Integrated

I went to my local Volkshochschule (VHS) yesterday to sign up for a grammar course and another language course next month (I've been taking a little break and very much enjoying it).

Part of the reason that I have been taking my break is that I have been waiting to hear the results of my B1/DTfZ. If I didn't pass, I would repeat the B1.2 and take the test again. I hadn't received my scores yet, so I decided to take a quick one day course in grammar while waiting. (ed. That is, one day a week.)

When I went in to discuss what course to take (all placement in the VHS for German requires a personal discussion, other courses can be registered for on line) the head told me that the scores should be in and they were.

I passed the reading and listening section with 98%, speaking with 91% and I just scraped by in the writing. That was a shock, because I thought that my speaking score would be much lower. With the writing, I had known that I had done badly: the test required a "half official letter" and I had used elements from an "official letter" by accident: huge no-no.

I haven't received the results back yet from the Orienteeringskurse exam, but I'll guess that will be 100%, so I can officially consider myself (and the German government also considers me) to be integrated. I used only 400 of the 600 hours offered to me at a subsidized cost (by the government- German language courses cost 1/2 of what other language courses such as French or Italian or Arabic cost) and none of the possible additional 300 hours. It's unfortunate that I can't use any of these hours to continue my studies, because I think I'll need to progress through at least C1.2 and do additional work in writing to actually be considered moderately literate and capable of getting a job if I look for one here in Germany, but I am also extremely grateful that Germany has provided such an easy and low cost path for me and all other incomers to become more integrated, especially in language skills. It amazes me that people pay 5-6 times the cost of going to the VHS to take lessons at private schools when the teachers at the VHS may be the same teachers they have as well, or far exceed their skills. My teachers have all been wonderful.

I think it's a pity that the US doesn't follow this model: I do believe that one should not be allowed, in ordinary circumstances, to be a permanent resident or a citizen without the requisite language skills. I also believe that once that decision is made, the country with such a belief should provide a path for immigrants to actually gain those skills. Here in Germany, it's not (in my case) much of a subsidy (although it is for the poor or jobless) — it's that the classes are readily available, that childcare is available for those who require it (I did not), that full-time and part-time, morning, afternoon and evening classes are available and that the path to mastery is clearly indicated and achievement is determined through testing, with the availability of additional help as needed.

Germany talks the talk and it walks the walk and I think that is just great.

Ever wondered why

certain areas of Berlin are overwhelmingly Turkish and poor? I didn't know that "temporary workers had been required to settle only in certain areas.

Immigration
Another wall has risen

Over 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, an invisible partition still divides the city, observes La Stampa: "South of the Bernauer Strasse begins the Mitte district with its health food shops and bobo cafés. To the north are Wedding and Brunnenviertel with their record unemployment levels and council housing inhabited by Turkish and Arab families.” So despite all the outraged reactions to Thilo Sarrazin’s incendiary remarks, the myth of multiculti Berlin is crumbling, revealing a reality of failed integration and ghettoisation. The authorities, who had hoped the “guest workers” would not remain for a long time in Germany, only allowed them to settle in certain neighbourhoods, such as Kreuzberg and Neukölln. "The result is that nowadays there are several areas where you can go shopping or go to the doctor’s without speaking a word of German.”

This is a personal Blog.

Since November. the velocity of my blogging has been extremely low.

I looked around again this year and saw Germany celebrating the day the wall opened without a nod at the real history of the day: that it's the anniversary of Kristallnacht.

As I saw blogger after blogger and newstory after newstory fail to mention the coincident dates (which were the reason that official German Reunification day was instead set in October), I became depressed.

To that I added the overwhelming rape apologism that I saw surrounding Roman Polanski's much-delayed arrest, including his support by people who I actually admired (at least one of whom, when shown facts, recanted that support).

I started reading books more. And I liked them more.

