Goodbye Germany

Panoramic view of the Bodensee, Konstanz

Before I came to Germany my expectations were not that high. I imagined I would make a clinical entry and an equally easy clinical exit. Focus on work, travel around a bit on the weekends, and indulge myself in the culinary delights of this part of the world. Period. It has been a year and half to the date since I first came here, and now that I am all set to leave, I can’t but help looking back to those early days and say, “You were so wrong!”

Unsurprisingly, the better part of the master plan was consigned to the rubbish bin. The weekend trips never really materialized, bar a few - one long weekend in Munich, one in Heidelberg, one spent camping at Belfort in France during FIMO, one too many in Zurich, an interesting one in Amsterdam, one in Ravensburg, a couple of day trips, a couple of hikes in the black forest and one little cycle ride around the Lake of Constance. Not bad, but I think I could’ve done more. If only. If only.

My friends tell me that I’ve seen only the “Disneyland” part of Germany, which is probably true, for Konstanz is a favorite tourist destination for many. The mesmerizing azure blue waters of the Bodensee can lure you into wasting sunny days at its banks, inviting you to take a dip in its pristine clear waters and stare at the Alps marking the boundary between heaven and earth. White in winter and dark bluish in summer. Why the hell did I ever work here? I will miss the view sorely.

The old quarters of Konstanz escaped the brutal Allied bombing raids of the second world war by keeping its lights on. The pilots confused it with a neighbouring Swiss town of Kreuzlingen, and so the homes from the 1300s survived here, while those in other German cities turned to rubble.

If I had a penny for every time someone asked me “What are the three things that come to your mind when you think of Germany”, I’d be a rich man. “Boris Becker, Schumacher and BMW” is I believe an unusual answer. The 2nd world war scarred not just the landscape of Germany, but continues to scar the German population. Yes. Even to this day. It is an emotion called guilt. On pavements you will find these little bronze cobblestones, with the names of people who lived on that street. The people who were sent to dreaded prison camps to meet a gruesome death. These recent installations are a symbolic gesture - a sober reminder of a gruesome past, for which the current generation is genuinely sorry. Even though it was (and is) in no way their fault.

Reminders of the past

Street protests in Stuttgart against German involvement in Afghanistan

The German language, I’ve been told, is a very exact language. It is supremely frustrating to learn. After months, you believe you have kind of sort of gotten a hang of it, and then bham, you are blown away with a new, until now unknown rule. And each rule of sentence construction is inevitably followed by a million exceptions to the same rule. Mark Twain found himself in the same conundrum about a 150 years ago, and wrote a comical account of his struggle with the language - “The Awful German language”. Still true. Still true today.

One of the low points in the life of an expatriate, is the feeling of loneliness. Far from home, family and friends, evenings can get melancholy and weekends utterly boring. Skype or Facebook offer but only a temporary escape from isolation. Been there, felt that, so I was expecting it, and totally not looking forward to it. However, in the course of these 18 months, I’ve seldom had those expected bouts of melancholy. I guess I got lucky, for I met some of the sweetest people I’ve known. They’ve taught me that there is more to Germany than fast cars, cuckoo clocks and good beer. I know I will miss them as much, if not more, as I have missed my friends from Bangalore. Thank you folks!

No matter how far we trudge along,
The world is small and our lives are long,
I know not, if again ever we will together break bread,
That hope alive in my heart, in this life I continue to tread.

Goodbye Germany

Book review: Love Thy Neighbor – Peter Maass

War is ugly. Period. This is one of those rare books which leave you with a bad taste in the mouth. Not because it is war porn (which it isn’t), it is because of the hypocritical nature in which the rest of the world responded to these events. Peter Mass spent 3 years reporting for the Washington Post a particularly ugly war – the Bosnian war. Those three years left over 200,000 people dead and brought “ethnic cleansing” to the living room – via TV.

He interviews refugees fleeing a marauding Serbian army and militia - they tell gut wrenching stories of abuse and torture. He talks to people on both sides of the “conflict”, and it is so easy to see who the bad guys were. If he saw it, and all the other reporters saw it then why did the governments not see it? He talks about the toothless UN force, how they unwittingly encouraged the Serbs to continue their atrocities. He talks about task force commanders not willing to see the truth, fabricating stories, and stonewalling the media. Sadly among those commanders is our own Lt. Gen. Satish Nambiar.

He visits detention centers comparable if not worse than Auschwitz. He talks to Serbs who have the guts to speak out against what their leader was doing, the talks to Serb soldiers who didn’t kill or rape and  to those who did with unapologetic pleasure. He talks to a young doctor who performed surgery without sterilized tools or any anesthetic. He talks about how liberal Bosnians turned to more conservative strains of their religion. He discovers the reason why a husband and wife never step out of their apartment together, why they go to different churches on Christmas, why they are delighted to receive oranges as gifts. He befriends people only to lose them to the war.

He also interviews Slobodan Milosevic, the slick power hungry goon of a President who singlehandedly triggered the collapse of Yugoslavia. He pokes holes and points out the absurdity of the Serbian propaganda that Bosnians were the ones who were bombing themselves as well as the Serbs. He tells the stories of high ranking US officials who resigned in disgust, of young French soldiers who do not understand why they must stop and turn back children, women and old men who are trying to cross a thin strip of land into the safer territory. After confiscating their food and supplies.

Any notions that Maass is biased faded away rather quickly, as I read through the cases pending and decided by the ICTY - International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The cases of War Crimes pending trial, completed or pending appeal are available at website of the ICTY - http://www.icty.org/action/cases/4. After reading these cases you realize the absurdity of Lt. Gen. Satish Nambiar’s insistence that “he did not witness any genocide beyond killings and massacres on all sides that are typical of such conflict conditions”. He must have been truly blind. And we awarded him the Padma Bhushan on the 26th of January 2009. Another lesson in Hypocrisy. 

Lt. Gen. Staish Nambair’s interview on BBC Hardtalk

After reading this book, I realize why it is so easy for the Taliban to recruit people. Maass hoped that his reporting could make a difference i.e. persuade the US/NATO to intervene or the UN to act as its should. They didn’t until it was too late, and when they did it was a half hearted attempt. Would there have been no Taliban had the US attacked and suppressed the Serbian aggression?

By telling the story of Bosnia, Maass, doesn’t want to take us on a guilt trip called introspection, he merely reminds us that within resides a wild beast capable of inflicting the worst on its own kind.

Book review: Love Thy Neighbor – Peter Maass