I Sleep in Hitler's Room (20 page)

I love the regional trains. Especially the one I’ve just boarded. It’s the old style, the one on which you can pull down the windows and let the fresh air of summer greet your face. Love it. Love it. Love it.

Happy like a child, I sit down and lower the window. Can’t wait for the ride to start. There aren’t many people in this car, about five altogether, and I can stretch. Fat people like to stretch.

The train is moving! The air is rushing in! I’m in heaven!

And then, immediately, there is a German Invasion.

First, a thirty-year old woman approaches. She asks me, in German-accented English, to please pull up the window. “There is too much draft!” she says. How did she know I speak English? She must have been trained in the German secret service. She’s so tough, so demanding, that I think it’s not really worth it to start World War III just for this. I offer a compromise: half opened, half closed. She says nothing and so I assume she agrees, and I close it halfway. One and one-half minutes later another German lady approaches. This one looks to be in her early twenties, fit and healthy, beautiful and athletic. She wants me to close the window because, she says, “it’s too cold.” Where was she born, in the Sahara Desert? Today is one of the hottest days of the year. What’s happening with her? She demands that I comply with her order.

I try the 50 percent formula again. She leaves, saying nothing. I pull up the window. Now I have it open only one quarter of the way. You would think everybody would be happy by now. No!

An older man, seems to be in his mid-sixties, approaches me. “Why are you doing this?!” he raises his voice at me.

Lebensraum
, I tell him.

It is a peaceful ride from here on.

World War III, when it starts, will start in Germany on a regional train. On a nice summer day, on a train from Nürnberg to Tübingen. All because of a window.

Somewhere between Nürnberg and Stuttgart, groups of people board. A group here, a group there. Young drinkers, for the most part. I watch them closely, diligently planning my war strategy in case they attack me for my one-quarter open window. They don’t act as individuals, these people. There’s something strange about them, though I can’t really tell what. It feels to me that it’s not a collection of individuals here; it’s more like a unit that has its own energy and rules, like a herd of sheep or a flock of birds. Here’s a group of men going to a concert, all of them wearing black T-shirts, and here’s another group of people, young men all as well, who discuss “tits” for over an hour and continuously drink beer.

A thought comes to me: These people, the Germans, my Germans, are group people.
Extreme
group people. Strangely, the young drinking creatures on this train hand me a key to a world I have been trying to understand for quite some time: The world of the German. Yes, how could I be so stupid: This is the
Verein
thing! They are “group” people, the Germans. They are clinging to each other, thinking with each other, and are each other. Whatever this means.

Yes!

Be they students in Munich, worshippers in churches, intellectuals in various disciplines, artists in various media, residents of the same villages: This is a
Verein
Country.

It’s as if something’s opened in my brain suddenly, giving me insight into much of what I witnessed in this land during my journey so far. Namely: Germans move together, walk together, celebrate together, act together, and think together.

Even in the media world, which is probably one of the most advanced in German society, they have those conferences, so they can think together.

Maybe Germany’s national symbol should be a lamb, not an eagle. I’m not trying to put anybody down; lambs are nice too. I like lambs. I really do.

I am in Tübingen. Good-bye Bavaria, hello Baden-Württemberg.

Tübingen has a church—sorry for bringing up churches again—that could be well categorized as philo-Semitic. It is known for, among other things, its dedication to the remembrance of the Holocaust. One of their activities, to cite an example, is the conducting of marches (
Marsch des Lebens
) in various locations in Germany in order to commemorate the Marches of Death, a Nazi practice that claimed thousands upon thousands of lives toward the end of World War II.

Don’t think that their emphasis on remembrance of the Holocaust is causing them to be a sad bunch of people. The opposite is true, if today is a fair example. They dance and they sing and they move and they shake for almost three hours and they don’t seem to get either tired or exhausted. Not a bit.

Yes, it’s another
Verein
.

The style here is very much American Evangelical. They jump in place, very cheerful, happy shmappy, they move and shake their bodies the way yeshiva students do in Israel. It’s not every day that you get to see German blonds shaking like ultra-Orthodox Jews. An interesting sight. The lyrics go something like: “Today is today, I don’t worry about tomorrow. Thank you, Lord.” Most of the people here are in their twenties and thirties. Pretty young bunch.

