Beautiful Berlin (part 2)

There’s something wonderful about the toilet walls of Berlin bars. Not for our Teutonic friends barely legible marker pen scratchings about the size of someone’s genitals or errant phone numbers promising untold sexual pleasures. Maybe it’s that Berliners are all too acutely aware of history, or maybe it’s just a place where Berlin men take the time out a toilet break affords and reflect on the state of the world. Either way, it's always worth having a good look around the walls and ceiling as you're spending a pen- spending a cent in a Berlin bar's public toilet.

Having said that, I did have some difficulty with public lavs in Germany. The confusion lies in the names, you see: Herron (Gents), and Damen (Ladies). Here's the problem: Herron contains the word ‘Her’, and Damen contains the word ‘men’. Now, how is my booze-addled brain to cope with that as I lurched towards the toilets at some ungodly time in the evening/morning?

Anyway, here are a few of my favourites found at various times on the walls of Herron across Berlin. 

(See here for Beautiful Berlin, Part 1)

I really miss Berlin. See you soon, old friend.

If for no other reason...

'They put a helmet on your head and a rifle in your hands and send you off to kill your brother in his native land, and I say LAY YOUR WEAPONS DOWN.'

'We can't go on this way, oh no! It's really up to us now, comrades. We can make it happen...Gotta put an end to war today!'

  

                             

Of course. And why wouldn't you have pictures of Leon Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg going to the toilet, on the doors of your toilets?

'YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL.'

'Not so bad yerself.''

Love that someone actually replied, too. Just a great big love-in in this toilet.

'Give DARKNESS no chance.'

This reminds me of my old Hackney Green Party comrade who was seen on TV during the 2009 Copenhagen climate change summit using his bike as a shield/weapon as the Danish police were laying into protesters.

'The AfD is Racist.'

(AfD: Alternative for Deutschland - basically the German version of UKIP, only these bozos don't bother to cloak their latent racism.)

This wasn't a toilet wall, but including here in keeping with the spirit. Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg is the radical leftwing area of Berlin. The Greens basically run the show, representing this area in the Berlin Parliament.

'Nazis, you piss off! This is our quarter!'

'Football is when twenty-two men get behind a ball, and at the end, the Germans always win', Gary Lineker. Ahem...

Again, not from a toilet wall, but I love this, spotted in Dresden, and a lovely way to finish this post.

For more, see here for Beautiful Berlin, Part 1

Beautiful Berlin (part 1)

Part 1 of a probably regular series of just lovely things I've seen and taken a picture of in Berlin, from skylines to street art to interesting things found in bar toilets. And everything in between. Enjoy.

A day or two after Bowie returned to whatever fabulous planet he came from, the road where Bowie lived during his 3 year stay here was renamed. During his time here, he made 3 remarkable albums:  Low (1977), Heroes (1977), and Lodger (1979). 

My favourite story about Bowie's time in Berlin is about the inspiration behind those Heroes lyrics. The couple who 'kissed by the wall'  was Tony Visconti, his producer at the time, and backup singer Antonia Maass, who would kiss by the Berlin wall, not far from one of the the gun turrets ('the guns shot over our head'), in front of Bowie as he looked out of the Hansa Studio window during a smoke break.

Dear Rosa was executed by order of the ruling German social democrats in January 1919. Tools.

Her last known words are: '“Order prevails in Berlin!” You foolish lackeys! Your “order” is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will “rise up again, clashing its weapons,” and to your horror it will proclaim with trumpets blazing: I was, I am, I shall be!'

Yep. My English language college was on this very road.

You do get a better class of graffiti on the toilet walls in Berlin.

Spotted at a music festival last September when Merkel was starting to open up the German builders to Syrian refugees.

Wonderful murals on the wall of my local cafe. l-r John Lennon, Edward Snowden, Bob Marley (I think), not sure who that is, Amy Winehouse, and Malcolm X.

A flyer from Die Linke, the 'Left' party. Basically says 'Refugees welcome! Nazis out!' 

Interestingly, the Left party have their roots in the ruling party in the old Soviet East Germany. When the Wall came down, they regrouped, brought more lefty groups into a coalition, and relaunched. 

Spotted this very random but extraordinary scene in the Berlin suburbs on a train ride into the city. A big peace sign there, and to the left is a store mannequin wearing a Team Edward t-shirt. As in, Edward Snowden. Not bloody Twilight.

