Hazards of My Job
////-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Jared from Red Berlin
From: Scott Siepker
Date: Mon, May 05, 2008 7:11 am
To:
Hello,
I love the New Europe tours! I have been on many of them in the past month as I was traveling Europe. Great Idea!
The reason I am writing is to file a compliant against the Red Berlin tour that I was given by our guide Jared back on April 26th.
My problem with Jared is not his attitude or his constant rolling and smoking of his cigarettes, it is his Anti-American Sentiment.
It is clear that he hates America. Nearly every time he would mention something bad that the Soviets did he would put the qualifier in that America has done the same things in other places. (I am the first to admit that America is not perfect by a long shot, but this is the Red Berlin tour not the audacities of America tour)
Just his sarcastic opening line to the tour is a good example: Hi, my name is Jared, I am from America so I know everything.
Now I know that that is a joke and I laughed when he said that, but that is because I hadn’t heard the rest of his tour and by the end from his Bush bashing, to his Clinton jabs, to his not even mentioning what countries were responsible for the Berlin Airlift, to his "there is no other way to put this, East Germany got screwed when the wall came down" due to the economic systems that where very different (though he didn’t mention that now they could go and come and they please with out being shot at!!!!), and the topped was his closing line: "I may have given away my political standing, but I do accept tips."
Now I could go on and on and I am not sure you have a problem with this at all, but I just wanted you to know what is going on with Jared.
Again I just want to say I love this company and thank you very much for providing the free tours and other tours like Red Berlin and Dachau, they are great. Thanks again.
Scott////
lets just say Scott was a 19y.o. boy on my tour in Berlin, it was his very first trip abroad, and perhaps he wasn't used to the non-american-social-studies version of history. In any case my boss sent this to me for a laugh, and I thought my friends might enjoy it.
A few things should be explained to those unfamiliar with my tour and/or history.
-Scott refers to the soviets, however he means the east germans (not really the exact same thing). On my tour we visit a Stasi detention center and the question often arises, 'Jared why didn't any of the stasi perpetrating these tortures that you talked about ever get prosecute,' to which I respond, 'the only way in which the stasi were exceptional was in the AMOUNT of domestic spying they involved themselves in, they had approx. one agent for every 65 people in east german society. sad fact of the matter is, the reason none of them have ever been prosecuted is that the torture methods I have talked about here are pretty much par-behavior. the U.K. only disavowed torture as recently as 1975 and we still practice it in the united states today. this of course does not make it ok, and in fact I think we should all be outraged that in the modern world torture occurs, it is however a fact of history.' And that is the only time I pick on the states in my tour.
-Scott says I mention bush, in fact, I don't. Bush would have absolutely no place on the tour, further I work with tips and were I to mention Bush on my tour, in a negative way, I would probably get better tips, given his approval ratings both at home and abroad. This statement of scotts is an absolute lie. I do mention Clinton, but only because he visited immediate post-communism berlin.
-My opening line is actuall 'hi, my name is Jared, some of you are probably wondering why a non-german is giving you a tour of berlin, that's quite simple you see, I am an american and as an american I believe I know absolutely everything there is to know about this world (wait for laughs to end), in all honesty folks I don't believe that and I hope non of you do either, regardless...(go on to talk about my university experience in anthropology).'
-As for defending the sentiments of all former-East Germans I have ever encountered I must plead guilty. At the end of my tour I talk about the socio-economic problems heaped on the communist east, especially in regards to berlin, especially concerning switching from a planned to capitalist economy in less than 5 years and undermining all the values ingrained in them for the past 40 years. I don't talk so much about people being able to travel around, because I actually talk explicitly about that at the begining of the tour when we see the berlin wall and the death strip as well as the trennen palais and main train station from west berlin. This boy had not paid much attention.
In any case, my boss says we aren't responding to him. And he agreed with my equation of this young boy with that of Muslims and holocaust denyers that decry the HUGE holocaust memorial in berlin as being a symptom of Jewish-victimization ideaology. In short this kid's a nut-job. Funny nonetheless
Subject: Jared from Red Berlin
From: Scott Siepker
Date: Mon, May 05, 2008 7:11 am
To:
Hello,
I love the New Europe tours! I have been on many of them in the past month as I was traveling Europe. Great Idea!
