Today, as Germany and the rest of the world celebrate the 25th anniversary of the ‘Fall of the Wall’ and we in Pakistan ‘celebrate’ the 137th birth anniversary of Allama Iqbal in the usual lackadaisical manner, I can’t help but think of the 8 days my wife and I spent in Berlin last July.
So smitten were we with Berlin and Berliners and the vibrancy and ebullience of the city that our initially planned three days’ stay stretched to 8 days without much thought. It was the allure of Amsterdam and the thought of our hosts expecting us there that finally made us leave.
The way we saw the celebration of life in Berlin becomes all the more magnificent when you see all that the Germans have had to endure during the last century. The intention here is not to go into that; it is common knowledge anyway, but what is most striking is the resilience the Germans have shown in the face of hardships and insolent might.
And just after 25 years of the collapse of ‘The Wall’, today, reunited Germany is the EU’s strongest economy with a $3.4 trillion GDP, 4th highest in the world.The open acceptance and celebration of human diversity in all forms struck us in all its glory as we explored Berlin. All one needed to own and become a part of the bustling metropolis was just to be there! Nothing else mattered.
It was co-existence at its best! No one cared who you were, what you were wearing or not wearing as long as you acted in a civil manner. The comfort and contentment that comes from the knowledge that truth and honesty prevail was pervasive and helped one feel greatly at ease. What you see is what you get! My wife was able to travel within the city on her own with comfort and security…something that makes her relatively uncomfortable even in her own Pakistan.
Another quality that impressed us was how everyone acted as if what he / she were doing was the most important thing in the world. The words of Martin Luther King come to mind: “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
Many instances of how this manifested in life in Berlin come to mind. During a visit to an aquarium my wife happened to ask the lady attendant, a member of the aquarium staff, a question about an exhibit. The lady left everything and proceeded to explain the answer to us in great detail, spending about 20 minutes with us. She did not have to do it and in any case not with that degree of indulgence but she did…and we will never forget that!
During a visit to the Berlin Zoo, we decided to have lunch in the Zoo Restaurant. It was a fast food, self service restaurant and we ordered some fried fish along with Salads. The scantily dressed, young cashier lady at the counter who had probably overheard us or simply took us to be Muslims, because of our attire and appearance, quickly pointed out in her rather inadequate English, that fish we had chosen had been fried in the same oil as pork sausages and if that was a problem we should get the other fish, which had not shared the same oil. Her concern for our religious beliefs is just one example of the empathy we experienced again and again while in Berlin.
During our stay in Berlin, I decided to buy a camera lens, simply because I had unexplainably lost one in Geneva. At a big electronics store I found the one I wanted for 250 Euros. Thought I would get it on the way back and when I went later to get it I discovered that its price had been hiked to 360 Euros. In answer to my distraught query, the salesman said prices had increased the same morning on the instruction of their head office. As I turned around to leave, he asked if I had been in earlier to see the lens. He remembered me from my last visit and said I could have it for the old, less price simply because that was the price it had on it when I had first seen it!
In another incident another salesman explained to us, of his own volition, how we could get a refund of any sales tax we had paid on our shopping anywhere in Europe. He said if we lived in another country it would be unfair as we could not benefit from the development work the tax would be spent on and so we were entitled to a refund when we left Europe. Left me speechless!
Another thing which we found amazing was the extremely efficient underground Metro system, ‘U Bahn’ and the public transport system. The clock-work running of the trains as well as buses was a fine example of the ‘German efficiency’ that has become proverbial but what was even more amazing was how there was no apparent check at all, none whatsoever, on whether U Bahn users were buying tickets or not. Tickets are conveniently and readily available through automatic machines and it is the responsibility of the commuter to buy his ticket before boarding a train, but we did not see any scrutiny at any level. The level of mutual trust was balmy!
We sensed an overwhelming pride among the nationals in being German and having a common national identity, irrespective of ethnicity and origin. The museums and monuments we visited made us very aware of this sense of ownership of even the bleakest times of their history. But there was a sense of acceptance of all calamities that had come their way and an urge to move on with lessons well-learned and echoing Invictus: ‘I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul’.
While visiting the Topography of Terror (Topographie des Terrors), an outdoor and indoor history museum in Berlin, which one million people visited in 2013 alone, I saw many with tears in their eyes, some sobbing uncontrollably as they saw the photographs and exhibits from the time of the Nazi rule.
Germany has a very well-thought out education system, which is different in many ways from the ones in other countries, but it produces high-performing students. The overwhelming majority of German students attend public schools but no matter what kind of school a student attends, he/she must complete at least nine years of education. Students are required to study, at minimum, one foreign language for at least five years.
Education in Germany is free as tuition fees are considered “socially unjust.” From this semester, all higher education is now free for both Germans and international students at universities across the country. I think one can easily trace the source of Germany’s penchant for progress, unity in diversity, perseverance and social justice and it would be no surprise if the trail leads to its education system and its 99 % literacy rate!