Just Like Starting Over: Berlin update, December 2015

Meet Ringo, over there.

He's my puppet alter ego – basically made up of all the pop cultural references that wove together my childhood. He talks much like Terry Jones' Mandy, Brian's mother from Life of Brian, only with a scouse accent, loves curries, and isn't even the best drummer in the Beatles.

Ringo is also my English teaching buddy.

Now, as many who have met me for even a few minutes knows, I really have no time for children. Odd little things with nothing interesting to say. I will very often walk in the polar opposite direction if I suspect that I'm likely to share some kind of public space with one of them. Horrible things. Like Agatha Trunchbull, I'm glad I never was one.

So, it may come as something of a surprise to learn that as of last week I'm teaching English now to small groups of Kindergarten children around Berlin. Well, me and Ringo are.

I had my first class in a Kindertagesstätte (literally, 'children's day place'. Berliners call Kitas what the rest of Germany calls Kindergartens) in deepest east Berlin. My pupils that night: four of these little autonomous people called Jerry, Frija, Davinia and little Lenn, the loon.

I'm working for OskarLearnt Englisch, a really wonderful little company that teaches German children English through play and games. Their teaching methods are so much fun, for both learner and teacher, and the company itself provides brilliant support for its teachers – something I'm learning isn't always the case with language centres. Their teachers meet once a month for a general chat, drink free beer, and provide mutual support, not just in teaching but, as we're mostly recent new arrivals from the old country, about the realities of making a life in Berlin.

I'm also teaching English to an amazing Italian-speaking Swiss chap via Skype twice a week, which never fails to be a learning experience for both of us. Pietro is an innovator and inventor, writes classical music on his piano, and is just an all-round good egg. His current project is creating super-efficient batteries that stores renewably-produced energy. So, obviously, me and him get on just fine.

Just this week I've also been hired by a company called Inlingua, a massive language training organisation with, by all account, 309 centres in 35 countries spread across 5 continents. Which is quite exciting. I met the head of teaching last week – a hippy from America who left the US in 2003 because of George Bush. Given my reasons for leaving the UK, we immediately had something in common :-)

Here's the update, in the proverbial:

As I wrote in an earlier blog, I'm working 30 minimum wage hours a week, from 8.00-14.00 every day, in the Kirondo warehouse. Even though it's minimum wage, this still pays my monthly rent, travel card and phone bill and more, and because I have a job that pays over 500Euros a month, it also pays for my health insurance.

I then have the rest of the afternoon and evening to dedicate to building my teaching career, which in just a few short weeks is showing green shoots of life.

The ambition, of course, is to teach enough through the week that allows me to jettison Kirondo.

To that end, English teaching isn't that lucrative a job in Berlin (seems that every British wonk here, with or without qualifications, is have a crack at it). Also, on top of the aforementioned monthly essentials, without steady employment I would suddenly have to pay my own health insurance, at an eye-watering 180 EUROS a month.

Freelancing

To build an ESL (English as a Second Language) career, one must be a self-employed Freelance teacher. Here's my website, if you're interested. 

You are then hired by various language organisations for a set teaching contract, signed between the customer and the language centre, either in the college itself with students or, more likely, onsite with the company or Kita that provides the students.

The average pay for an ESL teacher in Berlin is about 16 E/h, although Oskar Learnt Englisch pays 20 E/h. An ESL teacher can command more in other German cities; elsewhere in Germany, demand outstrips supply – every bugger wants comes to Berlin.

And, of course, as a freelance you need to pay your own tax, so remember to put away about 23% of everything you earn through teaching to pay the annual tax bill.

Taking all of that into account, I will need to work about 6 hours a day, Mon-Fri, teaching (that's not including traveling, prep and marking time, before you think about breaking out the invisible tiny violins). That's 120 hours of teaching a month, or 30 hours a week. So far, I'm teaching 5 hours a week.

So, you know, getting there.

On top of that I'm also living up to my usual life motto of 'In for a penny...', and have applied to be on the board of the English Language Teachers Association of Berlin and Brandenburg (ELTABB).

Starting over

It's a strange and surreal feeling, after 15 years in one career, to be entirely starting over: new career, new country, new language, new friends, new priorities, new direction – everything unknown and everything terrifying/exciting (funny how those two make such comfortable bedfellows).

