I watched The Patriot and Forrest Gump, Friends, Breaking Bad and The Simpsons, drank Coke, ate burgers, oohed and aahed at holiday pictures of New York and knew who Obama and Kerry are. Nevertheless - I had no idea about America! Now I do know a little more.

By taking part in the "Young Journalists' Program 2014" in Washington DC, I had not only the chance to visit sights and media companies, but also to get an idea about what Germany means for Americans. One of the responsible persons during the program quoted the former US-foreign minister Henry Kissinger, when he said: "Germany is too big for Europe and too small for the world." This outlines what Americans think about Germany: a strong leader, off course not as strong as the USA itself, but important enough to be one of the closest partners.

Partners are even not the same as lovers or friends - they have something in common, but also a lot of differences. But: "Opposites attract!" And so I experienced some, let me call it "American specials" I really loved.

First, there is this overwhelming friendliness of nearly everyone. Yeah, maybe it's not meant that seriously as it seems to be, but it contains a positive basic attitude I really liked.

Second: In the USA every meal or beverage seems to be really big and hot. When I ordered a so called "small coffee," I always got a huge cup and had to wait several minutes before I was able to drink it without getting burned. I think that is why the Americans use straws to drink their coffee. There can't be any other reason. It seems like the only possible way to get through this 100-degree, boiled, brown water just sip by sip. I don't know.

Third: Americans know more about Germany than Germans think they do. They are not only familiar with our "Bavarian Sauerkraut culture," a lot of them also know Hamburg, Berlin, the Spiegel or Merkel. That's because of history and because of their family roots. A lot of US citizens have a German heritage. So maybe that is one reason why they are interested in our culture. Another one is surely that some of the people I met really like how Germany reacts as a modern, democratic state - statutory health insurance, same-sex relationships and yup, drinking alcohol with 18 years.

When we went to Voice of America and Washington Post I realized some differences in how they do objective journalism in the USA. A foreign correspondent showed videos made in Ukraine and Egypt, which really had more imagery as common German TV news. I was impressed by the way he cut his video in a very choppy, sharp way and introduced his story by taking music from the streets background. Maybe that's too much emotion for a news report, maybe this affects an objective style, but maybe that's another way to create news people really remember.

Some former editors of Washington Post founded vox.com - a young online news service, which has a modern attitude and a great way to deal with the opportunities of social media. In Germany it's more and more used as a general news overview for the States. Things like this are what modern journalists really try to realize in Germany as well, instead of only constructing a pay wall in front of their online content. At the moment there are only some trials like the extra information service of Bild Plus or Krautreporter, an avant-garde project of online journalists, who want to make well researched, investigative web reports. So I think this is one big thing where we have to grab the straw as well and go through the challenges of new (online) journalism step by step.

Finally the "Young Journalists' Program" gave me the opportunity to recognize that Germany and the USA are thousands of miles away from each other, but still share the same ideas of a modern world and especially of future-oriented journalism.