On the road

I am traveling and will post again soon. Check back in November and I'll have something for you!

Hungry to be noticed

The European refugee crisis that was all over the front page a couple of weeks ago is now mysteriously absent from the media. Did it go away? Was there just nothing new to report? Or did our collective attention span run its course?

I won't answer that question, but there is a group of people in Hannover who don't want to be invisible. A few months ago, I wrote about the Sudanese migrants in Refugee Protest Camp Hannover. They are here without a status, not deported but not given a place to live or a right to work. They are squatting, basically, in a nice part of town, living in tents and trying to get refugee status from the state government. No one has arrested or deported them. No one has given them rights either.

This week they staged a hunger strike outside the Staatskanzlei, where the governor works. I knew this not because I am that connected with current events but because I ran right into it. The state government building is on my way to school and the Sudanese guys were all set up on the sidewalk Monday morning. They were there Tuesday also. On Wednesday, I stopped to talk with them. It was day three of the hunger strike and a few of the 45 men were looking, even for people used to living in the elements, pretty worn down.

I asked if they had talked to anyone from 'in there' (as I pointed to the Staatskanzlei). The man who seemed to be in charge said that some people from their group had gone in and delivered a letter explaining their case. Someone from inside was now supposed to come out and address them. I wished them luck and asked if I could take a picture. They wanted to make sure I got the government building in the background. I mentioned the blog and said I'd write about what they are doing.

According to a local news article, the Sudanese want to have the same status as people fleeing from Syria, who are classified as refugees. They have also pledged to continue the hunger strike until October 23rd, nourished only with water, tea and cigarettes. It baffles me to think how that is even possible.

And as I pedaled past on day four of the hunger strike, my belly full from breakfast at home, my heart sank a little. It was hard to believe that these people would be heard by the officials from 'in there'. They have no rights, no power, no money, no political clout. There is not a Sudanese community in Hannover pulling for them. Sleeping under tarps beside their protest signs, they are fighting to be noticed.

The Sudanese protesters do have a few friends in town, and a Facebook page, of course. A recent post mentioned that the protesters need: "water, tea, sleeping mats, sleeping bags, their rights."
As a foreigner myself, I don't think I can help with that last one, but I might drop off some tea on Monday. I wish the Sudanese guys, and the other refugees coming to Hannover, a roof and a full belly and a chance to be noticed.

Recent photos

Here a few photos I have taken lately:

Powdered wig, tri-corner hat, motorcycle jacket. Taking a smoke break on a 17th century fountain in Hannover

Grand Theatre in Groningen, Netherlands

Train station and some public art, Groningen, Netherlands

Farmers and agricultural workers protesting the drop in dairy prices, Hannover (note the man in the pig hat)

A sticker on a light pole brings some hope.

If you remember the watch tower post, here is the Döhrener Turm decked out in ivy.

Right on time in Hannover

When you live in Hannover, there are only two places to meet up with people: under the horse tail or at the clock. You could choose somewhere else to meet, but that would be unusual. The idea that everyone in town uses just two meeting spots is one of the reasons that Hannover, despite its big city aspirations, is really a small town.

Unterm Schwanz is the way to say under the tail, which only makes sense if you know you are at the train station looking at this statue:

I wrote about the horse and his rider Ernst August a couple of years ago. Go ahead and read about them if you want, but now I'm going to tell you about the clock.

The Kröpcke clock is on the busiest pedestrian corner in town. It's between the opera house, the train station and the main shopping streets in the city center. The spot is named after a guy named Kröpcke and his cafe, which is still a perfect place to sit outside and watch all the commotion. Mr. Kröpcke opened his cafe in the 1870s, and the city built the clock about ten years later.

Notice the Nazi flags waving on either side of the clock

During the war

While most of Hannover was leveled during World War II and half of its residents lost their homes, the clock survived. It ticked away among the rubble until the 1950s happened. The city planners wanted a modern, progressive city and there was no place for  19th century clock. So they built this one:

It stood until 1977, when Hannover realized that mid-century design wasn't cool anymore. A replica of the original clock was built in its place and is still standing today.

