Meet the Germans | Rory's Berlin Blog | Goethe-Institut

    Two hours’ drive west of Berlin, Wolfsburg is home to one of the most popular tourist destinations in Germany – and one of the world’s most jaw-droppingly-impressive automobile factories.



    Since its founding in 1938, some 40,000,000 Volkswagens have been manufactured in Wolfsburg.  The vast plant sprawls over 6.5 square kilometres.  Its roof area is the same size as Monaco.  Its press shop processes 1,500 metric tonnes of sheet metal every day.  Its state-of-the-art paint shop is the largest in Europe, and the first to use eco-friendly water-based paints.  And it is open to the public.

    Last week I visited Volkswagen’s remarkable Autostadt complex and joined one of its two-hour factory tours (available in either German or English).  A short boat cruise along the Mittelland Canal -- the longest artificial waterway in Germany – bought us to the Battersea Power Station-like KraftWerk.  Open carriage trains – pulled by special 250 h.p. Golfs – carried visitors into the heart of the factory, past some of its 5,000 employees and around the various assembly lines.  Robots moved like a thousand mechanical ballet dancers: positioning parts, performing spot and laser welds.  White-gloved workers inspected paint work.  Body and power train chassis were ‘married’.  The factory was clean, bright and relatively quiet, and produces about 800,000 vehicles every year.

    The Autostadt – a 28 hectares automotive theme park filled with stunning architecture, glass pavilions, 13 restaurants and the ZeitHaus, the world’s most visited car museum – was created as a place to deliver new VWs, as well as a ‘communications platform’ for the Volkswagen Group.  Rather than pick up their new car at a local dealer, customers can chose to elevate the delivery into a kind of automotive orgasm, travelling to Wolfsburg, visiting the pavilions, staying overnight at the luxurious on-site Ritz Carlton hotel and – above all – drooling in the temple-like Autostadt CustomerCenter over their car (with its odometer at that magic ‘0’).  Last year alone 175,893 vehicles were collected in this manner (that’s about 550 new vehicles every day, or about one third of all VWs sold in Germany).

    Customers are also able to enhance their ‘automotive experiences’ by driving All-Terrain Tracks, undertaking SafetyTraining, testing out a Golf blue-e-motion, or joining the Maritime PanoramaTour aboard the FGS Havelland.

    Unfortunately, even though many left-hand-drive VWs are made in the factory, British customers cannot take delivery of their new car in Wolfsburg due to incompatible tax regimes.  At present personal collection is only available to German, Austrian and Dutch clients.  But that shouldn’t dissuade one from visiting the Autostadt, as 25,000,000 people have done since the park opened in 2000.  



    Next week: the Autostadt itself.

    Does Angela Merkel tweet?  ‘So pleased to have solved the #Eurocrisis. Looking forward to solving it again next week.’  And ‘#Eurohorror fancy dress at the Chancellery tonight. I'm going as Voldemort.’



    For months now tweeters have been besotted with Chancellor Merkels’ fake Twitter account.  Back in May there was a virtual uproar when @Angela_D_Merkel was shut down (by persons unknown).  Now its creator has relaunched the delightful parody at @Queen_Europe.

    The new Angela Merkel (not) account, which has over 36,000 followers, proved especially popular during the Olympics.  On the day of the opening, Angela (not) tweeted ‘Heading to the London #OpeningCeremony. First world leader to ask me for money gets a discus in the face.’  During the wacky opening ceremony she wrote, ‘Upgraded London from Dodgy Bankers to Completely Bonkers.’  At the end of the Games she declared, ‘Thanks London, you did great. Give me a call in 8 years time when the money runs out.’

    The unnamed author of Angela Merkel (not) is said to have grown up in Brussels, hence has a cynical view of EU politics.  In his/her interview with Deutsche Welle, he/she said, ‘When you look at the characters coming out of Brussels like Herman Van Rompuy, Catherine Ashton, President Barroso to mention but a few, I think there is plenty of material there. There is room for plenty more parodies on Twitter.’

    As anyone can open a parody account (as long as it’s not malicious), it’s up to individual tweeters to decide if a site is – or is not – legitimate.  One of my favourite Angela Merkel (not) tweets is ‘Text from @MittRomney. Silvio keeps calling about the vacancy. Think he may have misunderstood the Vice part.’  As I was so amused I followed the @MittRomney link, under the impression that I’d be taken to another parody site.  The first tweet assured me that the author of the Romney page was a top-notch satirist.  It read, ‘Mr. President, take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago.’  Brilliant, I thought.  So close to the line.  You could almost believe that – in the heat of the moment – a politician might have uttered such a vapid inanity.  

