings in the original style and just integrate the stores in the fassade. You can clearly see the contrast between the old victorian houses combined with the new modern shops. We only had to walk a few blocks away from the main street, to find the riverbank. The architecture here was completely different. The buildings were quite modern, innovative and most likely expensive to live in. It was residential apartment buildings, many of which had balconies with a view of river. Obviously this was an awfully rich neighborhood, which also meant that just like in the Meatpacking District there weren’t a whole lot of other races represented than the caucasian. We interviewed a man named Mahatma, who said, “you see it (racism red.) here because it’s a well off neighborhood, so you see less number of blacks coming here. They may come for fun but they don’t live here. (...) but if you go to a part of Washington, which is mostly inhabited by blacks, you see less whites, so it’s a reverse of what you see here. So there is a function of segregation but it’s not a legal segregation(...)” (qt. Mahatma). One of the points he was trying to make, was that Georgetown is really rich, so therefore you won’t see as many blacks, due to the low number overall number of rich black people compared to rich white people. Which was the same point, Sarah was trying to make about the Meatpacking district.The same thing happened in the Meatpacking district as here though, no one seemed to have any sort of prejudices about other races, and this must just as in NY be due to the educational level of the citizens and general tolerance in the area.

 

Mahatma Interview Part 1

 

Mahatma Interview Part 2

 

In the second part of the interview Mahatma says that the solution to prevent racism would be to increase the general level of education for the people in America. Because through education you learn to tolerate other cultures and people's way of living.

 

Another indicator that this area is upper-class, is some of the statistics available online. Georgetown is quite safe compared to other neighborhoods in DC. Georgetown has 59% fewer violent crimes, than the average across the city. The district has 60% less property crimes, (burglaries and so on) than the average in the city. Although this all sounds well, it doesn’t really put it into perspective with districts, which Georgetown usually would compare themselves with. The same website which the other statistics were found on also suggest, that Georgetown is only safer than 20.6% of the districts in DC. This statistic is a bit frightening, but there might be a logical explanation. Georgetown is a shopping district which makes it highly targetable for small crimes, like shoplifting, while keeping an area less influenced from more severe crime, such as violence and murder. So a resident in the area will not feel scared in any way. Another indicator of the wealth in the district is the real estate prices. The average home price in Georgetown is 1.06 million dollars, which is only surpassed by a very low number of areas in DC, and it’s more than twice the average price of a home in this city. With these indicators and the knowledge we have gotten from our interviews and analysis, we can conclude that this is definitely another upper-class neighborhood.

 

A meeting with Johannes V. Lankilde

 

Most danes probably know Johannes Langkilde from his time at TV2, as anchorman. However, he shifted to DR to work as their American correspondent. Through our teacher’s connections, a meeting with him was planned in front of the Congress, where he would do a presentation for our class. Johannes talked about the shift from anchorman to correspondent, and the differences between America and Denmark, in media, culture and politics. He also talked about current American political affairs, mainly the government shutdown, which of course, were especially relevant at the time. At the end of the presentation, Johannes was open for questions, which led to a small discussion about Obama and the Syrian crisis, a determining topic for both Obama and the American foreign politics. Overall, the Adventurous Danes thought it was a great experience meeting Johannes, and very educational as well. We will follow him on DR!

 

 

The House Of Representatives

 

On the October 12th we were scheduled to visit the house of Representatives. we began our visit with the classic routine security check. We were guided through a labyrinth of hallways and finally we ended up in the House Of Representatives. We were escorted to our seats inside the debate hall and from distance we saw how the politicians worked. It was very remarkable compared to the danish version of the House Of Representatives which in this case is “Folketinget”. The politicians in the House Of Representatives weren’t debating the issue (which in this case is the government shutdown) at all - they were throwing bricks at each other. It worked like this; There was a “Speaker” who gave the permission to speak weather it was a democrat or a republican who wanted to speak. Afterwards when the Speaker gave this permission and the politician who wanted to speak almost held some sort of lecture. After the current politician ended his lecture he/she left the room. They didn’t hear what the other politicians might had to say about the shutdown. Many of us concluded that if our political system in Denmark was childish - this was kindergarden, maybe lower. Because every time a republican got up and spoke they started their lecture with the following words; “The democratic shutdown…” and every time a democrat got up and spoke they started their lecture with the following words; “The republican shutdown…” So as said before they weren’t debating anything. They didn’t debate how to solve this issue or how to work together for a better America. There was actually one thing they debated - which side caused the shutdown.

Washington DC Gallery

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