Public clocks are everywhere in Germany. If I had been a watch-wearer before, I would have stopped by now. There are clocks on church steeples, above banks, sometimes just on the street corner as a public service. There's no excuse to be late. In case you are not looking up, somewhere nearby a church bell rings every fifteen minutes. Germans are punctual, and almost everything here runs on time.

People complain about the DeutscheBahn arriving ten minutes behind schedule. Apparently they have never tried Amtrak in the U.S., or the Hershey train in Cuba. I wanted to ride the Hershey train through the sugar cane fields of the old Hershey plantation, but there's no way to know when it will arrive and some days it doesn't show up at all). This is why, as I may have mentioned before, living in Germany doesn't prepare you to live anywhere else in the world. In most places people, and trains and buses, are sometimes late (but hopefully show up on the same day).

I most recently waited at the Kröpcke clock for two people who come from the polar opposite - culturally and almost geographically - of German punctuality. Olga from Colombia and Surama from Cuba are hard-wired for la hora Latina. Latin time runs anywhere from 10 to 45 minutes later than German time. If my Latina friends call at the time we are supposed to meet and say, "I'm on the way," that means they are about to leave the house. Since I'm chronically 5 minutes late (sometimes a little more), they make me look good.


I wonder about the people hanging around the Kröpcke clock. If everyone arrives on time, then nobody in Hannover would stand by the clock for more than 43 seconds. Are they showing up early? Are the friends they plan to meet not German? What's going on?

The friends I was meeting, despite not being German, showed up within the hour. We all laughed about it as the clock ticked away behind us.

From the left: Olga, me and Surama

We bought a TV

Brian and I bought a TV. 

It was a first for me. I think in my whole life I have never actually bought a television. They have been handed down or given as gifts (thanks, Mom) over the years. And since we moved to Hannover, Brian and I have not had one. We haven't gone Amish or anything, we were just using a projector. It seemed like a great idea - hook the computer to a projector and use the white walls to our advantage. But then the projector broke, we hung a nice picture on the wall, and it was time to move on.

Buying an electronic appliance means going to an electronics store. You might think that these places in Germany would be quaint, with fresh bread and a beer stand and lederhosen-wearing salesmen. You are wrong. The big box store is international. And it's my least favorite kind of store. I would rather be Amish and write this blog on a slate with chalk than go to Best Buy at Christmas time.

Check out the length of the word above the TVs. German is hard.

You see, I am not into gadgets. I like them when they work and I like using them to the very minimum of their capabilities. This means I have an automatic communication gap with people who are into gadgets - like anyone who works at an electronic store - even before you consider the language gap. What I do have working in my favor is that I've always been a bit of a nerd magnet. And though they are not wearing lederhosen, the guys working at the big box store are definitely nerdy. Therefore, when buying an electronic device in Germany I pull what I call the double bimbo. I ask the salesman in my heavily accented German, filled with cute grammatical errors, about what a smart TV is, actually. Not only am I a foreigner (hopefully a cute one) but I apparently know nothing about electronics. This means that the nerdy salesman should take pity on me and walk me to the precise point in the precise aisle where the HDMI cables are hanging. It's not an act; it's a survival skill.

I am not helpless with technology; I am just not that interested. I'm also old enough to know that it's faster to just let the interested people help me. My generation learned how to program the VCR and make mix tapes. I can use iTunes and pull off a mail merge. But I have no idea what HDMI stands for.

So we bought the TV. Then we had to get it home. No, Brian did not strap it to his bike and roll it back (though he did that a few weeks ago with an armchair). We took the tram. It reminded me when we bought our grill and took it on the very same tram four years ago.

For that purchase, there was just a lot of pointing involved. A grill does not have any electronic parts so I didn't need to ask any questions. I think the Amish even use them.

My new day job

I have a new job to add to my collection of part-time endeavors. In addition to running Play Global, coaching cross country, helping international school kids apply to college and finishing my Master's, I am now teaching middle school Spanish.