This is a personal blog. It's used as a vehicle for conveying information and pictures to my friends and family and to act as a diary (I have a notoriously bad memory and am awful at keeping print diaries). It's also an open hand to meet people in a strange land and people who have some of the same experiences that I do:

• Working professional who is now SAHM,
  
• Stranger in a strange land,
  
• Older person attempting to learn a new language, from necessity rather than desire
  
• New mom dealing with the ups and downs of having children in a strange land
  
• Negotiating the shoals of a school system unlike my own in a foreign language
• Missing my homeland and seeing my new and old home through foreign eyes
• Being Jewish in a country which was the architect and hands of the will to murder my people, and which succeeded to a vast extent in doing so and exploring my religion and its tradition and rituals as my family grows
• Living in Germany as the child of an Auschwitz survivor and the mother of German Jewish children and needing, at an age I feel too young, to explain these issues to them in the least traumatic way possible
  
• Living, on a daily basis, with the visible symbol of the antisemitism of Europe: the high walls and bulletproof gates of the schools, community gathering places and synagogues I frequent and the 24 hour police guard they require
• Being a woman and dealing with the intrinsic sexism and misogyny of Western culture, where white male privilege is so pervasive that a white Christian male can tell a Jewish female that her views on sexism and racism are just hysteria and in her mind
• Being the the parent of two small girls who are growing up in this society and how to strengthen them against it and prepare them for individuals who will tell them that their beliefs and experiences are invalid.
  

This is not a political blog nor an economics blog nor a literary blog. It is not a feminist blog nor a conservation blog nor a mommy blog.

This is my personal blog and I talk about all those things because they are part of who am I am. Don't read and don't comment if these issues don't speak to you. I have reached a place in my life- a place of calmness- where the ad hominem attack hits the wastebasket and the individual who launches it is removed from my sphere of acquaintances. And that is how it should be.

I am not dependent physically, emotionally or financially on those strangers or acquaintances who pass through my blog gates. I enjoy meeting others, but it's a voluntary activity on both parts.

This is my safe space and I will keep it that way.

*(And for those who care, this is a wonderfully succinct link to Feminism 101 FAQ over at Shakesville).

Life as an ex-pat, SAHM, and functional illiterate.

I was reading Erin's blog, Uberall: Live, Eat, Travel (please note that she actually has an umlaut, as compared to me- I haven't figured out where it is yet;)) post commemorating her first year as an ex-pat and it made me want to think about my own experience in relating to hers.

The last year has been interesting in many ways as well as tough.

I have had to adjust to being a stay at home mom, to being in a foreign country, and to being in a country where I knew only how to say "Ja", "Nein" and "Wo sind die Toilettes?". When we arrived here, lugging our cat, two kids, 6 suitcases, two car seats and two strollers, we arrived in the rain. It then rained for the next 135 days. It wasn't easy.

The biggest struggle hasn't been my inability to read or write German, or even that I speak it at a 2-3 year old level: it has been getting used to staying home with children, and more so, with no car. The attempt to do things with the kids in a constantly raining climate has been a struggle. I am so grateful for Kita and for the teachers there and the other children who help my girls get their ya-yas out that I can't adequately express it. The State-subsidized and controlled system of child care and education has allowed me to take German classes and to begin to be able to manage life in Germany. It has given my 5 year old fluency in German (and a vocabulary that surpasses my own) and given my younger both German as her first language and a great deal of self-confidence.

Without a car and without either an adequate refrigerator or freezer, I need to shop on average every other day. I am finally able to find the different food stuffs that I need, although I wind up visiting 4-5 separate locations in a week to do so. Note: Arab and Asian markets are the place to find non-pork and spicy foodstuffs.

We are finally settled in a permanent apartment and although we aren't quite finished (no art or paint colors on the walls, missing 2 lights) we are basically moved in.

After we decided to stay in Berlin, I started to look for a "social scene" and I'm in the process of finding a place to fit in and meet people with similar interests: book clubs, blogs, Mom's groups and women's groups.

We are deep in school options for my oldest and German class starts again next week.

So the worst of it is over. At least the kids are settled and we are familiar with the area. I do envy those childless ex-pats who can travel and visit all the places so easily accessible in Europe, but we will be around for a while. Hopefully we will have a chance to get around a bit. And it is amazing to see how well a functional illiterate (who does not need a job) can survive in a foreign society. Although I do miss reading a local paper.

(Amusingly enough I also haven't figured out my handy voicemail, and like all the other ex-pats I know, can only see "voicemail" if sent by SMS. It's an oddly amusing theme, speaking to the general level of German customer service as well as, in particular, the level of its communications corporations.)

Recovering from the Weekend

It's been a hectic weekend of socializing and frivolity: at least for me;)

On Saturday, CN Heidelburgian was in town with some friends and Snooker and I met up with them at Cafe Einstein to have some Kaffee and Kuchen and to chat. Between us, none of us had Kaffee (we stuck to tea, hot chocolate and, in my case, a citron presse) but we all indulged in Kuchen. Kasekuchen, Apfelstrudel and Sacher torte were our picks and we all heartily enjoyed.

