A Final Letter from Germany

Well folks, it has been an interesting few weeks since my last update. I did finally get to the Balkans, and I have a tale or two to tell. Unfortunately I have not yet been able to add any photos of my most recent adventures in Serbia to Facebook, and I am not sure if I will be able to, for reasons I will explain below.

The sections of this last letter are as follows:

BIKE RIDE
WORK TERM REPORT
TRAVELLING TO BELGRADE
REFLECTIONS ON CULTURE
MY ARREST (ALMOST) AND OTHER EMBASSY EXCITEMENT
MORE TRAVEL AND THE TESLA MUSEUM
GOSPIC
CONCLUSION


BIKE RIDE

Well, one of the first adventures I went on since my last letter was actually a bike ride to a place called the Rheinfall in Switzerland a few weekends ago. This is a mighty waterfall on the Rhine River, and a few friends, acquaintances, and I biked over 65 km to get there and back. As you know, I have been biking to work all summer long, so this actually wasn't as much of a problem for me as it was for the two retirees that also came along, and accordingly we went at a fairly slow pace for most of the day. It was also more of a problem for the bike I was using, which creaks and rattles at the best of times, but really sounded like it was going through a series of painful death convulsions throughout the trip. Once we had seen the falls, eaten a good amount of swiss chocolate, and various dried meats, we were on our way back, when I had overshot a turn-off. Someone called me to come back, and I turned my bike around, and still in high gear, gave a hard power stroke to get going again, when *SNAP!* I felt something hit the back of my leg, and I found I wasn't going anywhere. Yes, indeed, my chain broke, finally putting the bike out of its misery, at least for the rest of the day. But you know what the really great thing was? I looked up at a sign at the cross roads that I missed, and saw that we were only 1.2 km from our destination. Talk about good luck!


WORK TERM REPORT

I have been compiling my Engineer in Training (or EIT) logs for the Co-op department, which are basically monthly summaries of work. I must say I am rather pleased that we do not have to pass in our entire daily notebooks, and to give you an idea why, here are some excerpts, taken word-for-word from my notebook:

--------------

"10 July, 2008

"Finished formatting and handed the report to Kerstin. Apparently Jorge has something for me to do...?

"11 July, 2008

"Catch up on other tasks while waiting for news fr. Jorge & Miguel.

"14 July, 2008

"More of the same.

"15 July, 2008

"Nothing really seems to be happening.

"16 July, 2008

"What am I supposed to be doing? Miguel has disappeared, and Jorge does not answer his e-mails."

--------------

By the way, Kerstin, Jorge, and Miguel are the people I worked with in the Product Management team, and "Catch up on other tasks" means "read CNN.com". But in any case, I think that I made up for this sort of tomfoolery when I actually had projects to work on, such as in this excerpt from a few days later:

--------------

"19 July, 2008 (Note that I am working on the weekend, bitchcakes.)

"Re-reading Kerstin's document shows..."

--------------


TRAVELLING TO BELGRADE

Well, as many of you know, Nikola Tesla is a great inspiration to me, and I have wanted to visit the Tesla museum in Belgrade, and Tesla's place of birth in Smiljan, Croatia for some time. So with just a week and a half left in Europe I finally made this "pilgrimage", despite everyone's best efforts to persuade me to go to Italy or France instead.

It was a long trip to Belgrade, and I split it up by stopping in Munich for an afternoon. I got to see the famous Deutsches Museum, which is a very large technical museum with topics ranging from the history of steam engines to aeronautics and astronomy, with countless exhibits of real pieces of (sometimes huge) technology, and for some reason, a resident glass blower. And there was the Hofbräuhaus, which was about as stereotypically German as any place I have ever seen. This was a huge restaurant and bar, with Lederhosen-wearing German girls serving armfulls of 1 Litre steins full of their home-brewed beer and pretzels wider than my outstretched hand (about 25 cm), all set to a live Polka band. Ah! What a time!