In weaker moments, slaving away in the warehouse, I wonder what on earth I'm doing; away from my home and family, away from my friends and everything comfortable and familiar, away from a life and a mildly successful, modestly well-paid career that I'd spent the best part of two decades building, away from my beautiful, brilliant girlfriend...

But then, when I'm sitting on the U-Bahn and a German rock kid is telling me about the best indie clubs in the city, or drinking a beer in the Stadion An der Alter Försterei stands with the 1. FC Union Berlin Englisch crowd, or having adorable German kinders using me as a climbing frame while we're playing games, and I think, actually, 'Ich bin ein Berliner. F*ck yeah! I'm just starting over.'

Doomed to repeat

'Look Who's Back'

'Er ist Wieder Da' (Look Who's Back) - film review

As I wrote in an earlier post, a new comedy film in Germany has caused tremendous controversy and not a little soul-searching among the German people.

Er ist Wieder Da is the half film, half mocumentary-style adaptation of the 2012 bestselling German satirical novel about Adolf Hitler by Timur Vermes. The book was published in the UK as Look Who's Back.

Marketed very much as a comedy, the film uses the monster from Germany's past as a comedy tool with which to explore the German (and European) people's darkening attitudes to multiculturalism and immigration, pitching parallels with pre-fascist 1930s Germany with razor sharp clarity.

In 2011, Adolf Hitler wakes up in a small patch of scrubland in Berlin, with no memory of anything that happened after 1945. Initially unaware of the intervening years he determines to continue his plans for Europe to fruition, interpreting everything he sees in 2011 from a Nazi perspective (for instance, he assumes that Turks in Germany are an indicator of Karl Dönitz having persuaded Turkey to join the Axis) — and although everyone recognises him, nobody believes that he is Hitler; instead, they think he is either a comedian, or a method actor. He meets a documentary film-maker who sees comedy potential and seeks to cash in.

So far, so fish-out-of-water slapstick funny: Hitler discovers the internet and, when invited, searches Wikipedia for 'world domination'. He laments with a dog-breeder about how the German Shepherd eventually loses its identity when it reproduces with other breeds. He pours utter disdain on modern-day German politics, but sees hope in 'a bunch of oddballs called the Green Party', misintepreting their ecological policies for a desire to preserve the pure Germanic hinterland – although, 'of course, their rejection of atomic energy is absurd!'

A TV channel, realising the ratings potential of their new star, puts Hitler on as many of their shows and internet platforms as possible. Of course, this gives him access to millions of German viewers, allowing him to transmit his propaganda of German nationhood, Aryan purity and National Socialism in ways that, as he notes while sneering at the banality of daytime TV, Nazi propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels could barely dream of.

In a remarkable performance, actor Oliver Masucci plays Hitler dead straight from the opening scene, not as a comedy send-up, but as a shrewd and charismatic political operator and orator.

21^st Century Germany celebrates what it sees as a post-modern satirical performance on their TV, a ridiculous character designed to mock and traduce the national collective memory of Hitler. The videos of his angry rants become hugely successful on YouTube, and he achieves modern celebrity status as a performer. You can almost feel the German people laughing with relief at being given the chance to finally puncture the pomposity of the figurehead from their darkest history. “Look at how ridiculous he was! How did people ever fall for it all?”

But as the film goes on, the story begins to turn, pivoting darkly around Hitler, the politician. 

On a tour of Germany, filmed as a documentary, ordinary real-life Germans open their hearts to Hitler, often expressing prejudiced views about foreigners and immigrants and 'bearded men' (Muslims) in their country, complaining that if they ever say anything about it then they are labelled a racist. One man even suggests bringing back work camps for homeless immigrants.

What is remarkable here is that these views aren't coming from radicals or fringe lunatics, but from normal, middle class people simply confronted by a chap dressed as Hitler.

Our Hitler's determination to continue where he left off in 1945 sees him meet the genuine leaders of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany and the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany, has selfies taken with sieg heil-ing football fans, encouraging a physical attack on a young antifascist, and talks with one particular man who asks for the camera to be turned off before replying, 'If you were real, I would do anything for you.'

