Restoring Walls in a City Known for Tearing them Down

(Disclaimer: As per usual I am publishing this post a day late - please read the word "today" as "yesterday")



Walls. Sometimes it seems that walls get a bad rep, criticized for their opacity, rigidness and divisiveness.  Walls, however, are merely shape-givers.  And shape is a pretty important for defining how we understand the world, ie, whatever we are giving shape to.

Twenty one years ago today the Berlin Wall came down.  It was a high wall, made of cement, patrolled by armed guards ordered to shoot anyone and anything that tried to cross it without permission.  On the day the wall came down, thousands of people came together, a nation was reunited, and those same guards put their guns down and hugged the people from the other side, who only hours before had been enemies.  It was a great day for Germany, and a pretty great day for the world, continuing a movement towards unification of Germany (and truthfully Europe),  and democratization of the former communist East.

Seventy two years ago a lot of other walls came down in Germany.  Not only walls, but also windows, roofs, and doors of Jewish-owned stores, homes and synagogues.

Of course Kristallnacht and the fall of the Berlin Wall don´t really have anything in common besides a few abstract elements: the physically destructive manifestation of a burgeoning socio-political movement, a region, and a day of the year.

I suppose I could and maybe should go on to tell you some interesting facts about both events, why and how they are still relevant today, but I think there are plenty of articles and blogs out there that will do just that, so I think instead I will give you a bit of an update on my life in Germany, and what this day means in relation to it.

Last Thursday I attended my first ever Rabbinical Ordination.  It was located at the Pestalozzi synagogue, a building for which today is certainly significant.  This building was damaged in Kristallnacht, restored after WWII, and became the primary synagogue for the Jewish community that lived in West Berlin.  Today it remains one of eight active congregations in Berlin and is home to a liberal congregation.  On Thursday it was the site of the third class of Rabbinical ordinations in Germany by the Abraham Geiger Kolleg since WW2, and the first ordination of a female Rabbi in Germany since the first female Rabbi ever to be ordained in the world, Regina Jonas, who was later murdered at Auschwitz.

Thursday´s ordination was a pretty intense, but certainly joyous, event, and it was also the first of two times this week that I head the German president Christian Wulff speak.  Events like this are strange reminders than Jewish life in Germany is, in its own way, thriving, developing, and self sustaining, BUT, completely and at times overwhelmingly characterized by the extraordinariness of its own existence.  AKA, as wonderful as a rabbinical ordination always is, as momentous as this particular ordination is, it certainly makes you wonder, will normal Jewish life in Germany ever be considered "normal" enough that the community´s activities are not front page news, worthy of a presidential speech?  I don´t know.  I think a lot of people in Germany quite innocently, and well-intentionally ask themselves this question.  I guess at this point it feels pretty incredible that Germany as a country and German Jews as a community within that country, have come so far in their relationship to one another that both can sort of make the agreement to let Jewish German achievement be part of a political, social and cultural conversation, and to allow these types of events to take place on a public stage.

Hmm, there is no question that World War II and the Holocaust play a huge part in my work here, not to mention my sense of self awareness as a Jew and also as an American in Germany, but I am not sure quite yet how I want to approach these issues for my project or here, with you, in this type of a forum.  I am not sure I know exactly how to form an opinion about a subject that I am confronted with almost everyday, but that I don´t honestly feel I have a right to take a stance on (personally or academically).

And so, when surrounded by the shapeless cloud of the past that sometimes seems to hover over modern Germany, I guess I am learning to study how putting walls back up, might actually be a really useful sort of public therapy and community awareness program.

In the last few weeks I have documented over 70 buildings around Germany that have been restored in some way in the last forty years to reflect their original architecture as synagogues.  As my project is developing I am considering focusing mostly on restoration projects in the new German states, those that joined the country after the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Expensive, labor intensive restoration projects in former East Germany have been taking place for the last few years quite frequently, despite a weaker economy than the West, shrinking populations, and severe brain drain.  So, while it might seem logical to classify these projects (and any Jewish or Holocaust memorial projects in Germany) as some sort of post Cold War guilt grappling experience for East Germans, I think it might be possible that rebuilding Jewish historic buildings in former East Germany is a broader way for East Germans to give tangible shape and create space and protection for their own local histories and sense of regional identities and that the fortification of synagogue walls was made necessary by the fall of the Berlin Wall, in other words, a reaction to the identity challenges and social crises brought on by reunification ... So that is sort of where I am right now.  Stay tuned for when I decide I am totally wrong in about 3 days.

