French eat at least two baguettes, a dozen of snails and drink a liter of red wine every day.

It is clear that we only feel comfortable in “Dirndl” and leader pants and have no sense of humor. We are dutiful, obedient, industrious, frugal, and have no idea of „savoir vivre“ as our French neighbors. Excessingly fussy and tidy we are also supposed to be. (Anyone who claims this, should enter the room of a normal german teenager once). In German homes we find either furniture in „German Oak“ or those from the famous Swedish furniture store! They indeed mainly produce Billy shelves, matches and sewing machines and a few cell phones in Sweden, as we know. They eat “Köttbullar” with cranberries, clear, and nothing else, except maybe crisp bread. Finns also produce mobile phones and are constantly sweating in the sauna, because it always so cold in Finland and only a few hours a day there is bright daylight. Therefore, almost all Finns are depressed or alcoholics. Quite in contrast to the southern EU Member States. The citizens of these countries are indeed very short, retire at an early age and hold siesta in the afternoon after they “goppled down” mountains of spaghetti and paella. The red wine they drink at midday prevents them from working in the afternoon.

British work more. They couldn’t do anything else as it is constantly raining there. They are said to have more sense of humor than Germans, but a strange one which none except them really understands. Only fish and chips are edible in that country. The Greeks can’t save money, in the Netherlands you get drugs in cafes and the eastern Member States are poor, but modest.

Yeah, whoops – so we get no further! How have such clichés about a country and its population come into existence? The reason is that you have no idea, because you are parroting what others say who also have no idea! So what to do? You must go there and must make your experiences yourself! Our EU offers so many opportunities to get to know our neighbors and even the more distant countries. Not only taking holidays, even working in other countries is a possiblilty. When I was in France last summer, I was even allowed to try snails, but only when I asked. By the way, I only asked once. My host family was very kind, friendly, outgoing, tidy, dutiful. (Don’t you say the latter about us Germans?) Great confusion? What to do when you, as a teenager, not have a chance to go abroad? Why do we have all the social networks like Facebook or Twitter? Not only to chat with friends and people, who we anyway see every day. You can use these online communities very well to socialize with people from other countries! We are the younger generation and have more options than our parents had to find out if the others are really so different. A concept of an enemy can’t be hammered into us as it was hammered into our forefathers before the world wars. There is no „hereditary enemy“ anymore, only friends and neighbors. We are hopeful that the same is the case with our neighbors: We finally want to get rid of our image of Nazi Germany. Even our grandparents were born after the war. And in history classes we learn enough to understand what terrible things happened in German history and that they must never happen again. If our neighbors are in Germany on vacation, they will find that the Germans have changed, that they have also become Europeans. I see our future Europe as a federal state which is proud of its many beautiful regions, traditions and singularities, as well as the unity, which lives the communion and enjoys friendship, peace and freedom.