The reason I am writing is to file a compliant against the Red Berlin tour that I was given by our guide Jared back on April 26th.
My problem with Jared is not his attitude or his constant rolling and smoking of his cigarettes, it is his Anti-American Sentiment.
It is clear that he hates America. Nearly every time he would mention something bad that the Soviets did he would put the qualifier in that America has done the same things in other places. (I am the first to admit that America is not perfect by a long shot, but this is the Red Berlin tour not the audacities of America tour)
Just his sarcastic opening line to the tour is a good example: Hi, my name is Jared, I am from America so I know everything.
Now I know that that is a joke and I laughed when he said that, but that is because I hadn’t heard the rest of his tour and by the end from his Bush bashing, to his Clinton jabs, to his not even mentioning what countries were responsible for the Berlin Airlift, to his "there is no other way to put this, East Germany got screwed when the wall came down" due to the economic systems that where very different (though he didn’t mention that now they could go and come and they please with out being shot at!!!!), and the topped was his closing line: "I may have given away my political standing, but I do accept tips."
Now I could go on and on and I am not sure you have a problem with this at all, but I just wanted you to know what is going on with Jared.
Again I just want to say I love this company and thank you very much for providing the free tours and other tours like Red Berlin and Dachau, they are great. Thanks again.
Scott////
lets just say Scott was a 19y.o. boy on my tour in Berlin, it was his very first trip abroad, and perhaps he wasn't used to the non-american-social-studies version of history. In any case my boss sent this to me for a laugh, and I thought my friends might enjoy it.
A few things should be explained to those unfamiliar with my tour and/or history.
-Scott refers to the soviets, however he means the east germans (not really the exact same thing). On my tour we visit a Stasi detention center and the question often arises, 'Jared why didn't any of the stasi perpetrating these tortures that you talked about ever get prosecute,' to which I respond, 'the only way in which the stasi were exceptional was in the AMOUNT of domestic spying they involved themselves in, they had approx. one agent for every 65 people in east german society. sad fact of the matter is, the reason none of them have ever been prosecuted is that the torture methods I have talked about here are pretty much par-behavior. the U.K. only disavowed torture as recently as 1975 and we still practice it in the united states today. this of course does not make it ok, and in fact I think we should all be outraged that in the modern world torture occurs, it is however a fact of history.' And that is the only time I pick on the states in my tour.
-Scott says I mention bush, in fact, I don't. Bush would have absolutely no place on the tour, further I work with tips and were I to mention Bush on my tour, in a negative way, I would probably get better tips, given his approval ratings both at home and abroad. This statement of scotts is an absolute lie. I do mention Clinton, but only because he visited immediate post-communism berlin.
-My opening line is actuall 'hi, my name is Jared, some of you are probably wondering why a non-german is giving you a tour of berlin, that's quite simple you see, I am an american and as an american I believe I know absolutely everything there is to know about this world (wait for laughs to end), in all honesty folks I don't believe that and I hope non of you do either, regardless...(go on to talk about my university experience in anthropology).'
-As for defending the sentiments of all former-East Germans I have ever encountered I must plead guilty. At the end of my tour I talk about the socio-economic problems heaped on the communist east, especially in regards to berlin, especially concerning switching from a planned to capitalist economy in less than 5 years and undermining all the values ingrained in them for the past 40 years. I don't talk so much about people being able to travel around, because I actually talk explicitly about that at the begining of the tour when we see the berlin wall and the death strip as well as the trennen palais and main train station from west berlin. This boy had not paid much attention.
In any case, my boss says we aren't responding to him. And he agreed with my equation of this young boy with that of Muslims and holocaust denyers that decry the HUGE holocaust memorial in berlin as being a symptom of Jewish-victimization ideaology. In short this kid's a nut-job. Funny nonetheless