Speaking of the fall of the Berlin Wall, I also attended a fascinating conference called Falling Walls on Sunday and Monday.  The conference brought together leading academics from diverse disciplines to discuss the next walls to fall in various fields of interest, from science, to math, to anthropology to art.  The conference began in the art studio of Olafur Eliasson, an Icelandic-Danish artist working in Berlin, who creates art that experiments with space, technology, the environment, etc.  His work is pretty cool, and you may have heard about some of his projects, including one in which he turned a river in Tokyo green.  On Monday the conference was held in a really interesting old building on the banks of the Spree River, which helped form what was still considered the most dangerous border in the world 21 years previously on that day, the day before the wall came down.  Some of the most interesting speakers discussed breaking down the walls of blindness, how we understand nature v. nurture, how we think about curing HIV/AIDS, how we envision successful world economies (ie the China model), etc.  For the second time I heard from President Christian Wulff, and the Prime Minister of Belgium, currently the President of the EU rotating Presidency, Yves Leterme.

Everyone starts somewhere

So I started in October.  I´d like to think I moved to Berlin permanently on the perfect day, Unity Day, October 3, 2010.  I took a walk from my new neighborhood along where the wall once stood, and in some parts still does, covered in modern graffiti that some people call art, and some modern art that people call graffiti, that ended at the Brandenburg Gate and its surroundings.  There was a festival, which involved a lot of beer, giant pretzels and doughnuts, and every type of sausage under the sun.  And, when the evening was setting in, politicians gave speeches, men jumped from airplanes wearing German flags, a light show was displayed on the parliament building, someone important said, "After all these years I can finally say I am proud of my country", and former Chancellor Helmut Kohl cried.  It was twenty years since the country of Germany was reunited.  It seems to me that a lot of Germans I meet are sort of over it all, or know the deeper issues that I am still learning, about invisible walls than no one can tear down, or maybe things that were easier when there was a wall, but for me, as an American, and a sort of sappy one at that, I was pretty moved.


On an interesting note, Unity Day 2010 had another, less openly discussed significance.  It was the day that Germany officially finished paying back the debts from World War I, dating back to the Treaty of Versailles.  Obviously, not a coincidence that this day was selected, but a hefty thing to consider in any case.


As I have been learning in this part of the world history is something that even non historians meet on a daily basis.  I was reminded of this just days later when my new coworker was late to work because a WW2 bomb was discovered near the train station in his city.  It turns out there are tons of bombs from WW2 all over the city.  They were dropped by the allies, never detonated, and now are occasionally happened upon, and though they rarely do any harm, have to, of course, be disposed of as safely as possible.


Well, I suppose that is a round about way of saying, I have started work at the Centrum Judaicum.  There will of course be many posts explaining my new job, my research, my coworkers, etc, but for now I will just give you a taste.  Most importantly, I love where I work (the Centrum Judaicum just might be the most beautiful building in Berlin), my coworkers and bosses are great, and although it is taking some time, I think I am actually figuring out how to do my project.  There are a lot of challenges.  I am truly conducting my days in German, as I am the only non German employee, and sometimes I honestly have no idea what people are talking about.  Mostly the result is just hilarity...
Example:  Boss says to Rachel: "Would you like some _________ (indecipherable word)?"  Rachel confusedly asks boss to repeat.  Word remains indecipherable.  Rachel tried to save herself by claiming she does not know what indecipherable word means.  Boss looks at Rachel like she is from distant planet and waves her into the next room where there is a plate of cake.  Boss proceeds to explain to Rachel, V E R Y 
 S L O W L Y what CAKE is. 


And, since my German is clearly already perfect...I decided to start learning Russian.  So, twice a week I attend an intro to Russian class at the Technical University.  Despite the fact that the language of instruction for the class is, of course, German, I think it is going pretty well.  More on that later of course.

And, of course there is the task of figuring out how to be a normal person here.  A list of things normal people have:
1. Bedding - check
2. Food and cooking supplies - check
3. Solid understanding of how to use the washing machine and other household appliances - check
4. capability of getting around city without constant use of a giant fold out map (which has now ripped precisely along a street that I travel often) - work in progress (note: people who use smart phones are cheaters)
5. seasonally appropriate clothing - took some doing, but I now own a winter coat... (and socks)
6. friendships- also a work in progress, but going surprisingly well, thanks to the high concentration of BUKAs in Berlin, and a willingness to talk to strangers in whatever language it takes.  I now have two tandem partners (stop giggling, it only sounds dirty but is actually totally cool).  Tandem is a program where people hang out with people who speak a language they are learning and exchange language skills.  I meet with Germans who want to learn English, and we split our time between speaking English for them and German for me, so that both of us improve our language skills in a non classroom setting.  I did the program in Vienna as well, and found it extremely rewarding.
Well, October started and ended with holidays.  Halloween, not exactly widely celebrated in Germany, but becoming more and more popular each year.  I celebrated Halloween with two friends and their young children at the Zoo in Berlin.  

