Journal 1!!! June 16-June 25

 In my first week here, I have found Berlin to be nothing like I expected. For starters, I expected there to be a lot more bratwursts and a lot less Indian food, but I prefer Indian food more anyway. What I also found interesting is how similar Berlin is to Seattle. I think when coming to Berlin I had lots of expectations that the people loved Angela Merkel, and that many people did not want to talk about race or nationality, but in fact I have seen the exact opposite. I can go to bars and talk with people about Donald Trump and then have very heated conversations with people about Germany and how their country still has many discriminatory issues that the government still does not want to talk about. Conversations about race and nationality were not discouraged, but instead people were open about their opinions about the how they felt race impacted their politics and how the holocaust impacted the way they felt about being German. Hannah and I met a guy at a club who showed us around Kruezberg and brought his friend who works for the government in the refugee department (I forgot his exact job title, but he does important stuff). It was interesting to listen to these guy’s opinion on Angela Merkel and refugees in the country. The guy that worked for the government thought that the country could accept many more refugees, but his boss thought differently. I cannot remember his exact numbers, but he compared the number of Germans to the number of refugees by saying that if there are 80 people in a bar, adding one more person would not be noticeable. The guy that we met at the club talked with us about nationality and said that he did not mind talking about the subject because while his family was not apart of the Nazi regime, he did not believe Germany could learn from their mistakes if they didn’t talk about race and nationality. Hannah and I thought that was a very good point because as we learned in the presentation by Kristina Graaf, many Germans like to ignore their history because it makes them uncomfortable. This is similar to the United States because while we are more nationalistic, we still tend to ignore our history because we do not want to admit to the bad things we did (i.e. slavery).

While going to the bars, a few of us found a bar with local DJs and an afro-black community and I talked to the woman at the entrance of the bar, and she said she experienced similar types of discrimination in the U.S. that she experiences in Berlin. She had been to New York and Florida and she said Berlin was just as progressive as the big cities she went to. She told me she was born and grew up in the outskirts of Germany and noticed a lot of discrimination in that area, she said she noticed people would look at her in the town she grew up in, and no longer feels like people discriminate against her here and the community is very accepting. As I am writing this I feel like I should have asked her more questions because after listening to Sharon Otoo talk, she experiences similar discrimination that black women experience in the United States, and while on the outside, big cities look progressive when it comes to race, we still have very many issues. Sharon Otoo talked about my favorite conversation which analyzes how women are silenced and erased from history. We were so lucky to have her speak because after winning her award, she has become a very famous author. I know I have only been here for a week, but I expect this to be my favorite part of the whole trip. My favorite quote of hers is “your physics does not apply to boiling an egg,” and with my higher education I have learned so many times how people have tried to use their area of knowledge to tell me what to think when in fact, their area of knowledge does not apply to being a black woman. Anyway, off my tangent, I would be interested to know what sorts of discrimination she experiences in Berlin, because I cannot imagine there is nothing. I am also interested to know if she participates in any sort of activism for afro-Germans, and why or why not she decides to participate in these forms of activism.

Other cool people I talked to:

·      Two guys from Dublin, Ireland. One of the guys did not believe race was a factor in inequality, but rather people discriminated based on class

·      A woman about my parents age who is a school teacher that works with refugees. She works at a private school, and gets paid less than teacher that works in a public school. She also works with refugee students who said the biggest difference between Berlin and their home country was the family dynamic and the amount of poor people on the streets.

·      A Croatian dude who has lived in berlin for a few years.

·      A few kids from Hamburg that moved to in Berlin and their friend visiting from home.

·      Every person we have met in bars and clubs have been really interesting talk to because while I generally have the same opinions are these people, they have different perspectives than Americans and I love to see how Berlin and the U.S. is different.

            The community partner has also been awesome. I started at Die Gärtnier on Wednesday and Becca, Ying and I were able to jump right in and get to know the community. I love the space and how welcoming everyone is. I have already made a few friends who give me hugs when I enter the garden space. We got to try different foods and different teas, as well as talk with the people in the garden and learn about their mission and why many of the refugees are here in the garden. We went to a neighborhood festival on Saturday where we had good food and a dance class in the garden. I got to make a finder mold out of bees wax and watched Muhammed paint a ton of people’s faces, I don’t know how he chose what to paint, but everything he did was so beautiful! The best face painting I have ever seen. I love the space, and I look forward to going back the next four weeks.

 HOLY MOLY I almost forgot about the Maxim Gorki play. It was written by a refugee about stereotypes that Germans have about refugees, and while we learned about the play before hand, our whole group was a little concerned about the amount of laughing in the audience if they did not know who wrote the play. The majority of our class was taken aback by the play, and while I was not completely offended because I remembered who wrote the play, a lot of the stereotypes were hard to watch and even harder to listen to people laugh at. I laughed at it like I would laugh at It’s always sunny in Philadelphia. But in terms of the performance, the actors were great and I am glad I saw it.