We then spent several hours wandering about being tourists, with a stop at the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe and Topography of Terror. Snooker was our native guide and told us about some of the many interesting buildings and areas that we passed. One of CN's friends was a photographer (it was interesting to watch him compose shots) and they are both from my hometown so it was fun to discuss thing. They had just eaten at a restaurant I read a review of, WD-50, and I think that I should try to book a meal there next time we are in NY. We also met up with Snooker's spouse, N and enjoyed some friendly chat before she needed to be off to another meeting.

Afterwards, everyone went off in the evening to follow Snooker to what she described as a great doner place
and I had to rush home for my next social engagement.

There was a Mum's Night Out and I was finally going to go to one of these things. The German had fed the kids and I spent some time playing and then changed and rushed off. It's amazing how I can manage to be late even when I'm not traveling with the kids, but I guess the impetus of having to rush everyone along isn't there.

We were a group of 10 moms and we had a lot of fun chatting and checking out Bond, a realtively new restaurant/lounge by Savignyplatz. The conversation was intriguing, the women were from a wide range of countries and backgrounds, and the food was adequate. We had an amuse bouche of curried apple spume and then a varied bunch of main dishes. One woman said the fries were fabulous. I had a bite of another diner's "Brownie" dessert and I found it to be more like a Viennese flourless chocolate cake: not to my taste, but interesting. We wound up chatting until almost midnight and then had the usual "chase the waiter down". At times I really appreciate the German concept of almost never interacting with customers (although the waiters here were quite attentive for Berlin) and never expecting a table to actually turn over. I was home by 1 am.

On Sunday we had a busy day. First, after a late breakfast the German took the kids to the playground and after doing some errands I joined them and we went to a Sukkoth celebration. It was lots of fun and the amusement included a fire eater. I hope to include pictures later. We ran into some folks from kita there and spent the usual time discussing what our plans are for Grundschule next year. Thing1 had her face painted and we ate pizza and cotton candy.

Then home and I needed to change, grab a bottle of wine and be off to my "serious" book club. I belong to two and one is quite challenging and run in a strictly orderly way, reading only "serious and literary" works, while the other tends more to the frothy- although we have some very interesting books coming up in the next few months- and some folks actually come for the socialiation not the book discussion. I enjoy them both but the serios one tends to stretch my reading muscles more. I got there late, as usual, but enjoyed the discussion of class/friendship vs. the intimacy of the downtrodden/analogy to slavery of The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar.

This club has a well-defined end time and at that point about eight of us wandered off for a drink and a chat. The men and the younger ones toddled off by 11 and two other women and I stayed to chat about life until 1 am. It was an interesting triangle of a Scot, an American and a German with our differing views and attitudes. H and I shared a cab to the Mehringdam U-Bahn when we noticed that it was closed for the night. Good gracious. I had forgotten that transit systems actually stop in some cities. So I dropped H off and then took the cab home. It was very reasonable compared to NY prices and I'm glad that I did. It was getting quite chilly last night and even if I had found the night bus stop they run only every 30 minutes. As it was, I got home past 2 am.

And that was my weekend of gay frivolity. I think I have done more socializing in the last 30 days (including my non-blogged about, but one day I will finish those posts, WEBMU-2008) than I have done in the previous 12 months. I need a rest.

It is interesting though that only since we actually decided to stay here in Berlin (rather than live in the limbo of constant extensions) that I have really felt the need to actually develop some type of social network. I'm curious to see whether I can actually meet and be friendly with Germans: I'm not certain whether the period of time that we are expecting to be here makes it "worthwhile" for Germans to really get to know us.

Last night I was mobbed.

(Photo from visitberlin.de)

On Saturday we joined a walking tour around the Schloss Charlottenburg area. It was nice, but it broke half way through for a brewery stop. After the stop extended 45 minutes and seemed like it would last longer, we said good-bye and set off to retrace our steps to a pleasant playground that we had passed by.

One of the interesting things I find here in Berlin is that, just as it was much later in the summer when the sun set, now that we are heading into winter the sun is setting earlier and the time is getting earlier far more quickly than it does in New York, where I am from.