Here is a little photo series I like to call "Baby BUKAs do not see fence as barrier to entry at petting zoo"

Picture 1: Petting the animals

Picture 2:  It is increasingly hard to reach these animals to pet them.

Picture 3:  Children dive head first into petting zoo.

Like most good things, it involves something like a tree house

   As you can surely tell, I have gotten a bit lazy with this whole blogging thing, though I vow to get better.  In fact, tonight I am hunkering down and I am going to pump out enough blog entries to keep you reading for days (that is an exaggeration, as you would have to be a very slow reader).  And, I am rewarding you with pictures at the end!!!

Alright, so I live in Berlin.  I mean I really live here now.  No hotel, sadly no more maid service, but on the bright side, I have an oven again.

  I would love to say that I searched out the perfect place to spend my year in Berlin, that I carefully researched, visited tons of places, and that my selection was the result of a mature consideration of my needs and wants. 

 But, that would be a lie.  Finding a place to live was a little harder than I thought, so when a decent seeming apartment became available, I jumped at the opportunity.  The fact that it involves something like a tree house, was really just a bonus. 

  To call it a tree house is not completely accurate, although it is made of wood.  It is a free standing loft inside a room with high ceilings.  There are no railings.  I sleep up there.  It is very high.  Every morning when I awake still in one piece, I feel like I have earned the right to walk among mankind for at least one more day.  Some of my friends are worried.  There are threats of installing railings when I am not looking.  For now I just sleep as close as possible to the wall.  I will keep you posted.

  I should probably mention that I have two roommates, which technically classifies my apartment as a Wohngemeinschaft, or a shared apartment.  Thanks to said roommates, I didn´t have to worry about setting up most things in my apartment, all I had to take care of was my room.  That being said, I maybe could have worked a little harder.  It took me more than a week to buy a pillow and blankets.  I am not proud of this.  I am just stating facts.  Now however, I can definitely say I feel pretty settled here, and have managed to avoid making a trip to IKEA (note: I have just accepted lack of furniture as a lifestyle choice).

   As for my neighborhood, I should probably admit it was completely by happy accident that I found a place to live that is actually relatively convenient to work.  It only takes me about 25 minutes for my entire commute, which is pretty great considering how massive Berlin is. 

Sadly, I still get to work about 15 minutes late every day.  It turns out that even if your commute only takes 25 minutes, you must still leave 25 minutes before work starts to arrive on time.   In case you are wondering, yes, everything you think you have heard about the importance of punctuality in Germany is totally true.  My coworkers keep saying, "Americaner sind so Locker!", which means, "Americans are so chilled out!", which I think is code for, "Please try to show up on time."

  But back to my neighborhood.  It is called Friedrichshain (pronounced Freed-ricks-hine).  The part I live in is called Boxhagener Platz, or Boxi, for short.  It is sort of a lively mess in the heart of former East Berlin.  Founded as a working class neighborhood in the 1920s, Friedrichshain was one of the worst damaged parts of the city during second world war bombing.  In fact, after the war, the city took lots of the rubble from destroyed buildings, trucked it over to the 1840s era Volkspark in Friedrichshain, and made two gigantic mountains out of it that are now just part of the park (creative!).  The soviets left their mark too, building the grand Stalinallee Boulevard (later renamed Karl-Marx-Allee).  After the fall of the wall, part of which was located just a few blocks from my apartment, the neighborhood became a low rent, young, student and (graffiti) artist haven on the (slow) road to gentrification.  I live right in the heart of it all on Boxi, where a weekly farmers market and flea market take place.  I also live right next door to arguably the best falafel in the city (but please, let´s not argue).

And, as promised, some things I think are pretty around my ´hood.

(it looks like a smiley face)

Stowed Away

    Still playing catch up mode.  So I left Berlin on September 23 in the mid afternoon to fly to Paris to meet my parents.  Or, at least, I tried to.  The day did not exactly go as planned, even though I held up my end of the bargain.
I checked out of my hotel.
I took the Ubahn to the airport.
I checked in.

But, unfortunately France was slightly too preoccupied maintaining its Republican Values and exercising the right to civic spirit to go to work that day.  In other words, France, was on strike.  Why, you might ask??  Had someone been denying the people bread again?  Was absolute monarchy knocking on their front door?

