Germany - The Promised Land
Traveling through Europe in all conceivable ways is a regular, unexciting occurrence for me. I used that advantage of carefree traveling just two months ago vacationing in Italy. On my way back to Germany I travelled alone by train from Verona to Munich, a beautiful track through the Alps that lets you admire the mountain landscape. Rather distracting and not as beautiful were the proceedings taking place immediately around me inside of the train. I sat in a group of four seats, with one man next to me and another two directly across. The man next to me, a guy around the age of thirty, had helped me with my luggage earlier and was now sporadically conversing with me in English. I assumed he was Italian since he spoke the language fluently to the conductor. By the look of his fancy shoes, his small luggage, and the iPhone in his hand, I guessed he might have been traveling for business. The identities of the two young men (or maybe boys) across from me were far easier to pinpoint. Their clothes were worn out, their hair messy, and their English barely comprehensible. Plus, they were unable to understand the conductor when he told them they were sitting in the wrong wagon.
Once we left Italy, a few Austrian police officers boarded the train. They started making their way from the first to the last wagon of the train and asked to see all passengers’ passports, which was unbelievable to me since I had never been asked for identification by any officials while staying inside the Schengen area, the zone of Europe where you may travel across states’ borders as if they are non-existent. Before reaching the station in Innsbruck, the Austrian police officers came through our wagon.
They quickly examined my ID, thanked me in German, and then turned to the three men sitting with me. The one I had deemed Italian got up wordlessly, took his luggage, and joined the line of people that was led through the train by the police officers, calmly explaining that he did not own a passport or other identification. The other two men got up as well. As I had suspected, they were refugees trying to get from Italy to Germany, a land where they were to live in abundance and wealth--at least that is what they had been told.
For me, this scene of the Austrian officers leading the group of refugees--most of African origin--through that train like shepherds herding sheep created a disturbing image.
Within the last few years, refugee policy has become a strongly debated and highly sensitive topic in Germany. The media reports naval accidents near Lampedusa every other week; people drowning trying to make their way into a better, more peaceful life. Where I live, people are afraid that those coming to Germany will take their jobs and cost the state an enormous amount of money.
In the last few months there have been arson attacks on empty buildings that were to become shelters for refugees. Consistently, the vandals have been those who lack the capacity to imagine the horrors of fleeing one’s own home to undertake an exhausting, long, and dangerous journey to try to reach safety. This poses startling questions. Have so many Germans learned nothing from our history of xenophobia? Did we fail to witness the inconceivable yet horrifying results that such fear causes?
Luckily, there are many examples that this behavior is not the mainstream German sentiment. Germans are sheltering refugees in their own homes, voluntarily giving lessons in the German language, collecting and giving donations, and genuinely trying to help in any way possible. Different surveys broadcast by the media show that 67% of Germans are concerned about the arson attacks and concerned for the refugees themselves. Fifty-four percent of citizens in Germany believe that the state is able to handle the number of refugees in Germany appropriately, and 50% even believe we should accommodate more people searching for shelter.
Ultimately, however, the events I witnessed on the train remain everyday occurrences and show the ludicrousness of a polity that denigrates ordinary people derogative simply because they were born in another country, the “wrong” country. We just have to hope that the open-minded triumph over the close-minded and that Germany might one day really become the Promised Land--the heaven on earth that some truly believe it to be.
About the author
Sandra is currently working on her bachelor’s degree in Political and Social Studies in Würzburg, Germany. She loves traveling and experiencing different cultures and hopes to one day combine this enjoyment with her job. Right now she does so in her studies and will spend her next semester in Warsaw, Poland.