crucial

I was in a bar a few weeks back, drunk, talking to some people and listening to this girl tell us about growing up in East Germany. Just to paint a picture: she was very attractive, blond, very lively and also a bit drunk. She mentioned the dolls that they used to have, an Eastern German version of the Barbie Doll and I accidentally joked something like "were the dolls named Helga ?" — she slapped me. Lightly, but to the point. Then she complained bitterly that people just didn't understand what its like to have grown up in the east.

I think I do understand, and I'll get to that in a moment. But first let me say that often we think we understand something but we don't unless we've really been through it. Deep seated things get into your body, your emotions, your language and your way of being. Its about Identity. I didn't understand the terrors of immigration until I went through it (and mine was mild and my chances very good). Getting a taste of it I could say that I can imagine. But I can't imagine really what its like to be African and trying to stay in Europe and really having no idea what to do if I got denied. You have no idea the panic that brings a man.

I want to take a stab at this: the DDR was pronounced dead, it was declared unfashionable, its furnishings ugly and laughable, its people (many of my current friends) were poorer and behind the times. And the Western world, still to this day—in particular on this day November 9th 2009 (Mauerfall Tag) says how wonderful it is that these poor bastards got their freedom to be like us, to shop at Karstadt and eat bananas. The relics of the East are diminished by calling it Ostalgie and shoved into a box marked "The Past".

So its read as something like "you can be like us now" ... but you AREN'T us. You are still "them", and we've declared your culture as dead so now you really have no country. You can't change who you are (the way you grew up, your memories, the way you talk), but we've declared your whole Ossi culture to be over with.

Welcome to the West.

The only thing you can do now is give up and gradually assimilate into the western capitalist culture. As new identities come forth, people take those up and eventually it changes. Perhaps try Football or Rave.

Its like the well dressed older brother came back from college and now teases his little brother constantly.

That is the message that is being read.

I don't think like that, mostly I'm not even that aware of the cultural war, or I don't realize its that important. Hence me not realizing that the Helga joke was really insensitive. (I know it wasn't funny. I was drunk, it was an offhand comment, OK ?) My American method is to use humor to dissolve things.

Can't wait for a unified Korea, eh ?