    Then I read on. ‘In almost 4 years as president, @BarackObama hasn’t visited Israel. We need a leader who stands with our allies’ and ‘@BarackObama can’t run on his record. America deserves better than a president who will do anything to stay in power’.  The comments were opportunistic, inflammatory, even misleading.  And, by gum, they were written by the real Romney (or at least by his campaign team).  Even more worryingly, many Americans seem to believe them.

    Thankfully – in sceptical old Europe with its penchant for irony -- @Queen_Europe is not believed.  First, Angela Merkel (not)’s comments are hilarious and unguarded, and second she’s writing in English (every tweeter would have seen through Romney if he’d written in Hebrew, ‘@BarackObama לא ביקר בישראל. אנחנו צריכים מנהיג שעומד עם בעלות הברית שלנו’).



    At the end of the day, who cannot delight in imagining the Chancellor declaring during Wimbledon week, ‘For those asking, Wimbledon is nothing like the #Eurocrisis because in tennis the players actually have some balls’?  Or her asking British Prime Minister Cameron, ‘So David, I meant to ask how that whole standing up for the City of London thing worked out?’  Or her marking July 14th with the tweet, ‘It's #Bastille Day, marking a revolution against economic failure and absolute power. Sent @FHollande 50 Euros and his weekly instructions.’  

    Now I’m off to check out her ‘real’ facebook account.

    Berlin is a shocking and provocative city, yes?  People here live on the edge, redrawing social and artistic boundaries.  In its clubs, studios and communes, Berliners strive to build a new model for urban living.  True, or false?



    In fact over the last 70 years Berlin has grown to be a model for safe living.  No one in their right mind chose to live here in 1945, and during the decades of the Cold War, when West Berlin was surrounded by a hundred thousand Red Army soldiers, few folks wanted to settle in a city which might be vaporised by a surprise Soviet nuclear attack.

    But with the collapse of Communism, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, all that changed.  Techno activists stormed across the Spree to Ostkreuz and Friedrichshain, improvising new clubs in abandoned basements and warehouses, drawing together young people from both sides of the old divide. In the reunited city, clubbers danced beneath the death strip which had once separated them.  Berlin retained its edginess and sense of mystery – yet it became safe.

    Among the most changed and changing places was the Spreepark, once the only amusement park in the Communist East.  After 1989 the place hobbled along for about a decade before the owners declared themselves bankrupt and shipped its six biggest attractions to Peru. Two years later one of them was arrested for attempting to smuggle 180 kilos of cocaine back to Germany in the masts of the Flying Carpet Ride.

    On the green banks of the Spree, the abandoned and forgotten park became a magical wasteland, filled with overgrown goose boats, toppled concrete dinosaurs, a beached pirate ship and noisy frog colonies in the log flume ride.  As late as 2011 urban explorers and local graffiti artists scaled the fences to embark on nocturnal adventures.  The top thrill – apart from avoiding the thuggish Schöneweide security guards – was to ‘ride’ the rotting ferris wheel which turned idly in the breeze.  When the wind dropped, joy-riders could be stranded for hours high above Berlin.

    Earlier this year the park’s owners started running legal guided tours around the site.  Now urban explorers who want a thrill need take no greater risk than boarding the restored park train.

    In a way the Spreepark illustrates the greater changes taking place in central Berlin: vacant lots are vanishing, property prices are on the rise, investors are pouring cash into bricks and mortar.  The only threat that the Russians now pose is that they’ll buy up all the new, high-density ‘luxury’ developments.  At night the city’s streets are safer than they have ever been, perhaps safer than any other European capital.  Last weekend the Berliner Morgenpost trumpeted the town’s popularity and safety by declaring it to be a tourism ‘superpower’.



    Much like a funfair, this new Berlin wants the retain only an illusion of edginess, so as to add a frisson for residents and visitors alike.  Yet in historical terms, Berlin has never failed to shock the world – for better and worse.  Even as the capital grows safer, and more predictable, one can trust in its ability to surprise.

