I’ve been watching a
brilliant, dark TV show called The Killing, which is set in Copenhagen. The
almost clinical cleanliness and order and paleness of everything couldn’t be
further removed from where I currently live. There’s no dust there. The
independent houses are wooden and the apartments aren’t swarming with the maids
and drivers and all the other unorganised labour that we in India enjoy. People
wear jackets (jackets!) and the
supermarkets are shitty (compared to Tesco and Waitrose, anyway). The men are tall and all
of them are unwittingly camp. There are only three kinds of things on roads:
hatchbacks, sedans and Volvo trucks. Everyone smokes.
I’m reminded of the
time I spent in Germany (and I know that technically Germany is not classified Northern Europe, but then
I’d argue it is much closer to the ‘idea’ of northern Europe than, say, the
United Kingdom, which is). Not so
much the student life in dorms and clubs, but the time I spent with my friends’
families in their homes. There’s a measured blandness about the streets and a
feeling of general calm in the air.
If I’ve learned one thing from my travels it is this: if you want to “experience” a city, you have to walk its streets but if you want to understand its people you need to stay in their homes.
If I’ve learned one thing from my travels it is this: if you want to “experience” a city, you have to walk its streets but if you want to understand its people you need to stay in their homes.
“We drive by train to
the house of my parents” said Jakob, in that adorable European-English, “There
we make a party”. Until I figured out which universal language mistakes Germans
make, I couldn’t believe you could just drive trains around in this country.
He was kind but direct
and assertive. He had a style of telling you how your day together was going to
pan out, without you having any say in it – and you wouldn’t mind. “We go here,
yes? Then we take some beers in there. Then we make some pictures.” And indeed,
that is what we would do. But he wasn’t boring: he had tattoos and listened to
Jonny Cash. His English wasn’t that great but he spoke uninhibited. He is one
of those kind souls whose friendship you feel you don’t really deserve.
His family’s house was
wooden and had carpeted floors. There was very very slow internet and no cable
TV. The walls were packed with books and vinyl records. In the basement were a
big boxing bag, a sofa and an ancient television enshrined in VHS tapes. From
the quaint kitchen one could see down the wide roads to the level-crossing and
the station that we’d gotten off at. His back garden was
large and just across the mud track from his back gate was one of those
classic, deep, dark, coniferous German forests. It made it seem like we were in
the country side. It was dusk when we walked through the door. His family
enjoyed a close relationship with the neighbours and their two boys and that
evening, there must have been 20 people having dinner in the garden. A barbeque
was going, beers were being popped open using every single thing in the house.
It was a full-fledged Saturday evening get together.
One of the reasons my love for Germany endures is because even though I stuck out like a sore
thumb, I was never once made to feel unwelcome. From the first time I ordered a
sandwich at Subway in a deserted shopping mall on a Sunday evening and the
attendant taught me how to say “cucumber”, I felt like I was an exchange citizen rather than simply an exchange student. No one made me feel more welcome
than Jakob, whose family lived in the suburbs – 30 minutes by S-Bahn from the
city centre. Berlin in late summer is really something. It was like a culturally vibrant household in 1960s America but instead of father and son playing baseball, 15 year olds and 50 year olds drank schnapps and smoked roll-ups.
After the adults went
inside to listen to jazz music, the youngsters hung out in the – now chilly –
garden. Jakob’s brother’s and sister’s friends were there too and they all eyed
me up curiously before speaking to me in their best English. I was not paraded
around like many proud people do their foreign guests. I played football with
some of the younger kids who were amazed that I knew what football was. We
played that “guess who I am in 20 questions” game that apparently all Germans
play. Note: they ALL play that game.
Normally when you’re a house-guest
– especially a foreign one – everyone goes out of their way to tend to you and
you can end up feeling a little smothered. But the experience I had in Jakob’s
house was the same that I felt at Julian’s or Paolo’s. It’s hard to put it into
words. People would talk to you, smile at you and then treat everyone else in
exactly the same way. It was so refreshing. What I appreciated was that I
wasn’t the chief guest, just another guest at a party. It was like “Great that
you’re here. Here are the rules - help yourself to a beer.” That’s what Germany
is to me: a party where everyone follows rules.
No comments:
Post a Comment