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Yesterday, I went to the German city of Aachen to have an interview with Mathworks. The job sounded extremely and completely awesome and I think I would have really loved it and been good at it, except that I don't have the technical background I should have in order to do the job. Which sucks, because I would love to.

So after the interview, I walked around town a little bit, pointing my camera at things. There was a news crew doing one of those reports they do sometimes. There was a camera man, a microphone man, and a reporter. The reporter was carrying around a map and asking people questions. I was very entertained by watching the Germans react to his approach; all scared and helpless-looking. Anyway, they asked a guy who was sitting near me the questions: "Why is Europe called 'Europe'?" I was very curious and tried to hear the guy's answer, but he was pointing his voice away from me and talking in jumbly-german I was having trouble understanding. It must have been good, though, because the reporter replied with a huge grin and the question "But what does that have to do with Europe?" I caught the answer to that... "Nothing." Then the reporter told him, but I didn't hear/understand (that's still a thin line for me in German). Then he asked the gentleman "Why is America called 'America'?" Instead of rambling this time, the gentleman just said he didn't know. America is called America, according to this reporter, because of Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian cartographer and writer who was one of the first to boldly claim that the land we now know as America was, in fact, NOT Asia. Well, he didn't tell us all that, just that it was because of Amerigo Vespucci.

Being the curious cat that I am, I went up to the crew after they finished talking to him and said "I didn't hear what you said. Why is Europe called 'Europe'?" He told me that it was because there was a princess who gave a bunch of land to someone and then it was called Europe. But I didn't think that made much sense because at no point in history as I have ever learned it, was Europe under control of one empire (except mostly under the Holy Roman Empire) and even then, no one gave "Europe" to anyone as a gift. That just sounds ridiculous. So far, the web has provided one solution that it comes from eurus (greek for broad) and ops (greek for face) and thus combines into something like "The great face of the world". Also, Europa was a Princess in Greek mythology. Zeus, being the rampant breeder that he is, turned himself into a bull and got her to ride on his back. (First in a non-sexual way, but then the lights went out and who knows what happened.) Zeus swam to the Isle of Crete and made sweet, sweet lovin to Europe and she bore him three sons. Wikipedia can tell you more. But what does the web really know about it anyway. The point is, after that, the reporter asked me "Do you know why America is called America?" and the camera man pointed the camera at me... I told him I heard him explain it to someone else and he asked further, "Did you know it before then?" I had to admit I didn't. Then, I got really embarrassed because he asked me "And what country are you from?" Very ashamed, I said "I'm from the USA. I could tell you the origins of many of our state's names, but not America." Besides the fact that I was breaking the European stereotype that Americans can only speak english, I felt really embarrassed. Then I realized that most of the Germans didn't know why Europe was called Europe, so I didn't feel quite as bad...

So if you are watching ARD 1, especially in the area of Aachen/Köln(Cologne) and you see an American who doesn't know the origin of the name "America", then there is a good chance its me.