So dusk started to set in. I looked around and realized that the playground had become more crowded. When we entered, there were other parents with small children. All except one other child and her mother were Arab, but I really hadn't thought anything of the matter: it's not something I think about. There were women in full burqas, which I had noticed, but not cared about. However, now the playground had become much more crowded and the crowd was of much older children. To my eyes, they seemed to range up to 16, many of them groups of boys, and all of them Arab. Or, as we are in Berlin, I would assume Turkish. I still didn't care, until I saw an older boy running toward a group swinging what looked to be a baseball bat at the other children, some of whom scattered.

I had been taking pictures of my children, and I swung around and took a picture of the boy, thinking that he might be about to attack one of the other children and that I might need to call the police. Then I put my camera down and watched them to see if it was play or violence.

All of a sudden, a girl, about 14, came over with 5 or 6 friends, male and female. She started to yell at me in German. She and her friends started to push into my personal space. More of her friends followed her and soon surrounded me in a 3/4 circle (one of my children was behind me on a piece of play equipment, the other with the German across the playground, not yet noticing what was going on). The girl was asking why I had taken the photo and then demanding that I erase it. The boy, who was holding a broken chair leg (not the baseball bat that I had thought it- far more reassuring, of course) was in the group around me of twenty children, many of whom were taller than I. When I explained my concern about the boy swinging a stick at other children, she said that was her brother, it was all in fun, and I had better erase that picture and do it right now, while she was watching.

The German thinks that I have a defective fear reaction, especially because I had the kids with us. The truth is, I was just really angry. I was angry at their attempt to frighten me and to be in my space and to intimidate me. I should have been afraid, but I wasn't. Although I said that I would erase the photos, when the girl kept yelling and getting closer (although she never actually touched me) I stopped working on my camera (not an easy erase, a DSLR) and started speaking back. I whipped out my handy and suggested that perhaps we should call the Polizei immediately. Thing1 had started to notice and be concerned about the crowd, had stopped playing, and at this point was holding on to my leg and asking what the problem was. The boy holding the chair leg, who had been looking at the ground the whole time, at this point was telling the girl that she was frightening my child and to calm down.

The girl didn't back off, but the German and another older woman were quickly there (the German on the outside of the ring of people- he said he just had noticed this ring and walked over to see what was happening and there I was- inside it) and the older, ethnic German woman right next to me. The German waded in and started asking what the trouble was, the older German woman was talking a mile a minute. Seems the boy (and the girl) were her children, as was the little girl my Thing1 had been playing with, and the chair leg wielding was just a joke and everything was fine. But the older woman told Ernst that it was verboten to take pictures. He just agreed with everything, backed us out, put the girls in the stroller and we started to leave.

Of course, it's not true. It is not illegal to take pictures of a crime in action (and threatened assault is, of course, a crime, as is wielding blunt objects at others). It wasn't a religious problem, because none of the children involved were dressed modestly or concealing their faces. What it was was an example of the non-integration of Turks in Germany. This is why there is ill-will to Turks in Berlin (which has the largest- over 10%, or 350,000 people, foreign and Turkish population in Germany). This is a problem of lack of integration.

Before this incident, I wondered why we had been told not to look at apartments in this area: it looked very nice to me. Another blogger in Berlin lives three blocks from this playground, and when visiting them I had never felt unsafe. But now I would never go to this playground toward dusk, or after the schools let out. Before this, I had wondered at the lack of acceptance of Turks here. Now I understand where they are coming from. I still believe that the racism I see and hear is wrong, but I also understand the fear that Germans feel and we all know that fear translates oh, so easily, to hatred.

And I will never, never, allow my children to be in danger in this way again (if I can prevent it). It seems so strange to be so naive at my age, but life is a constant learning experience.

Integration

and how Germany handles it.


Currently (and funds for the program have just been increased), a new-comer has a legal right to 600 hours of language and cultural courses at the cost of 1E an hour. In addition, because I am enrolled in a language course I am entitled to daycare/kindergarten for the Things (which is otherwise available from 4 and up through the state or without subsidization). Each state has its own department in charge of Newcomers (Anfangers) and the services are available in multiple languages. There are Volkshochschules everywhere which hold not only language courses for German but also teach many other languages and skills, all available at very low rates. The German will be contacting the Alien Registration Departments that handle the area around his parents nd Düsseldorf this week to get information on when classes will be starting in those areas, so that we can arrange our moves around classes, if possible.

Right now I’m taking German Mondays through Thursdays from 9:30-1. The kids are picked up by shuttle after 8(when they aren’t sick!) and dropped off Monday through Thursday before 3.


On Fridays they come home at noon.