No and No.  This time the evil crime was increasing the retirement age from 60 to 62 and pushing back the age from 65 to 67 for those who want to ensure full retirement benefits.  If hearing this doesn´t make you want to shout "Sacre bleu!", trust me you are not alone.  In case France hasn´t heard, the life expectancy in their dear country is among the longest in the world - averaging 80.7 (77.1 for men and 84.1 for women), which makes them just about tied with Israel, Macau and Canada at number 8.  The US comes in at an astonishing 38, with a life expectancy of 78.2 ( 75.6 for men and 80.8 for women).  (Germany, FYI, comes in at number 20 with 79.4 years and is tied with Belgium, Great Britain, Malta and the US Virgin Islands)  All in all, in my personal opinion, the French could stand to work a little longer - most of the developed world probably could...

 But, on this particular day I was much more bothered by the strike caused by this issue, than the issue itself.  In the US, we just don´t seem to use strikes so often, we prefer tea parties...  When I checked my flight before leaving for the airport, it was the only flight still headed to Paris - too good to be true I should have known.  It was canceled half an hour before takeoff.

As the mob headed towards the ticket counter to trade their flight in, I considered my situation.  Already checked out of my hotel, no place to stay in Berlin, family and hotel waiting for me in Paris.  I had to get to Paris.  Flights were out of the question.  I headed to the train station...

At the train station I initially met with zero help.  I was told that no trains to Paris (or France for that matter) would be leaving.  I asked about trains going NEAR France.   I was told that just getting near France would be a futile action.  So.  I asked someone else.

Another lady at the station told me I could take the train to Mannheim, Germany, then wait out the strike, and take the first train to Paris.  So, with her help, I bought a ticket that left for Mannheim at 10:30pm and arrived at 4:50 in the morning.  I didn´t have a reservation for a seat, but she assured me that was no problem.  I boarded the train, and decided to stay standing until a seat became available.  In the meantime I chatted with a man hoping to exchange his seat for one in a quieter location.  Then the conductor came to collect tickets.  I showed him my ticket, but of course I had no reservation.  That was when he told that I would have to get off the train.

WHAT?!?!  I had a ticket.  I had purchased said ticket.  It was 11 at night.  We were literally in the middle of nowhere.  My new friend argued on my behalf.  Who ever heard of throwing a young girl with a ticket off of a train in the middle of the night?!  Apparently... this guy.  The eyes of those around me seemed to say, we would help if we had any clue how...  Then around came an elderly gentleman who was working for the government surveying about satisfaction with the train.  WE ARE NOT SATISFIED, exclaimed my new friend, explaining my situation.  The government worker expressed his disapproval, but explained that unfortunately he had no say in the matter (apparently train conductor > German government)  I totally wanted to tell the conductor that actually HIS government was paying me to live in Germany to be an ambassador so that they would have a better relationship with my country, and he was honestly blowing it.  I also wanted to tell him some other things that I would rather not repeat on a blog that my grandma reads.  But, you get the picture.
It was a bad situation.

Luckily as I pondered my fate, the conductor had moved on the check tickets in the neighboring car.  The train slowed to a halt.  I ran to an empty seat, changed my hair threw a different jacket over my head, and just before the hood covered my eyes, the guy across aisle winked in understanding.  For 6 hours I switched seats, took looonnnng bathroom trips, pretended to sleep, and evaded the conductor.  Finally, I got out at Mannheim.  It was five in the morning.  Trains to Paris wouldn´t start until nearly 7.  I sat down in the station.  All the sudden I had this crazy deja vu.  It hit me.  I had been to Mannheim once before, at 4 in the morning.  Four years earlier, on my first solo voyage, I had made my way through Mannheim on my way to the Black Forest in the attempt to fulfill my dream of gallivanting through the Black Forest as if in a fairy tale (dream fulfilled, btw).  I sat for a moment and pondered the meaning of life.

When that was through I headed upstairs, where I was befriended by two Norwegians.  Apparently there are a lot of Norwegians in Mannheim.  They asked where I was headed, and I said Paris, so they said, us too!  It was feeling a little bit Wizard of Oz-y, until I realized they were just bored of being in Mannheim (so was I ).

When the ticket office opened at 6, I was first in line to buy my ticket to Paris.  That is, until the lady behind the counter told me all the trains to Paris for the day were sold out.  Something about a general strike in Paris... yeah, yeah, I´d heard of it.  Still, it seemed shocking that all of the trains were booked solid, I mean, even first class?!?!  OH, she said.  Well you didn´t ASK about first class (come on people, can we think outside the box a little?).  So I proceeded to buy the most expensive train ticket of my life (the Norwegians were obviously no longer interested in Paris), and learned that first class really IS better.  They feed you breakfast, and the seats are more comfortable.