    Forty-three years ago today -- at the age of fourteen -- I created a country.  I ceded our summer cottage island from Canada, hoisted the national flag (sown on a pillow case by my mother) and declared Bumpalump to be a distinct entity.  Ottawa raised no objection (at least the Department of External Affairs didn’t reply to my declaration of independence).  No gunboat appeared on the horizon.  No UN peace keepers were airlifted in for conflict resolution sessions.  My family and our neighbours simply gathered at the waterside to sing Bumpalump Forever!, affirming our attachment to the place, and our wish to live together in peace and harmony (at least until the end of the holidays).



    On this auspicious day, it is worth reminding ourselves that the European Union is not much older than Bumpalump, and that monetary union is much, much younger. Hence, given the nuance and niceties of diplomatic protocol, I trust it will not be considered presumptuous of me – as Bumpalump’s serving Prime Minister since 1968 -- to propose a solution to the Euro crisis.

    Germany should leave the Euro.  Such a move would cause the Euro to collapse in value, giving the troubled economies of Greece, Spain and Italy the financial opportunity to stabilise themselves.  Their debt could be restructured.  Their exports would expand.  Foreigners would snatch up their investment properties, eager to buy at bargain prices.  Prosperity would return to southern Europe.

    Germany on the other hand would have a rough time.  At first.  The reintroduced Deutsche Mark would soar in value.  German products would become more expensive to foreigners and exports would collapse.  Industry would suffer, and need to reinvent itself (again).  But the trillions of Euros now pouring away to the edges of the Union could be redirected to finance that reinvention, giving Germany – and so all of Europe – a huge advantage in its competition for world market share.

    I should point out that I’m no economist.  The currency of my country, Bumpalump, is freshwater clam shells.  But even I know that clam shells – like the Euro – are not available in an endless supply.  I also know that far more important than the Euro is the preservation of the Union, and its remarkable accomplishments: the maintenance of peace between member states, and the free movement of people, goods and services across the continent.

    The Bumpalump Proposal – as I have dubbed this innovative (and totally batty) scheme – could save Europe, and keep Germany at its centre – without it being part of monetary union.  Like Britain.  If such an eventuality came to pass then -- on every August 9th -- people across continent would stand up and sing together Bumpalump Forever!, thanking their lucky stars that they were saved from having to trade in clam shells.



    Note: the views expressed in this post are those of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Bumplump only.  They are certainly not those of the Goethe-Institut, or of the government of Germany.  Yet.

    A Second World War U-boat has been found on the bottom of Labrador’s Churchill River, according to Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.  The report – which is yet to be confirmed -- has excited naval historians on both sides of the Atlantic as the fate of more than a dozen German submarines remains unknown to this day.  



    Most intriguingly, the wreck – which was discovered when the river was scanned recently for three missing local men – lies sixty miles away from the sea.  Why on earth was the submarine so far inland?  Labrador was strategically important during the Second World War, with nearby Goose Bay serving as a vital refuelling point for Europe-bound aircraft as well as an important US military base.  And not so long ago a battery-operated weather station was found elsewhere in Labrador decades after being left in there by another U-boat.

    But sixty miles is nothing to a Canadian.  So more interesting, perhaps, is last month’s sighting of a U-boat conning tower in Bowmanville, Ontario – 700 miles from the Atlantic Ocean.  In this sleepy town near Toronto, a U-505 seems to have surfaced in a local duck pond.

    Ian Baron, a retired Ontario Hydro employee and military history buff, built the life-size Bowmanville submarine from scrapyard junk.  He’d wanted to make a Mosquito bomber but – as he already has four replica warplanes – his wife Luverne insisted on a change.  On a visit to Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, Baron saw a real U-505 and decided to recreate the conning tower and upper gun deck for his Canadian b & b.

    Baron assembled the replica in his driveway from cast-off corrugated sheet metal.  The periscopes were made from old bowling pins and the hatch cover came from a dome-shaped barbecue.



    The U-boat was launched (i.e. towed by a tractor into his pond) last month by an enthusiastic band of locals including German-born Ruth Boynton and her ex-British Merchant Marine husband William Boynton.  A colour guard from the Bowmanville branch of the Royal Canadian Legion brought an air of reverence to the event for – as is well documented – 100,000 Allied seamen lost their lives because of the actions of U-boats in the North Atlantic during the War.

    Back in Ottawa, a German Embassy spokesman said – if the Churchill River wreck is proved to be a U-boat – that the discovery would be ‘sensational and unusual’.  Perhaps the ambassador should check out what has come to the surface in central Ontario?