I left Munich late, hoping to sleep on the train, which I was able to do right up to Salzburg (about 2 hours from Munich), when a team of English backpackers invaded the little cabin where I was sleeping. I asked them if they were from Australia (as I am wont to do to the British), and they were generally quite nice, but they did prevent me from sleeping, which actually turned out to be a bit of a theme of my trip.

I arrived in Belgrade to the sight of gypsies living in little hovels between mountains of garbage, right next to the railway tracks. Like most Canadians, I have never seen real poverty before, and I was awestruck and dumbfounded at the naked, unshod children playing in this horrible place. In this age, in this country, I simply couldn't believe it; this was supposed to be Europe, the birthplace of Western culture, not some African poster-nation for UNICEF.


REFLECTIONS ON CULTURE

I have done a lot of reflecting on culture and society during my time here, and this really came to a head during this trip. For those of you who don't know, Serbia is a land of war and unrest. It was the front of a good amount of the fighting between the Turks and the Austrians in centuries past, and this bloody history has left its mark on its people. Just over a decade ago, there was a war that broke out between the states of the former Yugoslavia, and the Serbs (and especially their leader at the time, Karadzic) are accused of genociding a bunch of muslims, Bosnians and Croats. During my time there, I met a few self-proclaimed revolutionaries, and, always eager to understand both sides of an argument or conflict, I asked them what were their thoughts on Karadzic, the war, and the accusations of genocide. As many of you know, I have a certain pride in and derive a distinct pleasure from holding opinions that are counter to the majority, or even downright unpopular, so I entered this conversation with a open ears and an open mind, hoping to be persuaded. Their argument, however, actually made no sense, and it would not even benefit your understanding for me to transcribe it here. They also discussed the belligerence and agression of the Serbian people, a fact of which he was actually quite proud.

It is very curious how these attitudes and ideas can be passed from one generation to the next. I was walking through an old fortress in Belgrade, that had been partially turned into a military museum, when I happened across the most pitiful sight I have ever seen in my life. Hobbling through the park was a small, black dog with only three legs, what's more, only two of the legs seemed to be able to support his weight, I kid you not. This dog was literally hopping around, looking for scraps of food around garbage cans. I watched as it tried to relieve itself, lifting its bad leg it fell over. It took a few more tries before it was finally successful. After a while, contemplating whether I should put the poor thing out of its misery, I noticed another dog following along. A bitch, possibly the first dog's mate, teats bulging with milk, but no puppies around, that I could see. It was almost unbearable to behold. How can you help in a situation like this? What was this strange place where such a thing can happen? And of course those dogs are but a small, bizarre symptom of this cancer of war and agression that has both oppressed and captivated this small nation for generations. I am not a racist, but I am a culturist. Tesla, himself, once wrote that all thoughts can be traced to a root thought, and that there is a reason for every action that we humans perform. I would posit that this idea can be taken even further, and that all attitudes and behaviour can be traced to a root cause, and in the case of cultures, to collective historical experiences, passed both consciously and subconsciously from one generation to the next, in everything from the type of food that they eat to the way they interact with one another.

A while later, still in the park, I found myself in dire need of a toilet. I found a few old portable toilets, but when I opened the door, each one was in such a bad condition, broken, vandalized, and reeking with sun-rotted human waste, that I wouldn't set foot inside. I thought to myself that in Germany, this would never happen, and I was contemplating this observation, when it hit me. The answer to a question that I have been asked, and that I have been asking myself since I came to Germany nearly eight months ago. What makes German culture different? I mean fundamentally, what is the root cause of the way Germans treat each other and the way they live their lives? I believe I can sum in up in a single word, "respect". Respect for the self and others. Why does this behaviour founded on respect flourish in this culture? Perhaps the question better asked is "Why does it not flourish in other cultures?" and "Has it always been part of German culture historically?" These are difficult questions to answer. For one thing, I have been saying "German culture", but really much of Western European culture is quite similar, at least in the present day, and I believe this idea of respect is present in many other European cultures, as well. As for the other questions... well, you tell me.

