In light of the attack by gunmen in Munich and amid fears of backlash against immigrants even as mixed reports emerge about the perpetrators and their possible neo-Nazi, anti-refugee leanings, an Indian recalls his time as a theatre studies student in the city.
Munich is a sanitised, picture-perfect city of rich people. It is a city which has risen from the ravages of the Second World War. It is a city with a chequered past with respect to the glories of the Nazi regime. Yet this city, though elitist to the core relative to the other German provinces, gave me, a brown Indian non-IT non-Mathematics theatre studies student, a home and happiness.
I reached Munich in May 2010, all aspirations and nervousness (secretly searching for abuse thrown at foreigners in European countries). My first four months were lonely, interspersed with the middle class joy of finding one-euro wine and beer at Aldi and the joys of meat.
In the sixth month, I attended a summer school. I was obnoxious and rude with my retorts and replies to questions, quite a far cry from the stereotypical stolid European behaviour. Yet, I made enduring friends. People who gradually became my reliable rocks for the tougher times in my life.
My experience, however, should not be taken as a standard for other international students in Germany. I had a landlady, the gorgeous Frau Dettl, who used to keep a slice of tiramisu and, more often than not, a bowl of meatballs for me.
This city gave me a lot. Despite being a greenhorn foreigner, I never faced any racial abuse or discrimination. It may have been because of the company I kept – university-going liberal arts students. But I came away with many stories that define how I look back at this beautiful city. Here are two.
2 am, walking back from the university office, I was stopped by the police.
P: “What are you doing at this hour?”
Me: “Walking back to my place”
P: “What’s your work?”
Me: “Theatre studies”
P: “Oh, wow. Please let us drop you home. Indien theatre, das ist schoen.”
And they talked about Tagore the entire trip back.
Another day, 3 pm, Stuttgart central station. Two foreigners board a bus. The bus continues on for quite a bit till the pair, after asking some elderly white Germans, realises that it’s a bus for a different direction. The entire bus full of people then proceeds to behave in an extremely ‘un-Germanly’ manner and stops the bus midway to guide these two hapless tourists back in the right direction.
(Dr Anirban Ghosh is a Research Fellow at the School of Cultural Texts and Records in Jadavpur University, Kolkata)
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