And that was how I made it to Paris.  Only 12 hours later than planned.

Headed to Berlin

    I have to say, I am pretty embarrassed that it took me a month to get around to writing another blog entry, especially since the last month has been incredibly eventful.  For one thing, I moved.  For another thing, I moved again.  I have actually been in basically constant movement for the last month, so now is probably the perfect time to get serious about this blog thing.  So where to begin...

   Last time you heard from me (ok minus that whole hacked email, scam from London, mass email stuff) it was my last night in Bonn.  Well the next morning, we boarded a bus, all 30 of us, plus our organizer, Friederich, a few Siberian spouses and babies, some bicycles, a million suitcases, some potted plants, etc.  And by et cetera, I actually mean that I brought along enough apples and honey to feed a small army.

  It was erev Rosh Hashanah, and so like any good descendant of a nomadic people I was on a caravan headed across ancient Ashkenaz (Germany) in the direction of Berlin.  The trip took eight hours, mostly because there is a law in Germany saying that bus drivers are entitled to a break every two hours.  In other words, we experienced every rest stop between Bonn and Berlin.  Among other things that would have been interesting to study, I got a good look at how different nationalities behave on long bus rides.  The Russians were clustered together in the front of the bus.  The Americans all wanted their own seats.  And the Chinese sat in the back of the bus and had apparently packed the equivalent of a five course meal, which they shared around for the next 6 or 7 hours!

  As evening approached, and we neared our destination, so too began a tradition that dates back generations.  This is the ancient tradition whereby the lone Jew heads to the front of the bus, sits in the tour guide´s seat, puts on a microphone and proceeds to tell her American, Russian, and Chinese friends about the Jewish New Year, in English and German, teaches everyone to say L´shana Tova (happy new year), and then stumbles from seat to seat handing out apple slices and squeezing a blob of honey on them.  The Chinese were pretty excited to hear that I ALSO have a lunar calendar :) 

It was actually really great, and I can´t imagine a better way or better people with whom to have welcomed the year 5771.

 Once in Berlin we had two weeks of an intensive study tour around the region.  I guess it is fair to say that we saw some of the best and worst of Germany, and that hopefully through that, we became more sensitive to each other and to our guest country, but also critical.  While it was frustrating sometimes that our programs and tours took place without any follow up or group discussion aside from that which we organized ourselves, I think we got an opportunity to be incredibly critical - of Germany, of our own countries, of one another. 

A brief overview of where we went and what we did:
The Neukölln Opera - Not actually an Opera at all, this is more like a new age musical theater that deals with real issues experienced in Germany.  I loved it.  We saw a performance about women who feel unsatisfied with their lives in big cities and head to smaller towns to try to do something with the vacant space and major population decrease that has occurred in East Germany since the fall of the wall.

The Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp - Maybe not the way I would have ideally spent the second day of Rosh Hashanah, but visiting this camp, used mostly for political prisoners of the Nazis, was really powerful.  The camp was used as a Soviet prison after the war.  As has often been cause for discussion among us BUKAs, how do Germans, and the rest of the world for that matter, talk about the crimes of Stalin and of Socialism with regard to a country still emotionally sorting its way through Hitler and Fascism.  This subject of course came up again when we visited the former Stasi Prison, and were shown around by a former inmate, imprisoned for writing a contentious book during the DDR era.  Negotiating how Americans in comparison to Russians think about and talk about the Second World War has been really eye opening. 

A visit to the Reichstag, Berlin´s Parliament building, gave us the opportunity to talk to leaders of the country´s main political parties (except for the Green Party - they bailed on us).  The term "integration" was consistently used to talk about the success or lack thereof of immigrant populations in Germany.  What an uncomfortable word.  Here, and at our visits to Berlin´s largest (and incredibly beautiful) mosque, and the office of Integration and Migration, the experiences of Germany´s immigrant populations and their descendants were brought to light.  Can someone deemed non ethnically German ever be German without giving up everything about their own identity?  And even then, will they ever be truly accepted?  Jewish history would seem to show that even the most integrated Jewish population in the world in the 1940s, namely the German Jews, were victimized with horrendous consequences.  If the word stays the same, can the definition possibly change?  Certainly Germany is not alone among countries in the world who need to reexamine how they define belonging and inclusion in a national social framework.  Perhaps we all have a lot to learn.

