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

    My ten-year-old son has left home, along with our neighbour’s six-year-old daughter.  Toddler twins (aged five) who live down the road have also gone AWOL. Children across Germany are packing their Lego rucksacks and Hello Kitty backpacks, deserting their parents and heading to the countryside.



    Germans worry about the standard of their education.  In the OECD’s world education league table, German schools languish in 15th place.  The country's top two universities, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg and Technische Universität München (TUM), are rated at a disappointing number 53 and 54 in the U.S. News Best Universities rankings, based on the QS World University Ranking.  The influential Bertelsmann Foundation has even gone so far as to declare that German schools are ‘only good in areas where they are unfair – and where they are fair, they are generally no good’.

    One area where German education excels is in developing ‘soft skills’.  Once a year every school-age child (as well as many a kindergarten kid) leaves home on a class trip.  These Klassenfahrten aren’t jolly afternoon jaunts to the seaside but rather – for children older than eight – five day (four night) excursions into the (sort of) unknown.  Popular destinations include the Alps, Sächsische Schweiz (Saxon Switzerland) and the beaches of the Baltic or North Sea.

    To educators, these annual trips are essential for both team-building and the development of an individual’s sense of personal responsibility.  In addition to class and academic teachers, most kids here benefit from a full-time Erzieher/in, or social skills teacher.   He or she is responsible for class cohesion and social responsibility as well as vaguely related subjects like nutrition, personal hygiene and ecological awareness.  The annual Klassenfahrt has long been perceived as a natural extension of this programme.



    All week two classes from my son’s school are in the hills south of Dresden at the Spukschloß Bahratal, climbing, abseiling, orienteering themselves in the woods and literally building bridges (across shallow gorges and between each other).  On Friday afternoon we expect him to return home to Berlin happy, dirty and totally exhausted.

    In Germany children take on responsibility at a much younger age than British children.  By the age of eight, most kids get themselves to school by foot, bicycle or U-Bahn.  First graders often travel in with an elder brother or sister.  But Britain’s cities are no more dangerous than those in Germany, so why in the UK do we worry and drive and molly-coddle our children to school?



    In some US cities, the evening television news still ends with the fear-inducing question, ‘Do You Know Where Your Children Are?’.  Today in Berlin I can answer that question.  My son is probably abseiling down a cliff face, with class friends and foes alike holding the safety line, scared out of his wits, and having the time of his life.

    Little Venice – or Tiefwerder – is a Berlin secret.  The one-time fishing village among the Havel reed beds lies fifteen minute’s drive – and a century’s time travel – away from the Brandenburg Gate.  In this leafy, watery enclave of 19th century ‘settler’s houses’ and sleepy weekend cottages, water laps at the foot of overgrown lawns.  Sunday gardeners snooze beneath their open newspapers.  Pike breed in the shallows.  It’s a place of remarkable quiet where almost no work seems to get done – apart from the dipping of paddles in the cool waters.



    Berlin’s many waterways are awash with paddling, puffing, tacking traffic for three season a year.  Luxurious Stern und Kreisschiffahrt tour ships ply between 80 landing points from the Berliner Dom to Potsdam and Köpenick.  BVG public ferries scoot across the Havel and Kleiner Müggelsee.  Bright white sailing boats skim over the Wannsee.  Heavy coal barges chug along the Hohenzollernkanal into Westhafen.  And on hot summer days an armada of small craft flood the central Landwehrkanal.

    In days gone by the Landwehrkanal – a six mile long urban canal which runs parallel to the Spree – was a popular spot for dumping both rubbish and corpses.  Murder victims were often found floating in its murky waters, most notable among them the Communist activist Rosa Luxemburg whose body was dropped through the ice in January 1919.  Today instead of corpses, the city waters abound with dinghies and inflatable rafts.  Families, friends and lovers drift alongside Paul-Linke-Ufer, enjoying the breeze, pulling ashore to picnic or restock their cool boxes.  Balconies along the canal often double as boathouses for canoes and windsurfboards.  

    But for me the loveliest waterways are in the Tiefwerder.  Last weekend we rented with friends a ‘Canadier’ canoe and a kayak from the friendly folks at Der Bootladen.  At the end of a leafy lane off Heerstrasse we cast off from their dock to idle along the narrow canals, pottering between lily pad beds and flotillas of ducks, drifting under huge weeping willows and foot bridges.  



    For a bit of excitement (and to increase the heart rate) we then joined the Havel to vie with vast barges and Stern und Kreisschiffahrt tour ships through the narrow Pichelssee channel.  Beyond its lighthouses the river opens into a lake, dotted with sailing boats and other pleasure craft.  Here the shore offers dozens of sandy beaches, and we paused on Schildhorn to picnic and swim.

(Come winter most of rivers and lakes become skating rings and, when the ice is thick enough, skaters speed around the Havel and along the Landwehrkanal.)

    Given the city’s history of division, it’s no surprise that Berlin also boasts an eastern Little Venice.  At the edge of the Großer Müggelsee, a second Klein-Venedig (or Neu-Venedig) is tucked away near Rahnsdorf S-Bahn station.  But whether in east or west, there are few better places in northern Europe to let than days drift away than on Berlin’s waterways.

    All my life I have been moved by aeroplanes, and every aircraft I’ve ever boarded, from a silver-bellied, three-finned Super Constellation to a rattling DC-3 workhorse and the Airbus 380, has thrilled me: the click of the seat belt, the start of engines, the surge of power, the hurtle down the runway, the anticipation of the miracle.