They also have a bookstore here, where they sell such titles as
How Children Learn to Believe
. On the stage, the flags of three nations are proudly displayed: Germany’s, Israel’s, and the United States’. This pretty much says it all: These people are not from Cuba.

Time for a little sermon. The Pastor talks at length against Western media, attacking the media’s criticism of Israel on the issue of the flotilla to Gaza. Tomorrow, he says, a delegation from the church will go to Israel, where they have rented an apartment for two weeks. What will they do there? Pray for the protection of Israel. He’ll be going as well.

At the entrance gate of this church, known as TOS, there is a sign proclaiming in big letters, “Free!” Meaning, I assume, come in and it won’t cost you a dime. Yet, money is raised here, via passing of the hat. Music follows. Happy people like to sing. Then, following the music, the pastor gives a speech about the high cost of the apartment in Israel. He urges the worshippers to help. Music comes up again. He leaves the stage. The worshippers, many of them, now come up to the stage and lay down euro notes, creating a nice Euro pile. Many twenties and fifties.

The pastor comes up again.

God, says the pastor, told him to go to Israel and pray to Him from there.

I don’t get it, really. If God and this pastor are already talking with each other, if there’s already a connection, why is God telling this pastor to go to Israel and pray to Him from there? If I talk to somebody on the phone and he tells me to go to Japan and finish the conversation from there, I’ll hang up.

I decide that I need to talk to this pastor eye-to-eye and see how he explains all this to me. His name is Jobst Bittner, and we sit down after the service for a quiet face-to-face interview. He tells me that his father was in North Africa during the war but that as a young man “he was strongly for Hitler. My mom was part of Bund Deutscher Mädchen” (or BDM, the female branch of Hitler Youth). I ask him if he knows why God is telling him to go to Israel instead of finishing the talk in Germany.

It takes him about an hour of talking and he still hasn’t given me an answer. I ask him what’s the problem, why can’t he give me a straight answer. He tells me to look for Jesus. I tell him to look for Muhammad. And that’s, more or less, where we end up.

He seems to be a guy driven to do good for his country and willing to spare no effort, but I don’t get him. I conclude: My Germans are sometimes extremely complex, no matter what their political views.

The soccer match between Germany and Australia is about to begin and the church offers a “Public Viewing” of it. My Germans want to see the game in a group. I join. And as the German team keeps scoring, the Jew-loving church goes wild. They sing:

Allee, allee, allee, allee. Eine strasse, viele baeume, ja das ist eine allee.

Wir wollen Tore sehen wir wollen Tore sehen, wir wollen, wir wollen Tore sehen.

Einer geht noch, einer geht noch rein, zwei wären besser drei müssen’s sein.

[basically: We want more goals.]

It’s 2–0 to Germany in the first half. The crowd is elated. Beer time. All Germans drink beer. Left, right, center. Doesn’t matter. And then it’s the second half. The German team keeps doing well and TOS fans keep screaming. Lines include: “Das war elegant!” and “Die Deutschen sind perfect!” (The Germans are perfect!) Flags suddenly appear as from nowhere; obviously the people here have been carrying flags in their bags just in case their team wins. Some paint their faces with the colors of the German flag. Others paint other parts of their bodies in the flag’s colors. Kisses, hugs, very loud sounds. My Germans are happy.

I leave them happy and walk to the town square.

Looks like a party, or an orgy, is going on. Drivers honk their horns all over, so happy are they. People dance in the marketplace after midnight. They have huge flags, my Germans. They kiss their fellow Germans. They dance wildly. The game ended 4–0 for the German team, and my Germans just can’t be any prouder. Some flags are much bigger, longer, and wider than their carriers. They want to cover themselves, and whoever is around them, with the flag.