There were lots of other interesting trips - We went to Potsdam and visited the palace of Friederich the Great, where girls were not allowed (not even Friederich´s wife!) and Friederich was later buried next to his 12 dogs (wife was not even allowed to visit in the afterlife).  We took a tour of the site of the Potsdam Conference, where Stalin, Churchill and Truman met in 1945.  And, we took a trip out to the city of Wittenberg, where Martin Luther posted his famous 95 these which brought about the Protestant Reformation along with one of the bloodiest wars in history.

Near the end of our seminar we came together for a program called Länderabend, a chance for the thirty of us, and a handful of BUKAs from previous years, to feed and entertain one another according to our national traditions.  Well, it was Yom Kippur, so to avoid temptation, I have no clue what was eaten.  (Also, if you recall from a previous post, Chinese, Russian and American cuisine may not have been intended for one plate).  Well, while everyone was having dinner, I put the finishing touches on the American skit, which a bunch of us had spent the last few hours putting together.  I won´t bore you with the whole skit (though I do have it on tape if you are that interested, including a hilarious ballerina skit by the Russians), but I will share with you the lyrics to the song we wrote.  As a bit of background, one of the Americans wrote a song called 16 Länder in Deutschland, to teach her son about the provinces of Germany.  To the same tune we wrote 30 BUKAs in Deutschland:

§Chorus: 30 BUKAs in Deutschland, 30 BUKAS in Deutschland, 10 aus Russland, 10 aus China, 10 aus USA, Das ist Prima!! (That is awesome!)

The Fei boys are telling Chinese Tort Law what to do
Ozge will bring Turkey into the EU
Veronika is fixing higher education
Laura hopes to rescue the Afghani Nation

Long and Xi Jing will help merge and acquire
But make too much and Emilie will get you fired
Yelena is fighting skin cancer
Vadim is searching for a peaceful answer

Sarah writes the news
Rachel works with Jews
Sergei tells us how much pensioners might lose

Jen and Phil will make the world better for gays
Johanna works with Turkish women who like plays
Iulia will look at Deutsch Philosophy
Kefei knows just how stressful that can be!

Igor will make sure we have milk to drink
Inna and Tsia-Xan tell us how we feel and think
Bing will help the world communicate
Natalya studies cities as they populate

The environment makes us worry,
Loni, Katya, Emily please hurry
And Chan-Zoung will make our budgets participatory.

Gao-Wei is telling us to volunteer
Xing-Ja is a banking pioneer
And if you still noticed that someone is missing,
Head to an ancient site cuz Olga´s digging!!!!




Probably you had to be there...  Now that we have all gone our separate ways, all I can say is I miss my BUKAS.

Conclusion: Being the Russian General Consul for Bonn is the best job ever

  Once again, my apologies that this blog post is a bit late.  On Tuesday, September 7th, 2010, I had quite possibly the most fun I will ever have at a General Consulate of the Russian Federation in Germany.

   Ok, let´s backtrack.  Every year the BUKAs get invited to visit the Russian Consulate in Bonn for meetings and dinner.  This year was no exception, so on our last night in Bonn, we thirty BUKAs prepared for our last big hurrah in Bonn. 

   If you ever receive an invitation to dinner at the Russian Consulate, you may first ask yourself, "What should I wear?"  According to Herr Friedrich von Matzahn, keeper/handler/counter/babysitter of the BUKAs, smart casual (which by the way does not translate into German) is the appropriate attire for the Russian Consulate.  Given the tense (for lack of a better word) relations that often exist between our two countries, the American BUKAs decided we should up the smart and down the casual, so we all put on our nicest clothes in hopes of making a good impression.  Little did we know we were about to meet:

Jewgenij Schmagin, Consul General of the Russian Federation in Bonn, Germany, and yes, he does always have a shot of some sort of alcohol in one hand while he wildly gesticulates with the other.  Mr. Schmagin has been on the job for three months, a fact which he restated about 25 times over the course of the evening.  After meeting Mr. Schmagin, who is incredibly friendly and hospitable, one can only imagine that his previous post was as Consul General to a summer camp.

    First the Consul General served us cookies and sat with us at a long table and basically repeated in more or less terms how happy he was that the Cold War was over, how much relations between China and Russia have improved in the last few years, and how, all things considered, he thinks the US is an okay place anyway...  He then delivered a speech in which every sentence included some variation of the phrase: You cannot imagine how big Russia is.  It went something like this:

  "Dear Chinese, American, Russian and German friends, you cannot imagine how big Russia is.  Russia is so big that we can hardly imagine how big it is ourselves.  Russia is so big that we need to spend many days on a train to get from one side to the other.  Russia is so big that we are on two continents.  Russia is so big that at the same time some places are very very cold while other places are very very hot.  Russia is so big that it takes up nine time zones.  Russia is so big that in some parts of Russia the day is beginning while in other places it has already happened.  Now that you have been in Germany for some time, you are maybe thinking, oh my, Germany is big.  Tell me, do you think Germany is big?  Is Germany big?  Certainly you are all thinking, my, Germany is quite big, yes?  (we are all staring at him confused until finally the head of the Humboldt Foundation, a soft-spoken man to the right of the Consul General in the picture above says:) Um, no, Mr. Consul General, everyone is well aware that Germany is actually a very small country."