Similarly, I have often wondered what defines American culture, and I believe I can wrap that up in a single word, too, "isolationism". Americans have been believers in isolationism since their very foundation, implicitly if not overtly, and I believe that this has played an immeasurable role in shaping their policies and world views, their lack of concern for global events, and even that thing so baffling to Europeans, a complete ignorance or at least nonchalance about climate change. In the second world war Americans were shown that isolationism is not only impractical, but actually foolish in our modern, highly globalized world. Unfortunately they took the wrong morals away from that little lesson so that today we have American military agression in the middle East, but a nation full of people who wouldn't be able to correctly choose between Iraq and North Korea on a map.


MY ARREST (ALMOST) AND OTHER EMBASSY EXCITEMENT

Speaking of the US, as some of you probably know, the US embassy in Belgrade was overrun by mobs and set on fire a few months ago when the US (along with most countries in the civillized world) officially recognized the Serbian break-away state of Kosovo. Well, I happened to pass the new embassy on the street, and I thought it would make an interesting photo opportunity, so I whipped out my trusty Nikon, and a few moments later was surrounded by armed guards, demanding that I hand over my camera. Now I'd just like to say that I hadn't shaved in a couple of weeks, but I definitely wasn't wearing a turban, nor did I have explosives hidden in my bookbag. I explaned that I was just a Canadian tourist, and meant no harm, but I was informed that my options were to surrender the film or to be arrested. I pondered this for a moment, and struck a deal with them. I explained that I already had over thirty photos on the film (some really good ones too), and I wasn't about to give it up, but what I would be willing to do was to open the back of the camera to expose the last couple of pictures I had taken. They agreed, and I did just that. Unfortunately I did it stupidly and I probably ended up ruining the entire film anyway, so for this grave transgression I may never forgive the United States government. What a bunch of silly bastards.

Just down the street a few scores of meters was the Canadian Embassy, and I thought it would be kind of cool to go in and have a look around. It turned out to be quite a nice building, actually, so I did go inside. In the entrance was a guard and a metal detector, pretty standard, I suppose, but for some reason I hadn't expected it. Nonetheless, I started shoveling spare change and bottle caps into the little tray, when I remembered that I had my (fairly large) pocket knife on me. Not knowing what the laws were for concealed weapons in Serbia, and not wanted to be threatened with another arrest, I embarassedly explained that I had changed my mind, and didn't want to in after all. Well, the guard impatiently asked "Why?" Not being the sort of person who would lie, even in a situation like that, I told him. He just said that I could leave the knife with him. "All right" I thought, handed it to him and walked through the metal detector. Damn! I forgot to take off my watch. I walked through one more time, and it beeped again. I must say I felt rather foolish at this point, but in any case he let me through. So there I was, thinking I was home-free, that I would be able to have a look around this building, see what an embassy is like, and talk to some fellow Canadians. Well, I was wrong. I was given a visitor card, and told that I would be able to speak to the consulate shortly.

"Wait, what?" I said, "No, I don't need to speak to anyone. Can I not just have a look around?"

The answer was a definitive "No."

"Alright," I said, "I think I'm just gonna go, and not waste anybody else's time."

"You can try, anyway," said the guard.

So the moral of those two stories is that embassies suck.


MORE TRAVEL AND THE TESLA MUSEUM

But Belgrade wasn't all belligerant radicals and unfriendly guards. The food really was as good as everyone said. For the equivalent of about 12 Canadian dollars, I got twice as much of a meal as I got in Munich the day before for about $30. It was a large deep-fried roll of meat, about 12 inches long and two-and-a-half inches wide, plus a half a loaf of bread, salad and a bunch of french fries, and of course some Serbian beer. Plus Belgrade has one of the highest PGPs of any city I've ever seen. At least 50, maybe even 75%. Incredible. I have a theory on why that is too, by the way. There were also some good street performers, a barbequed corn stand on every corner, and some really cool spraypaint artists. Curiously I found that in Serbia, and even more in Croatia, German seemed more prevalent than English. It was on the signs, and spoken by more people, and I would say maybe 80 – 90% of foreign licence plates had the German "D" on them. I suppose this makes perfect sense, given the Austro-Hungarian history of the region, nonetheless I was surprised, and quite pleased at being able to use my German proficiency in a place outside of Germany.