Extreme people, my Germans, and they love their country. Deeply. They scream. From the top of their lungs, “Deutschland! Deutschland! Deutschland!” Over and over. They jump, and jump, and jump. Here’s one jumping over a traffic light. Three cops are watching, laughing. They are part of the happy crowd. Strangers hug and kiss each other, over and over again. Happy bunch, the Germans. Look at the size of the flag over there: fits two king-size beds.

It’s good to be German!

I go to bed and sleep calmly. When my Germans feel good, I feel good as well.

Once I’m on my feet again I go to meet Bruno Gebhart-Pietzsch, owner of a store that sells fair-trade coffee, fair-handled tea, philosophy books, bio drinks, and CDs such as
Kinder der Sonne
(Children of the sun). Bruno is also a member of the city council, representing the Green Party.

The Greens in the Rathaus of Tübingen are 35 percent, the largest percentage in the country, Bruno says proudly.

Who are more beautiful, Swabian women or Bavarian? I ask him.

The man is shocked, he simply cannot believe that what his ears have just heard is true. He’s stunned by the question.

A man, dressed like a member of the British Parliament, enters the store. He works in the library of the university, where one of the students left an empty bottle on the table. He has a question: Would Bruno like to have it?

I have a question: Is he trying to sell the bottle?

No, no! It’s just that empty bottles shouldn’t be thrown away. They must be properly recycled.

Righteous people, my Germans, and pretty extreme. Where else, on this planet, would you find people who care so much about an empty bottle, carrying it all over until they find a Green man who would know what to do with it? Germany!

To be honest, this righteousness starts scaring me. Righteous people can turn into animals in a second. Blind were the people who couldn’t see Nazism coming during the Weimar Republic. It wasn’t the bad economy that turned the country to Nazism; it was the Weimar people and their righteousness.

I know. How do I know? I’ve met many righteous people in my life. Not only Germans. Not one righteous man or woman ever “disappointed” me. When I stood in their way they turned into beasts in a matter of seconds.

Yes, many a historian would disagree with me on this. But I spent years studying German history, especially the Third Reich era, and this is my conclusion. I might be wrong, but that the others might be wrong is equally true.

Whichever it is, I write a note in my head: must go to Weimar.

I am not done with Bruno.

I ask my main man, Bruno: Who is smarter, the Swabians or the Bavarians?

Bruno, a PC man, won’t even entertain the thought of answering this.

You are very PC, I say to him. Were you always like this?

“I used to be Catholic but became very disappointed with it as I grew up.”

Is this store your new church?

He laughs, nods his head. Then says: “Maybe.”

Outside Bruno’s store is a tent for Ärzte ohne Grenzen (Doctors Without Borders). Righteous people as well. This is a city of the righteous, I soon see. Here I see Georg, a young man who sells donation subscriptions. You can, for example, authorize the No-Border doctors to take 10 or 160 euros from your bank account once a month. Jobst sells you eternity with God, Georg sells you righteousness with man. And the people of Tübingen buy.

How much are you getting paid to stand here, Georg?

“I do it because I believe it!”

How much, man? Give me a number!

“Five hundred fifty euros a week.”

My interviews done for the day, at least as far as I know, I walk about smoking my cigarettes. Done with one pack, I try to dispose of my empty cigarette box in the garbage can. But it’s not an easy task in this town, as I soon learn, when a local woman catches me in the act and sternly reminds me that anything that has a plastic cover, like my empty cigarette box, must be taken out, together with the silver wrapper inside, and be disposed of in the yellow bin, bitte! You cannot put the whole empty box in one bin, just like that. She stands next to me to watch me comply. I must first separate the parts of the empty box. Yes.

I’ll never live in Tübingen!

The Nazi Lady is leaving, and another woman is making her way in, a Muslim lady.

She is interesting. Really.

Did you ever see a woman with a burka making a call on her cell phone? You must take a look at this one. It’s a very complex operation, let me tell you, and it takes quite a few steps: Move the veil so that it doesn’t stick to your face but don’t reveal your face, look at numbers but don’t let light from outside in, click on the numbers but don’t let anybody see your fingers, then move the phone to your covered ears and make sure all the black textile doesn’t get in the way. Say Hallo, but don’t raise your voice. Men might get tempted.