   Then the Consul General proceeded to give us a tour of the Russian Consulate, which he reminded us multiple times is technically part of Russian territory.  "Now you have all been to Russia."

Then he fed us lots of wine and caviar and the Bishop made a toast.

Then he taught us how to play Gorodki, a traditional Russian game in which you throw sticks at a target.  (It was somewhere around round two of Gorodki that we realized dressing up for the Russian Consulate might have been a mistake).

Then we had a cookout, during which the Consul General insisted on serving all of the Americans hamburgers (sort of a low blow, but being as he was consuming vodka like it was water I figured stereotype shmereotype).

Then it was time for traditional Russian singing and accordion playing.  And then the Consul General decided that each of the four countries represented should take the stage and perform a traditional song from their country.  The Russians went first, and performed a traditional folk song.  Then the Germans performed, and I swear if I had not known better I would have thought they had rehearsed.  They broke into different parts and sang in a round and had harmonizing, and it was just really really organized. Then the Chinese sort of kissed up and sang some Russian song from the 1950s that is very popular in Chinese translation.

  

 See what I mean?  They were pretty proud of themselves.  All the while the Americans were having our usual "oh shit we missed out on a solid nationalistic song-singing education" moment.  What could we sing?  Yankee Doodle?  Too cheesy (heh, macaroni, get it?).  She´ll be comin´round the mountain?  Too folksy.  

   And then suddenly, we knew.  The song that said it all.  The song that perfectly explained our existence as Americans in Germany, as Americans at the Russian Consulate!  The song that said, so what if we are the fattest country on earth!  So what if we export hamburgers like it is our national pastime!  So what if the closest we get to a folk culture education is square dancing in middle school gym class!  So what if we call football soccer!  So what if every time we try to play the Russian stick throwing game our sticks accidentally get lost in the woods!!!  We stood together, shoulder to shoulder, counted off and began:

First I was afraid, I was petrified, kept thinkin I could never live without you by my side, but then I spent so many nights just thinkin how you did me wrong and I grew strong and I learned how to get along...

By the time we hit the chorus to I Will Survive the accordion had joined in and the Consul General was dancing.  It was like every bad wedding DJ, drunken karaoke mistake, Bar Mitzvah hallucination all melted together into one perfect cultural exchange.  It was a proud moment in BUKAdom, a proud moment for America, and I dare say, a meaningful step forward  for Russian-US relations.

The surface of the moon.

  Week one of orientation is over, and I´m sitting here in hotel room 4009 in the Tannenbusch Acora for the last time.  Tomorrow, bright and early, we board the bus and officially move to Berlin. (Note: in the haste of moving this post and others were left as drafts, thus they are being published a bit late)

  So, Bonn.  I promised in my first post that I would hold judgment and let Bonn be a place that I got to know personally.  For those of you who have been dutifully reading along without doing any supplementary reading, let´s review history for a moment.  I am in Bonn, not Bern (that is Switzerland).  Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany (just for fun, the 19th largest city in the US is Memphis Tennessee, which has a population about twice as big as Bonn, at 680,000 compared to 320,000).  Although it was certainly much more than just a village, Bonn basically rose out of obscurity in 1949 when it was selected as the new capital of West Germany.  Why Bonn?  Well, Konrad Adenauer, first Chancellor of West Germany, selected little Bonn basically as a small, hopefully temporary, location for a new German capital with the hope of showing the world that Germany was not a place to be feared anymore. 
         Bonn.  Although the name is not in any way etymologically related, it might be helpful to think Bonn equals bon, good, harmless.
    And, you might say Bonn was pretty bon.  It did its job.  Bonn sustained West Germany through the cold war, rebuilt the image of Germany in the eyes of the world, and delivered it safely and soundly into a reunified Germany in 1990.  For the next year, the German government and the German people debated between their two choices for capital cities, Bonn v. Berlin.  Don´t think for a minute that the choice was easy.  After forty years, people felt pretty comfortable with Bonn, and Berlin still represented to the world and the German people the same demons of the past, but, after much deliberation, on June 20, 1991 (my fifth birthday, in case you were curious), the decision was made to move the capital to Berlin, and only 9 years later (ha!), the process was complete (our trip to Berlin will take ONLY 9 hours tomorrow).


