Germany

Wrote this on Friday, finally got around to posting it today.

So, work took me to Germany today. I’ve been here before – the same town, even, Gutersloh – but I was only seventeen back then, and I flew by military transport to a British military base, and then back again. Not exactly immersed in German culture.

Europe’s big on standardisation, trying to get everyone following similar sets of rules for everything from border controls to allowable curvature of bananas (once upon a time). So it’s always slightly frustrating to get somewhere and realise that they don’t use three-point plugs for electricity. Everything here’s waiting for someone to plug a razor into it, it’s mental.

And then I think – but they only have one system. And it’s the same system I saw in Denmark last week, and in Poland a few months ago… but we use these plugs for razors, and other plugs for other electrical items. Maybe that’s mental.

Anyway, drove through (literally) a wind-farm on the way here from Dortmund. Technically they’re fantastic, of course, and eco-friendly. I keep reading reports from people saying that they’re a blight and an eyesore, and we shouldn’t have them – generally got the feeling they were nimbys, but I’d never seen a load of them in one place to say. There was one in Denmark, last week, actually, but only one. This was a genuine farm.

My instinct has always been to think of people who’d want to go see the Dutch windmills, but wouldn’t want to see these, much the same as they’d quite fancy a steam-railway past their back garden, but not a diesel electric one.

I was right, they look fantastic. Graceful, quiet, sleek style. No belching fumes, no constant scurrying activity to keep it fed, just silent service in steel.

And then, on the taxi ride in, there was a tank. A German tank. On a German military low-loader. Fair enough, you think, it’s Germany after all.

And yet I couldn’t help but think of German tanks plowing down the road, Russians and Americans and British on their heels, making headway towards the fall of Berlin. We’re three-hundred miles from Berlin, sixty years too late (fifty, if you’re French) and it’s being towed by a truck. My heartbeat went up, though, and although it wasn’t panic I was aware of the tank, in a way I’d not been aware of anything else since I’d landed.

It’s almost like I’ve been conditioned through child-hood to fear German war machinery – all those films as a kid, all the tales of war on the television and on video, from the Sullivans (which was Australian, after all) to Where Eagles Dare. I’ve always thought of myself as rational – I still do – but part of that has to be making sure that I’m aware of when sometimes things provoke an irrational response.

And the welcome from the Germans who are running the factory I’m visiting has put my mind to rest on that count – open, friendly, welcoming, and their English is so much better than my German.
Danke Schon, Deutschland. Tchuss.