In one memorable (thankfully fictional) scene, Hitler is confronted by a terrified elderly Jewish woman, her fear and hatred and memories cutting through her dementia. 'It's just satire. It's comedy,' says her granddaughter, trying to calm her agitated grandmother. 'That's what everyone thought then, too,' replies the grandmother, 'until it was too late.'

Very slowly, a nicely-polished looking-glass turns to reflect a simmering and resentful Germany back at its modern, confident self.

Berliner Morgenpost, one of Berlin's major newspapers, says of the film, "A fake Hitler, a small moustache ... allowed insights into Germany's dark side." Hitler, it said, "in a figurative sense, never really left...The far-right ideology smoulders to this day.”

After a failed assassination attempt, Hitler looks his assailant, and the camera, in the eye and says, 'You can't kill me. I am a part of you. I am a part of all of you,' reminding the watching audience that Hitler, far from overthrowing the Government of the time and installing himself as Chancellor, was in fact democratically elected by the German people in 1933 on an explicit and well-publicised anti-Simitic Nazi manifesto.

The film was made in 2013/14, before the Syrian and Middle East refugee tragedy brought hundreds of thousands fleeing war and violence to Europe's borders. Following the public and political backlash to the crisis and the arrival of the refugees, the film seems prescient. 

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

The final, terrifying scene sent a cold chill straight down my spine, and should act as a call-to-arms for antifascists and right-thinking people everywhere: real-life, recent news footage of violent racist attacks, mass demonstrations across Europe against immigrants and asylum-seekers, huge far-right rallies, rightwing and Conservative political parties pushing anti-immigrant policies and using dangerous rhetoric to whip up xenophobia and fear - all shown against Hitler being driven through the streets, smiling at waving Berliners and, with some satisfaction, declares:

'I can work with this.'

You can't always get what you want

Look closely at my Berlin graph over there, the one with the 'x' axis labelled money and 'y' axis reality. See it? Now, you'll notice the graph line, declaring a gentle slope, running left to right, and downwards. Definitely down.

Since landing in Berlin about 8 weeks ago I've lived in a blissed-out state of perpetual hyper-reality, where everything through my gleeful eyes is exciting and immediate, drunkenly grinning at the shock of the new with stupid, childish awe. I've spent two months floating around the city ringed with a visceral golden glow. 

Not unlike the Ready Brek kid. In fact, exactly like the Ready Brek kid.

Me, on an average day in Berlin

But the money I begged, borrowed and saved to make the Great Escape is dwindling, pouring down the hungry drain of, mainly, booze and furniture! A cold, sharp, grey light is quickly eviscerating the fuzzy brilliance.

So, I really only had one terrible option left; find a job.

Now, my background and career (such that it is) has for the past decade been spent in political campaigning and community/union organising. So, a few weeks before moving, I emailed a bunch of excellent Berlin union and Green Party (die Grünen) folk, friends of friends, with a keen eye on seamlessly continuing my campaigning career (!) in my new, progressive home.

And there's the problem. Like someone peering over your shoulder and pointing out the black '10' on the red Queen, I feel a bit silly for only just realising. 

Whereas a lot of the British in Berlin are expanding stellar careers in online or digital technology, an industry where English is pretty much the sole, shared language, my background is in person-to-person campaigning, organising communities and engaging with the political process at a grassroots level.

And to organise people and communities, communication is pretty central; communication, ideally, without the need for confusing hand gestures and Google translate!

So, of course, my plan was completely unrealistic. Did I really think I could mooch on into Berlin, speaking not one word German, nor knowing one person, and expect a job in German politics to fall into my lap? Of course not. Well, maybe a little bit of me closed its eyes and wished really, really hard.

But, as part of the Berlin masterplan, in August 2014 I undertook a month-long intensive TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) course, in order to give me an actual skill to exploit once here.

So I arrived in Berlin, waving this TEFL qualification, clutched tightly in my little hand, wondering which of the many English teaching colleges in the city would be the lucky one to first offer me a job. But, bewilderingly, the queue for my teaching services is as remarkable in its absence as the offers from the Berlin political world.

The teaching career, I think, is going to take a while to build...

All this is a round-the-houses way of saying that last week I started my first part-time minimum wage job since I left casual employment over 10 years ago. You know. For a 'real' job!