    Pause for an unnecessary cultural/historical allusion.  Sometimes when I think about Bonn, I think of Apollo 13, or at least the movie with Tom Hanks that I watched a lot as a kid.  Germany is the mission, set into motion by the cold war (um, yeah, like the space race), and Bonn is the lunar module Aquarius that had to act as a lifeboat and take on the crew for four days (or forty years) because of oxygen problems (communism?) that prevented the crew from staying in their main command module, the Odyssey (think Berlin, for the hell of it), which they were later able to repair enough to use for a safe return into the earth´s atmosphere (reunification!)  So what ever happened to Bonn?  (FYI Aquarius burned up upon reentering the earth´s atmosphere a few days later.)

      Fortunately for Bonn, things worked out a lot better.  Once most of the government offices left, a bunch of international organizations, big businesses, etc, decided to take over their buildings.  In Bonn, there is life after reunification.  It´s just different.
     For example, today me visited a major solar panel company, Solar World, with headquarters in Bonn.  And, on Thursday we visited Deutsche Welle, a news organization that broadcasts radio, TV and internet in over 30 languages around the world, bringing the German perspective to places around the world, particularly places in which freedom of the press might not otherwise be possible.  Interestingly enough, Deutsche Welle is located in a building in Bonn that was originally planned and constructed for the German Parliament.  The decision was made to move Germany´s capital to Berlin before the award winning building was even finished, leaving the people of Bonn (and the German taxpayer´s) in a bit of a lurch.  Imagine for a moment if the Capitol Building in DC was converted into a radio station...
     We also had a chance to visit the German Defense Ministry, which maintains its primary headquarters in Bonn, and has a smaller office in Berlin.  Defense and participation in foreign wars is understandably a touchy issue in Germany.  I found the Captain that we met with to be one of the most interesting people in our week of endless meetings.  He informed us about the current status of German troops in Afghanistan, the Congo and Kosovo, as well as the issue of conscription in Germany.  Currently all men in Germany have to serve in the army for nine months (if I understood correctly, they would like to change it to 6 months).
      The main thing that stuck out for me in our visit to the Defense Ministry was what the Captain had to say about the image of the soldier in Germany.  Despite conscription for all German men, Germans in army uniforms still get strange looks when they walk down the street in uniform.  He said he knows career soldiers who wear their civilian clothes when they go to and from work, just to avoid the stares.  When visiting the US, he said, regardless of the fact that he was wearing a German uniform, people would stop him in the street and shake his hand and thank him for his service to his country (I wouldn´t be surprised if the aforementioned Americans did not realize that the soldier with whom they were shaking hands was not in fact wearing an American uniform...)  It is only natural though, he said, that after fighting and losing two world wars, symbols of war make the Germans uncomfortable.  Speaking of uncomfortable:
      Yesterday´s trips took us outside of Bonn to two other large enterprises that play major roles in Germany today.  They were interesting, but somewhat unpleasant places to visit.  One was this:

     This is an open brown coal mine.  When I think about mines I generally think of tragedies in which people get stuck in narrow sooty shafts under the ground or eventually develop the black lung.  In open coal mining people are hardly used at all.  Gigantic, billion-dollar machines manned by around 4 people claw away miles and miles of earth to expose soft brown energy stored just a few feet below the surface.  The crazy thing is that whole towns have to be moved to keep them out of the way of these giant earth eating machines.  The town of Königshaven is an example of one of these towns.  We visited New Königshaven, which was rebuilt with the same plan as old Königshaven, right down to the street names, but almost all of the buildings are new.  I am still trying to mentally envision how they dealt with the Königshaven cemetery I saw signs for...

     After visiting the coal mine, we took a trip to a gigantic Bayer chemical plant.  Before touring the plant, we were guided through a museum exhibit about the history and current work of Bayer.  I am sure I wasn´t the first person to see Bayer´s exhibit about history and feel like something was very clearly being left out.   The museum included one panel on the history of both world wars, which showed some busy factories and a picture of "forced laborers".  Our tour guide said that Bayer was a part of the war effort, and that there was discussion after the war about whether or not the company should continue to function, and of course the decision was made to keep Bayer as a tool to help rebuild the German economy.  Questions we asked about some of Bayer´s more controversial involvements in the Third Reich were met with hostile, incomplete responses.  As for the bus tour we took through the chemical plant, once of the BUKAs put it best when she said:  

This is just like driving through a movie set, if you were making a movie about chemical plants.