I would say that at about this time I was becoming quite travel weary. And not just from this trip, but from the eight months away from home, trying to do and see all that I could. There are only so many museums, castles, and cathedrals that a person can see in a year, and I think that I have approached that limit, if not surpassed it altogether. So I ended up just going to the Tesla museum, and wandering rather aimlessly through the city. And can you imagine the irony, that after travelling all that way just to see that one museum, there was some kind of tv filming taking place inside, and visitors could not enter! But I was told that it should be done in "about an hour", and that I should come back later. This happened a few times, actually, so that when I finally did get into the museum it was with three or four hours wasted. When I finally did get in, I was taken on a guided tour, and just when I thought things were getting started, I found out it was over. They had been doing renovations in the building and only a single room was open. Furthermore, once the tour was finished I had to hurry up and leave "at my earliest convenience" because the film crew was impatiently waiting to start filming again. Bah!


GOSPIC

I arrived in the tiny Gospic train station Thursday morning, and discovered that it was about 3 km from the centre of town, which was in turn about 7 km from my destination, Smiljan. There were no busses in this rural area, and no place for me to store my luggage, so I ended up walking around 30 km that day with a bookbag weighing probably 20 – 30 lbs, under the hot Mediterranean sun, but my trip was feeling more and more like a real pilgrimage with every step. Among other things, I passed by a little farmers market, with delicious fruit and beautiful straw hats, which I may never forgive myself for not buying. Gospic was the site of one of the more well-known massacres during the war last decade, and you can see a tragic history in the bombed-out houses, and around one home whose residents had been spared, there was still a barbed wire fence as a reminder of the fear and injustices dealt these people in years past. But the most amazing thing about this town was the rebuilding that was taking place. You could hardly look down any street without seeing a row of rough, bright red, brick houses newly standing up, or under construction. Yes, terrible things had happened here, but the people were moving forward, and continuing with their lives, and it was really great to see. There really is hope for the future of even this war-torn region, and its people who have suffered terrible abuses and injustices on both sides of these conflicts for countless generations.

When I finally got to the Tesla Memorial site, I was already sore and exhausted, but I was still excited to finally be there, after such a long trip. It was actually quite nice, the whole thing had been recently reconstructed, and it was really very professionally done, I must say, and I even learned a few things I hadn't known before. But after a few hours I had seen all there was to see, and it was time to start the journey back. Back to Gospic, back to Germany, and soon, back to Canada.

And that was pretty much it. That night I met a couple of "Canadians", a father and son, the father who was originally from Croatia, but had been living in Canada for many years until he finally got "the DP", as he called it. Well, whatever floats his boat, I guess. But most interestingly he gave me another view of the war of the past decade, which was very enlightening. Then I waited on a bench in the train station until 3 in the morning, and was entertained by some of the conductors, slept in the hallway of a train, missed a connection by something like 5 seconds, and generally had a miserable trip back home. And that brings us pretty much to today. Here I am sitting in my bedroom in Germany for one of the last times. I'll be leaving on the train in just three days. It's hard to believe it's finally over.


CONCLUSION

One of the biggest advantages we have as humans is not merely intelligence or the ability to create things, but the ability to communicate. We can pass on our knowledge and experiences so that we can learn from one another, and regardless of culture, we can build on the foundations of those who have gone before us, "dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants," as it were. So, dear reader, I have shared with you my experiences of the past eight months of my life. I sincerely thank you for taking the time to read these letters, and I encourage you to learn from my mistakes and successes and to go now and create your own experiences, form your own opinions, and write your own story.

I have only a few days left that I can tell you what tomorrow looks like, and it looks beautiful.


Sincerely,

Greg