My wonderful flatmate took great pity on me and set me to work in the warehouse of the children's clothing company he works for – Kirondo.

It ain't a bad job – there are certainly much worse out there– and I'm certainly very grateful. And, even working just 9-3, Monday to Friday, on minimum wage, I think can pretty much live quite comfortably in this cheapest of capital cities. 

(By the way, paying minimum wage really is your boss letting you know that if they could pay you less, they definitely would!)

Working part-time will also let me, in the afternoons, evenings and weekends, build my teaching work and experience, which is very much what I eventually would like to do in Berlin. 

Brian Roberts is my role model, here.

Also, importantly, if you earn over about 450 EURO a month here then your employer is legally obliged to pay your health insurance (no NHS here!).

So, in the end, here's the upshot: I work with lovely people in a decent enough job – where, importantly, not speaking German isn't much of an issue - that lets me listen to 6 hours of new albums or podcasts every shift, working part-time that gives me over half of each day to myself to write and play, pays for my health insurance, while allowing me to fairly comfortably live and booze in Berlin with consummate elegance and depravity. Which, ultimately, was why I moved here in the first place.

Turns out Jagger was right: you can't always get what you want, but, right now, I find I've got what I need.

Take it away, Mick.

They won't get me, I'm part of the Union

I'm very much a Merseyside boy, with split footballing loyalties. It can sometimes happen. I was raised a Liverpool fan; my earliest memories was going with my Dad to the Anfield Kop. But then I've been many more times to sit in the Cowsheds at my hometown team, Tranmere Rovers (the Wirral's finest!).

Last season Tranmere were relegated out of the league and into the Conference (now called the National League, which itself sounds a little like a sinister fascist political party.) So I've experienced life at both ends of the English football league.

My first trip to Stadion an der alten Försterei (Stadium near the old forester's house), the home of 1.FC Union Berlin, in the lower reaches of 2. Fußball-Bundesliga (2^nd division), reminded me of a heaving Anfield in full swing. 

And, like Liverpool, a cherished club that evokes dedicated passion from fans, 1.FC Union Berlin is so entwined with its fanbase that it demands devotion from its supporters. It is this history and community that attracted me when searching for a club to support in my new Berlin home.

Pre-1989, east of the Wall, Union was a hotbed of anti-Stasi and anti-Communist sedition, so much so that the old ground developed into a meeting point for regime critics. When Union had a free-kick, the spectators used to shout "Die Mauer muss weg" (“the wall has to fall”). Union's hated local rivals, BFC Dynamo, received financial support from the Ministry of State Security, and was very much the team of the east Berlin Soviet officials. Now there's a local rivalry that defines the term.

Nowadays, happily, some traditions still cling on. When Union have a corner, some in the crowd take out their keys and jingle them at the players. This is a nod to the team's nickname of Eisern Union (Iron Union) from the 1960s, derived from the name Schlosserjungs (Schlosser boys), working class employees of Schlosser, the colloquial name for small companies that carry out construction metal work.

As in Soviet times, Union's fans are legend, and they define the club; their legend is literally woven into the DNA of Union. In 2004, the club urgently needed £1.5m to avoid bankruptcy. The supporters stepped up and organised "Bleed for Union" where fans gave blood and forwarded the reimbursement to the club. And who then, four years later, worked free for 140,000 hours to physically rebuild their stadium.

Our love. Our team. Our pride. Our club

The club motto, writ large over the stands, sung with pride at every game, is a anthem to fall in love with: Unsere Liebe. Unsere Mannschaft. Unser Stolz. Unser Verein. Our love. Our team. Our pride. Our club.

The legendary punk singer Nina Hagen sings the club hymn, played before every game, firing up the crowd. Kind of a Half Man Half Biscuit for Union.

As each Union player is announced pre-game, the crowd roars 'Fußball- Gott' – football God!

There is a saying at Union that captures the spirit of the club perfectly: Sie gehen zum Fußball, gehen wir zu Union ('You go to the football, we go to Union!').

With the club and fans so intimately joined, it's no wonder that the atmosphere, at an average home game against a mid-table team, crackled.

During the game itself, four men in the main kop stand on podiums above the crowd with microphones and drums, leading the swaying, singing crowd.

