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  • Amok Mama: Ten things I love about Germany

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Amok Mama: Ten things I love about Germany

Jacinta was going to say something about racism today, but then she realized she was tired of that and maybe it's a job for someone else for the time being. So here's a list instead.

So, I was going to write a blog-response to Frank A. Meyer’s racist propaganda piece in Cicero. Read it yourself – he hates foreigners, basically. And then I realized: what is there to say? There’s no debate to be had here: “We’re doing our best! Every Turkish fruit and veg shop owner is doing their very best! Please forgive us for not being good enough! Please, please, please! Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease! We’re so, so sorry about the thing with the Krankenschwester!”

Frank A. Meyer is a fucking Ausländer. The difference between him and the Ausländers he’s slagging off is that he has more money than them and he looks German. Someone obviously needs to translate the German constitution into Swiss German for him, for he hasn’t understood a word of it, mind. But I’m not going to. We need white Germans to protect us against evil like this. I’m not gonna sit here and beg people to notice that Ausländers are human. I’m not gonna sit here and beg people to notice that racism is evil. Meyer’s hatred of people like me is so huge, so ultimate, that anything I say will merely prove to him how inadequate people like me are.

You – white Germans – you have to protect us against people like him. And I don’t want to be melodramatic: people like Thilo Sarrazin and Frank A. Meyer, the racist elite – they are really fucking dangerous and we need your protection. You have to protect us. You have to stand up for us. There’s nothing we can say to prove to them that we’re human beings. That’s your job. They won’t listen to us. 

So, I spent the weekend fighting strangers on Facebook who thought there was something – some weird moralistic, intrinsically beautiful racist quality – in this crap that was worth defending. And it wasn’t long before a slightly unoriginal person came out with “If you don’t like living in Germany, why are you here?” Like as if people who dislike racism hate something so fundamental and so beautiful about Germany, that they must hate it here. Like as if the most beautiful thing about German culture is Beate Zschäpe’s contempt for Turkish people. I didn’t reply. I’m sick of having my “right” to live in Germany questioned every time I reject racism and white supremacy.

But there, are of course, some things I love about Germany:

1) Woyzeck It’s a play about an Ehrenmord, it’s brilliant. Woyzeck’s girlfriend has sex with a drum major so he murders her. He’s really poor and this snooty doctor makes him eat loads of peas. It’s a really good play. It’s as good as Hamlet or Miss Julie or Abigail’s Party or something

2) Poetry Slams and Lesebühnen And the way people argue about what’s better, like they’re totally fucking different when they’re both a fairly geeky way of spending a Saturday night out

3) That nobody owns a telly 

4) When men want to sleep with you – which doesn’t happen often enough – and then they try and be cool about it and they mix their verb order up You can always tell when German boys want to sleep with you because of the Satzbau of their sentences. When they don’t want to sleep with you, they go: “Ich mag schwimmen gehen” or “Wir könnten einen Taxi teilen” or “Ich hätte nichts dagegen” but when they want to sleep with you, they fuck up the verbs, they go: “Schwimmen gehen mag ich” or “Einen Taxi könnten wir teilen” or “Dagegen hätte ich nichts“. Then you know you’re in there. I think it’s coz they want you to fall into their beds like you’ve fallen into the sentence but it’s just a theory.

5) Free rice and salad (sometimes) at Indian restaurants Also, I know it doesn’t really taste like Indian but on the plus side you can take your six-month-old baby to eat there. Every cloud, ey.

6) That moment in Good Bye Lenin! when the dad goes “Al-Ex”? Byoodiful.

7) When German men say “mir meine Schuhe” I always want to sleep with everyone – within reason – who says “mir meine Schuhe“. 

8) Not having to wear make-up Saves a lot of time in the mornings

9) When Ossis and Wessis slag each other off and you don’t have a CLUE what they’re talking about The Ossis call the Wessis “superficial” and the Wessis call the Ossis lazy! It’s so hilarious. I seriously don’t know what the FUCK they’re going on about but I normally nod politely if they’re not too mean about it

10) That respectful, concentrated look on German people’s faces when they do ausländisches Tanzen Breakdancing, Bollywood, line-dancing. You can see the quiet respect in their eyes. It’s like they’re thinking: “Okay, we did the Holocaust, we better get this right.” It’s lovely.

Things I hate: The racism and my Stromrechnungen. That’s it. Sort it out, people.