About Living in a Go-Area…

(Die Dresdner Frauenkirche, ‚The Church of our Lady’)

RETURN COMFIRMED!!

Hello everyone! I finally and happily announce that I circumvented all the remaining obstacles regarding my return to Singapore and especially the realization of my diploma thesis. Yippieeehhh…Singapore, I am soon coming back! Flight is booked and I can start complaining about the endless heat again on July 2nd. In the meantime, I will try to follow some positive response and have a closer look at my home, Germany. Which is not easy, because one does not necessarily see the things which would appear odd to foreigners. I will try my best :-) Or just tell me, what you are interested in..

IS IT A PAINTING OR IS IT REAL?

Well, the picture above is indeed real and provides you with a stunning view of last-years finished reconstruction of the Frauenkirche, or ‘Church Of Our Lady’. The original version finally due to intensive heat a few days after the disastrous British-American air ambush on Dresden Feb 13th, 1945. Until the reunification of Germany, it has been decided by the then Communist/Socialist leaders to keep it as a field of debris..serving as a very visible war monument in the heart of the city. The fascinating fact is that as many pieces of debris as possible were reused as material for the 'new' church; computer capabilities in the 90s even enabled the cataloguing and reusing of the old stones where possible. Nonetheless, among local people here the opinions still differ on the very fact of the reconstruction. Some say, the old church can never come back and it should have remained as it was.

However, since its completion, the church has gained a lot of ground in the people's heart and ok, I LOVE this building. To having seen it grow every day from inside the tram on my way to university was fascinating. Now, this specimen of one of the most ambitious projects in Germany after World War Two has changed the appearance of the old city, gave it grace and old grandeur. Negative thing? Too many tourists. I thought I could run away from the Singaporean sport of ‘EXTREME QUEUEING’ and have therefore not managed to get inside yet. What a shame.

(THE people’s car in the former Communist German Democratic Republic, a ‘Trabant’)

DO NOT GO TO NO-GO

These days right just before the beginning of the World Cup in Germany, the media is once again covering a nasty and sadly familiar topic. One former member of the chancellor’s office under Gerhard Schroeder has claimed that some regions in Germany, esp. in the East should not be visited by foreign-looking people, ‘since it may be that they would not leave the place alive’. This surely must be an exaggeration, but racism and the rise of neo-nazism went a long way since the reunification in 1990, and even established on grassroots level in many ‘strongholds’ in East Germany.

From my perspective, the picture is a bit distorted though. It might be a disgusting fact that neo-nazis and esp. the way too national party of the NPD (National Democratic Party of Germany) work on fertile grounds in some economically disastrous regions in East Germany, because of their ability to use the fear and agony of some people there. Two negative outcomes of this debate come up my mind: The rightists already started to use this campaign for their own purposes (e.g. issuing leaflets, where they would even like to establish and define No-Go areas themselves to keep away foreigners who supposedly are the fault of everything bad). Also, it will probably scare foreigners so badly that some will not even think of going to the East of Germany as a consequence. Exaggeration and generalization in the media always causes this kind of collateral damage; and this one in particular acknowledges a status that these stupid people simply do not deserve.

(a cooler version of the Trabant, as seen on a German Autobahn)

GO TRABBI, GO

I grew up in the former German Democratic Republic. One distinct feature of a lack of planning economy in this Communist/Socialist state was of course the very limited range of available products. This boiled down to the exemplary fact that there were only a couple of car models available. The normal people’s personal means of transportation was the Trabant, or ‘Trabbi’, which featured a cardboard-made frame, ginormous 25 horsepowers and the trademarke-like, memorably smelly white exhaust fumes. After signing the contract for sale, one had to wait for approx. 18-20 years to get the car delivered. That is why most young parents ordered their offspring’s future car only shortly after the child breathed East German air for the first time, so it would be there right on time.

One thing many people forget is that this car (which most people just smile at nowadays; it can still be seen in the streets every now and then) was top of the line in the 1960s. The design and engineering was outstanding, so that even big car manufacturers from West Germany queued up to have a coser look at it. Unfortunately, the car has not evolved since then and basically remained the same until the 1990s, which made it unsellable when all the new, flashy, western cars flooded the market after the opening of the economy.

It must have been a funny sight then, when a huge crowd of East Germans used their Trabbis to explore the West for the first time after the Wall was torn down. Never in the history again were our origins more visible and audible :-)

Maik

(I had one myself...this is Schwalbe ('swallow'), famous specimen of East German bike tradition, about 50ccm...enough to get to school :-))