And there's the key word – swaying. British football league crowds haven't swayed since the 80s. 80% of Union's ground, much like the majority of Germany's football grounds, is for standing fans. Well regulated, safe, secure standing fans: light years away from the pre-Taylor Report zoos found at British football grounds.

For £10 I watched a great match between two major-ish football league teams, stood the whole 90 minutes with fellow fans, sang, chatted, and swayed, and all with a beer in my hand. A cold beer. A cold German beer. Refreshed regularly in the stands, not missing a beat, by one of the nice chaps with beer kegs strapped to their backs.

The Germans have this football thing sorted. The UK could really learn a thing or two here.

The forest trail to the ground from the U-Bahn.
Pre-game BBQs are a common sight here. As is beer. 

Union lost on the day, giving us much to discuss as we melted into the forest, heading to the U-Bahn station.

But for most supporters, though, success in football is a distant abstract, a Gatsbian green light that only the lucky few ever reach. 

This is not why we support.

We pick a side because a football club is a beating heart that pumps blood to feed oxygen to its supporters. Without the oxygen of support, a club withers on the vine. 

Football, in its distilled, pure essence, away from TV rights squabbles, glittering baubles and devaluing corporate deals, is still about a community, a history, a tradition, a story, love. It's about that beating heart, and how strongly it pumps blood through its veins.

Union's heart beats loud, and the blood flows strong.

In the biggest shadow of all

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanjahu's recent idiocy, blaming the Jewish Holocaust not on the Nazis but on a former Palestinian leader, has forced Germany, and particular Chancellor Angela Merkel as the global representative, into a strange and awkward position.

Merkel is working with US Foreign Secretary John Kerry at the moment in attempts to end the latest round of violence in the Palestine/Israel conflict, so the Chancellor had to move quick to stamp out this particular fire before Netanjahu's words set the region even more aflame. 

Das Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas
(Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe), Berlin

Germany doesn't hide or fudge its responsibility for the Holocaust. So, in response to Netanjahu's screaming about Palestinians and the Holocaust making global headlines, the world looked to Germany.

And then, once everyone was looking , they had to basically say, 'That Holocaust. Yeah, that was definitely still us.'

In international diplomacy, Merkel's response was as admirably definite as it was solemn: “Germany abides by its responsibility for the Holocaust. We don’t see any reason to change our view of history.”

So button it, Benny big balls.

However, this event has highlighted a recurring symptom in Germany that I've noticed since arriving here. Aspects of the country's behaviour – its politics, its media, its citizens – is still partly informed by its role in World War II, 70-odd years ago.

Wilmersdorfer Witwen

Just a few days after arriving in Germany, my wonderful flatmate took me to see the play Linie 1 (with English subtitles projected on the walls). Written in the 80's, the play used the central U-Bahn (tube) line through the heart of west Berlin – the Orient Express to Kreuzberg - to explore the culture, politics and people of 1980s Bundesrepublik Deutschland (FRD) Berlin. It's a wonderful play, but the scene I remember most vividly is the hilarious Wilmerdorf Widows – Wilmersdorfer Witwen – song.

Die Wilmersdorfer Witwen

Four self-righteous widows, all played here for comic effect by male actors, have a go at the young heroin of the play, when a middle-aged lady intervenes. The widows insult the lady, whose father was a "socialist degenerate" and "red rat", who replies "Better a red rat than a brown blowfly".

The widows, declaring themselves "German nationalists" and a preference to be "brown" than "red", go on to sing about the advantages of the Third Reich, and that they are fighting "for purity and discipline, as fifty years ago". Their deceased husbands had high positions in the Nazi party and consequently for the rest of their lives pick up their fat government widower pensions.

It's an extremely funny performance (you can watch it below, sieg heils and all, but unfortunately I can't find any English subtitles anywhere online).

Linie 1 is from the 80s, but 30 years on it is still massively popular in Germany, with secondary school teachers regularly dragging their classes along to see it.

That a film like Linie 1, that ostensibly comments on modern-day Berlin (in the 1980s), should delve into the city's terrible past with Wilmersdorfer Witwen, and feel the need to poke fun at a lasting but marginal relic from that dark period, and that Wilmersdorfer Witwen is still so popular in 2015, I think speaks volumes about Germany's insecurities. 