    No surprise then that this week I ventured to the ILA Berlin Air Show, founded in 1909 (in Frankfurt) and regarded as the world’s oldest aviation trade show.  The massive event – which opens to the public this coming weekend -- takes place at the new Berlin ExpoCenter, in the shadow of the capital’s future airport terminal, and features over 1,200 exhibitors from 46 countries.  Almost a quarter of a million visitors are expected during the show.

    Beyond the indoor displays of engines, landing gear and airborne wash basins, almost 300 aircraft lined the runway.  When it comes to flying machines I confess to being a bit of an anorak, and I delighted in gawping at a vast Emirates A380, an Airbus Military A400M (maximum payload: 37,000 kilos, or a couple of fire trucks), an EADS ‘Heritage Flight’ ME 109 and ME 262 (the world’s first jet) and a Royal Air Force Tornado (flown in for the weekend by No. 617 ‘Dambusters’ Squadron).  The Luftwaffe brought in a dozen aircraft while the USAF was represented by F-15s, F-16s and a huge four-engine C-17 Globemaster ‘flying warehouse’.  Elsewhere on the field were drones, dozens of helicopters, rescue aircraft and – it seemed – half the Romanian Air Force.

    As well as a commercial role (during the last ILA in 2010, Airbus alone received orders worth US$15.3 billion including the then-biggest order in civil aviation history on 32 additional Airbus A380 by Emirates), the show also serves a political purpose, hence the presence of Brits, French, Polish, Romanian, Russians and many others nationalities  To underline its importance, while I was drooling over a Mirage 2000N, Chancellor Angela Merkel helicoptered in for the afternoon (her coalition partner FDP leader Philipp Rösler came by car).  Surrounded by hundreds of particularly-serious businessmen and women (almost all of whom wore black designer suits), Merkel cut the ribbon to open the show, helped to launch the Lufthansa Boeing 747-8 ‘Brandenburg’, pressed the flesh at the German Armed Forces Pavilion and dropped by the ILA Space Pavilion ESA.  She paid particular attention to many small German – and European – exhibitors, admiring Liebherr landing gear, smiling over a Rolls-Royce engine and checking out the comfort of Recaro seats (although her advisors should have foreseen the clash of the eye-watering lime green upholstery with the Chancellor’s orange jacket).  No prize for guessing why she didn’t stop by the Russian S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia stand.



    I slipped away from the crush to drive a lunar lander, enjoy a currywurst (compliments of Boeing) and listen to a police band play jazz beside their rescue helicopter.



    Then in a kind of private ecstasy, I returned to the airfield to watch a Typhoon Eurofighter make a vertical climb and a Blackhawk helicopter turn on its nose as if it were tacked to a cloud.  Despite many of the machines serving a military purpose, it is nearly impossible not to be in awe of the inventiveness, technical brilliance and sheer wonder of modern aircraft.   As the Blackhawk pilot took an airborne bow, I recalled Plato’s words that ‘more than any other thing that pertains to the body,’ the wing ‘partakes of the nature of the divine.  Its natural function is to soar upwards and to carry that which is heavy up to the place where dwells the race of gods.’

    In July this year the Autostadt automotive theme park welcomed its 25,000,000 visitor.  Located two hours’ drive west of Berlin, it’s one of the most popular tourist destinations in Germany.  But apart from the stunning architecture, ‘brand’ pavilions, 13 restaurants and the renowned ZeitHaus, I’m convinced that many people visit because the Autostadt’s employees are among the happiest I’ve met in Germany.



    ZeitHaus, the world's most frequently-visited automotive museum, is the Autostadt’s top attraction.  Alongside its historical Volkswagen cars are ‘milestone’ vehicles like a 1912 Bugatti T15 – painted yellow by Ettore Bugatti for his wife who loved the colour of French post boxes, a forest green Benz ‘Velo Comfortable’ (1899 price: 200 Gold Marks), numerous Bentleys and an outrageously-finned 1959 Cadillac.

    Beyond the ZeitHaus, around the 28 hectares park, are eight ‘brand’ pavilions, one each for Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini, SEAT, Škoda and VW Commercial Vehicles.  The Premium Clubhouse – designed by British architect Stephen Williams – features a single Bugatti Veyron, its body work reworked in mirror glass by artist Olaf Nicolai.  The arts and artistic works are everywhere on the site, in the sculptures and mobiles, as well as in hugely popular recent performances by Sting and Peter Gabriel, Bejart Ballet Lausanne and Danza Contemporánea de Cuba.

    Visitors are also drawn to Wolfsburg to explore developments in vehicle design and technology in the CarDesign Studio, or to consider the environmental impact of Western lifestyles in Level Green – The Concept of Sustainability.  Children learn how to reduce their carbon footprint, design their own car and can take a driving test.  Every day some 500 car buyers collect their new vehicle at the CustomerCenter, the world’s largest vehicle delivery facility, and any visitor can see those cars in the two, soaring glass CarTowers, each of which holds 400 vehicles waiting for delivery.



    In the summer the Mittelland Canal is transformed into the ‘Cool Summer Island’, with beach chairs, chunky lifeguards and waitresses dressed in baby-doll pink.  In winter the chimneys above the VW power plant become the world’s tallest Advent candles, and visitors enjoy ice skating, festive light shows and a full-scale Christmas market.

    But for me, above all, the Autostadt employees’ smiles, and their willingness to help, will stay with me.  I’m not a motor enthusiast.  All I look for in a car is its ability to move forward.  But time and again in Wolfsburg I was struck by people’s remarkable pride in their product, and for the company itself.