Obamamania in Dresden (Nu Glaar, We Can)

Tomorrow, Barack Obama is coming to Dresden. And the city is FREAKING OUT. It's quite impressive. The newspaper has been running articles on it for 2 weeks. The Dresden police have been rehearsing for the visit the same if not longer. The city has even set up a website specifically for the visit: www.obama.dresden.de

Obama will be here I believe less than 24 hours total. He will make no scheduled public appearances. He will give no speeches. But that doesn't matter. The hype is out of control. Not being one to ignore hype, I got involved with Nate and Cliff and we conceived and designed the following graphic:

For those not familiar with Dresden, the building there is the most famous Dresden landmark, the Frauenkirche. Below, "Nu glaar, we can" is a shout out to the Saxony German dialect, where instead of "ja" you sometimes will here "nu" for "yes". "Glaar" is a phonetic spelling of the Saxon "klar". So it's meant to be a "yes we can" with a local appeal. Cliff and I have made it into stickers. I'll write it again here "nu glaar, we can", in case anybody sees a sticker and googles it - this is where to give credit/hate.

To give another example of the mania surrounding Obama's 18(?) hour visit to Dresden, every single tram in the city, as far as I can tell, has been outfitted with a banner declaring "Welcome, Mr. President!". This has been on the trams for the last week.

Air Force One is scheduled to land at the Dresden airport sometime tomorrow evening, along with ELEVEN other planes of support staff. And that doesn't include the giant C-5 that landed at the airport a few days ago and unloaded a helicopter and limo that will be Obama's transportation while he's here. Less than a day!!

Anyway, the city seems to be encouraging people to get out and about to perhaps catch a glimpse of the president - but with no guarantee that he will even appear in public. Also, a sizable fraction of the Altstadt around where Obama will be staying will be off limits to almost everybody as a security precaution. You're not even allowed to swim or fish in the Elbe tomorrow - special orders. I think I'll go out to check out the commotion, maybe to the airport, maybe around the secure area. The city apparently is planning a celebration nearby featuring American activities such as "cheerleaders" and "mechanical bull-riding" (no joke, check out the webpage). If I see anything interesting, I'll post more.