Er ist Wieder Da

A new film came out in Germany a few weeks back simply called Er ist Wieder Da , or 'He's Back'. The film basically has Hitler returning to modern-day Berlin, bemused to find a peaceful multicultural city and a woman in charge of the country.

It's a satire, and even in German looks hilarious, but where people in most other countries I think would rightly laugh at the film and its extraordinary premise, in Germany it seems to have really touched a nerve and caused some controversy.

Our modern-day Hitler, for instance, meets real life members of the UKIP-style Alternative for Germany party and the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD), while the final scenes show news footage of far-right protests and a rally by the nasty PEGIDA movement (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident), a sort of EDL but without the charm.

As Berliner Morgenpost, one of Berlin's major newspapers, said, "A fake Hitler, a small moustache ... allowed insights into Germany's dark side." Hitler, it said, in a figurative sense, "never really left...The far-right ideology smoulders to this day and has found new forums... in the form of the Alternative for Germany and the PEGIDA movement.”

Indeed, one viewer, who gave her name as Angela, complained: 'It was all a bit too forced. The film is playing too hard on the fear about Nazi ideology, and they only picked out the worst sequences.' 

Tell me again about the better parts of Nazi-ism?

As the AFP reports

'In the real-life scenes, lead actor Oliver Masucci - replete with Hitler moustache and uniform -- is seen getting rousing receptions from ordinary people, many of whom pose for "selfies" with him.

'Tourists and football fans cheer the fake Hitler at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, in a Bavarian village and elsewhere, and elderly people pour their hearts out to him, often voicing extremist views.

'"Yes, bring back labour camps," says one citizen to the dictator.'

'Frau Merkel. Here is the people!'

PEGIDA

Speaking of which, according to reports, tens of thousands of people cheered at a PEGIDA-organised anti-refugee rally last week in Dresden when some tool with the microphone said 'It's a shame the concentration camps aren't up and running.'

It's the specificity of the language used here that is interesting. Above all the usual far-right brain-farts you get from these numpties, in Germany they casually and approvingly talk of specific places where millions of people were murdered.

Concentration camps? Really?

from the good, good people at Ballspielverein 
Borussia 09 eV Dortmund (Borussia Dortmund FC)

Refugee crisis

Even Germany's heroic response to the Syrian refugee crisis is haunted by World War II.

Willkommenskultur , a word really invented by the Government in essence to create an open and warm welcome that would attract skilled workers from other countries to Germany, has been hijacked and used as a much better application to encourage help from German citizens for the hundreds of thousands of refugees arriving here by the month.

According to a recent opinion poll commissioned by the TV channel ARD-DeutschlandTrend, a simply stunning 88% of Germans have donated clothes or money to refugees, or are planning to do so.

But, it's quietly acknowledged by Germans that their efforts in the crisis are, at least in a small part, a response to the events of the WWII.

Petra Bendel, of the Central Institute for Regional Research at Erlangen, in Bavaria: “German citizens know that the regulations of the Geneva Refugee Convention stem from the historical experience with Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust.”

The self-aware bank man

And finally, on a more personal note, I went to open a German bank account here in Berlin last week. The process involved me sitting down with a nice man from the bank and, over a cup of tea (German people, it's really not that funny to splash a little milk in a cup of tea!), go through the process.

Like a lot of Germans I've met since I arrived, he was mad keen to talk to me, in flawless English, about Britain, our culture and, particularly, in a 'are you people nuts?' sort of way, British politics. My man here brought up the 2017 UK referendum on EU membership.

'The EU is so important,' he said to me. 'If only to stop us invading France...'

That a stranger, a bank worker of all things, should want to talk to me about the war while opening a bank account is remarkable enough, but to be straight to the point about his country's role in invading their neighbours, is astounding. Could you ever imagine an Englishman saying how important the 1707 Acts of Union was because 'it stopped us from invading Scotland?'

I had absolutely no idea when I arrived, but am fast learning, that Germany is still a country where guilt over World War II and the Holocaust still has substantial influence in shaping the national discourse.

Of course, history like Germany's in WW2 should never be forgotten, and walking around Berlin it's clear that Germany goes to great lengths to ensure they, and we, never will. But examples like these make me wonder when, if ever, the German people, no matter what their age, will ever be able to live free of the biggest shadow of all.

UPDATE 28/10/2015: Here, at last, are the subtitled trailers for Er ist Wieder Da