There was a time when I thought a degree from a good liberal arts college would get me places. That was a silly idea. Español has been my ticket to just about every job I've had. There were a couple of social service jobs, an immigration law internship, some translation work and - most interesting - a job at a used car auction. It was the place where old, donated cars got a second chance every Saturday. It was also a destination for people who didn't have much money to buy a car, but were not afraid to fix one. There was a fast-talking auctioneer in a ten gallon hat there, and more cash than I had ever seen. The crumpled 20s and 50s and 100s made my hands grimy. A lot of the buyers spoke only Spanish, and almost none of the staff did. I had no idea what I was doing, but I could at least communicate.

So now, after a couple years of substitute teaching, I am actually... teaching. Preface that by saying I am not a teacher, have never been trained as one, and I know nothing about educational theory or anything that real teachers know. But I can speak Spanish and I show up for work, just like at the car auction. And the kids seem to like me, so I guess it's going ok.

Where will Spanish take me next? It's hard to say. Hopefully nowhere else for right now.  I've got enough to do. I don't know if they even have used car auctions in Germany, and if they do exist there are probably hundreds of laws about them. But if a man in a ten gallon hat shows up to offer me a job, it'll be hard to say no.

The invasion

They're coming.
The invasion has begun.
It's not the undead. The zombie apocalypse is not here yet. What we are facing is a horde of... refugees.
Ok, when you put it like that, it sounds less scary. Some of them are brown people. They are going to need jobs and health care and places to live. Maybe that sounds scarier.

The flood of refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans makes headlines here every day, and with good reason. It's the largest refugee crisis since World War II .  Germany is stepping up to the challenge. As Europe's political and economic leader (I guess that could be debated, but nobody messes with Angela), Germany has opened its doors to more refugees than any other EU country. It will accept about 500,000 asylum seekers this year.

Germany's public services are responding. Shelters and tent cities are springing up around the country. In Hannover, a school gym has been converted into a refugee shelter. There are rumors that Waterlooplatz, originally a training ground for the Prussian army, will soon be filled with trailer homes for refugees. 

Some refugee shelters in Germany have already been burned down. As many Germans as there are who want to help, there are plenty who are afraid. There's also a slimy underbelly of those who are afraid and react with violence.

I think that Der Spiegel does a great job of describing the mindset of the German public:

"These are people who are determined to do everything right and to atone for Germany's sins, even 70 years later. They know that they owe something to their collective conscience, and that whenever they give something up, they also gain something in return. That something is the feeling of doing the right thing, the important thing.
 
But there is also the fear of being overwhelmed. It is the fear of people who are willing to give, but only to a point, only as long as it doesn't hurt them. People who are willing to share as long as they don't have to make sacrifices. And that, all generosity aside, is why so many people now feel that limits should be imposed on immigration. They may not know where these limits should lie, but they are convinced that they should exist."

I was subbing in fifth grade last year as the students worked on research projects. One girl was researching refugees. Her survey to the class asked whether Germany should be accepting refugees or not. Most of the ten and eleven-year-olds in the class answered, something like "yes, but..." or 'yes, to a point..." or "yes, as long as...". Even though many of these kids had immigrated once themselves, they (or their parents) wanted to put a limit on just how welcoming Germany could be. 

The flow of refugees might be easier to swallow if all of the refugees came from Eastern Europe. It might be easier if they were not so different, at least on the outside. Dark-skinned people and women in head scarves don't blend in well in small German cities. It's harder to forget they are there.

It's not like my country has a spotless record on immigration either. I am not pointing fingers. We've had our share of failures, racism, deportations. We have just been doing immigration - messy or complicated or illegal or successful - for a really long time. Whether it's been a melting pot or a mixed salad or a tapestry or whatever you try to call it, we have some experience with this stuff. And, not so long ago, some of the refugees we took in were from Germany.

I'm interested to see whether the trailer park goes up in Waterlooplatz. If it does, I wonder how Hannoverians will react. My guess is that the trailers, and the people living in them, will make some locals uneasy. Most will smile and shrug and accept. Only a few will be out trying to stop the invasion. When Angela Merkel spoke in Heidenau, where a refugee shelter was burned down recently, only 200 people booed and called her a traitor. I don't think that Angela gets rattled that easily. She would probably be a good zombie killer.