While there I started talking to three Germans. A rather dull conversation of the general: what do you do, how long have you lived here and the sort, was changed into a very interesting discussion. The whole scenario went a bit like this: A girl with a lip piercing asked me Where are you from. I go Slovenia. Aaaaa, ok. Then she asks the rest And you guys? Upon which they answer Germany. And she: Oh god, you're everywhere, Germans, aren't you?. I need to point out that the girl was from Austia. LOL of all the countries. But fine. This trigered one of the Germans (the girl whose name escapes me) to ask me, why do all foreigners hate Germany and Germans. A question I was a bit astonished by... I was silent for a while and in the mean time she uttered another thought: Why do we still have to pay for the things that happened 60 years and more ago!? Ahaaa, so this is the problem. I said that it certainly is not thaaaat bad and then she told me that while she was in Portugal a 16 year-old girl told her that because of her (being a German) her grand parents were killed!!! Oops...
But the whole question did not give me peace. Do we really not like Germans because of the wars? Do we not like them because they are punctual, work oriented, humorless, wealthy, the biggest nation in Europe, drive BMWs and Mercedes'?
But war did leave a big impact on the people and their perception. One of my grand-fathers was imprisoned in Dachau, his brother died in Ebensee in Austria. My other grand.father was in the partisans... For a long time I wanted to aks every German that I met, what did their ancesters do during the war. Now it does not matter aymore. I don't want to know. I know what mine did and I let it rest...
I do however get upset when people start to solicitor any kind of untolerance, be it sexual, rasist, national, religious, you name it...
Bottom line: I don't like all Germans, and I don't dislike them all. I love some and I don't care about the others. I love some English and could not care less about the others... I don't like someone just because that poor soul was born in a certain country. Daft.
5 comments:
Do the sons bear the sins of the fathers? Of course they do not and every person deserves to be judged by his/her own deeds… and nothing else. But some people still live too deep in the past (as far as the war and the post-war period is concerned, Slovenia is no exception…).
A friend of mine says that being intolerant is mostly a sign of a probably unconscious insecurity within us… and that although intolerance might be a result of ignorance, at the bottom of it there is almost always a kind of some inner fear.
just my two cents ;))
Zelo realno razmišljanje, bi rekla.
Moja otroka vzgajam tako, da bi velika presegla vse rasne in druge predsodke...predvsem pa nacionalne:))))
Bomo videli.
Sem pa danes gledala po TVEspana, kako so v Sevilli spodili iz lokala geyski par, pa je Španija tako tolerantna in odprta.
Nikoli ne moreš priseči na noben narod, sestavljajo ga posamezniki, ki so vsakršni.
Aleks, I'm certain that all the fears (and intolerance is only a manifestation of fear) come due to the insecurity.
But what makes us insecure? Our childhood? I found a lot of the traumas that we have in the adulthood come from the times we were children. I had a very intolerant father and yet I believe to be a very tolerant person myself. Perhaps because I'm gay... On the other hand I know some really untolerant gays - especially toward women..
yes, i sometimes wonder, too… since i grew up in an extremely intolerable family… if i were straight, would i be the same as them? would i uncritically share their values, their conservatism, traditionalism… etc? would i fear everything different, without even trying to understand? if i never experienced homophobia, would i understand how does it feel to be a part of a minority group? and then again… is it enough to be tolerant? or should all people be accepted, regardless of everything? i'm not sure that i am able to be so open minded, although i find myself tolerant as well...
Tokrat moram tudi sama nekaj izpostaviti. Meni se je Nemčija od nekdaj zdela velika, graciozna, pompozna, polna ljudi, ki ponosno gledajo na svojo državo, na zastavo in na preteklost, ne glede na zadeve, ki so bile narejene. Zato sem jih (oz. jih še vedno imam) rada. In seveda, ko je EasyJet prišel v LJ, sem bila med prvimi, ki sem kupila karto za Berlin. Ker sem si resnično želela videti to mesto. In ja, name je pustilo velik vpliv. Bilo je točno tako, kot sem si ga predstavljala. Veliko, glamurozno, močno in polno močne zgodovine.
Bila sem v enem boljših in prijaznejših hostlih, kjer sem se spoprijateljila z enim tipičnim berlinčanom. Kar mi je povedal, me je zelo presenetilo: sram jih je svoje preteklosti, najraje bi zamenjali tako himno, kot zastavo, kot pobrisali pod preprogo svojo preteklost.
Bila sem razočarana in nisem mogla verjeti, da je temu tako. Ampak to samo potrjuje kar sta in ambala in aleks rekla - nestrpnost (v tem primeru do samih sebe in lastne preteklosti) je znak nesigurnosti....
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