Berliners and their dogs

Let me introduce you to Bambi, the resident dog on my street and my favourite in all of Berlin. She belongs to the Vietnamese restaurant on Bergmanstrasse and we'd pass each other on the street every time I left the house.

I'd say, "hi Bambi", and give her a little pat on the head and she'd shoot me a really bored Vicky Pollard stylie "whatever" in return. But despite her Little Britain act, she's actually a genius in disguise with a seemingly good understanding of German, English and Vietnamese.

She's quite well known around Berlin's Kreuzberg neighbourhood and some friends of mine were even discussing once if maybe she would help us with our German prepositions and pronouns - I'm sure she'd have been a great help! ;)

Every day she goes to work with her owner in the restaurant and pretty much just sits there looking cute all day (Berliners are more that happy to have dogs in restaurants - and it always make the meal more interesting!) or heads outside by herself to look at the passers by and dig little holes next to the tree outside the restaurant.

Well all this leads me on to say about how much Berliners love their dogs! And they have to be cute and little - anything about knee height. You see them everywhere - in the shops, cafes, restaurants, taking a stroll in the park...

I went to see a Richard Gere film called Hachiko, about a dog whose owner dies and the dog waits for him at the train station every day for the rest of its life. I saw the film in German, and let me tell you, I have never experienced anything quite like it in my entire movie going history!

People around me were wailing, and I mean WAILING right out loud about this dog. They didn't seem to mind at all if anyone thought this was kind of weird. I've never experienced such an outpouring of grief before at the cinema and I really didn't know whether to laugh at the weird situation or cry about this poor little dog.

Anyway, I'd be interested to know what the reaction to that film was around the world - if it was a quintessentially Berliner reaction or a general one that anyone would have watching Hachiko.

In any case, one thing's for sure - Berliners sure do love their dogs!

Sounds like Berlin

I've been away from Berlin for a few weeks now, so I'm beginning to see things in a nostalgic ahhh Berlin kind of way. I was in LA a couple of weeks ago and heard a jazz singer singing Sam Cooke's Bring it on home to me, a song we sang at the community choir in Berlin. Well it gave me a little Berlin heart flutter, so I though I'd post a couple of songs that remind me of my time to date in Berlin...

The cool kids are crazy about Peter Fox in Germany and foreign expats very quickly learn to love him too. A Berliner born and bred, his trademark is his half paralyzed face that makes him look grumpy-cool. His sound is described as quintessential Berlin summertime music.





These are a couple of songs we sang at the community choir. If Germans are known for one thing, it's probably their raw enthusiasm for anything they do, so just imagine a group of singers standing round in a circle and getting really, really, really into their vocal harmonizing of these songs, and there you have my memory! ;)

Jumping Germany's educational hurdles

My German teacher came to Germany from Eritrea, Africa, when she was 13 and her story is a real tale about triumph over adversity.

Children of immigration in Germany often face the same problem. The German education system divides children from the fifth grade into three different school tiers. These tiers basically determine the rest of that child's life. The bottom school, Hauptschule, primes children for a life of practical, manual work. The middle level school, the Realschule, trains children for slightly better prospects, and the top level school, the Gymnasium, preps kids for university and professional careers.

Children who move to Germany without being able to speak the language often get put into one of the lower two schools without any consideration of the fact that the language is the problem - not the academic skills.

A Polish girl in one of my German classes said a friend of hers from Poland - a straight A-grade student back home - was placed in Hauptschule simply because her German wasn't up to scratch. I guess her future was pretty much screwed because of this.

Anyway, a similar thing happened to my German teacher but she fought tooth and nail for her right to an education.

After escaping Eritrea's war with Ethiopia, she came to Germany at 13 and was promptly placed into hauptschule. Because of the war back home, she hadn't been to school for four years, so her chances to a fair education were pretty narrow at that point.

When she came to Germany, it's fair to say she had a whole lot of catching up to do - not only in terms of education, but also culture. When kids at school talked about how much they loved The Beatles, all she could think was "really? What's so great about this little black insect?"

But one thing she had going for her was a real hunger to learn. After four years of hiding from soldiers and missing out on education, her new life in Germany was a chance to make up for everything - and she wasn't about to give up on her second chance.

So at the age of 13, she studied every hour of the day to learn German and catch up on her school work. Eventually her teachers took note and said, "hey, this kid doesn't speak much German but she has a real knack for maths and she's really keen to learn".

Sooo, eventually they said, "let's give this kid a six month trial period at the Gymnasium". But they also warned her that if she didn't catch up in time, she would be right back to where she started.

So with her six months at Gymnasium, she studied like crazy on her German and school subjects and really started to make progress. However, when the six month trial was up, the teachers held a meeting and told her, "look, you've done really great, and you've tried really hard, but you just didn't improve quickly enough, so we're going to have to send you down to the Realschule".

Well of course she was gutted, and so were the teachers who had worked closely with her in that six months. So after the meeting, one of those teachers called the others back again and said, "look, I really, really think this kid deserves a chance. Give her six more months and let's see how she goes".

So another six months passed and she managed to catch up with her German, catch up on her school subjects and catch up on everything western culture related - a lot of catching up to put it mildly! And, hey presto, she aced everything and was allowed to remain in Gymnasium and eventually get a university education.

So that's the story of how, unusually for children of immigration, she used her own strength of character to climb up through these educational hurdles.

It seems crazy to judge a child at such a young age. Kids change so much between fifth grade and uni age, it seems a shame to dash someone's future based how they achieved at 10 (or there abouts).

Things are starting to change, and the last I heard they were thinking about changing the school system so give more kids a chance to go to university. Kids who go to Realschule can also apply to go to Gymnasium once they graduate, so there is some hope there.

I went to school in Germany at the age of eight myself and couldn't speak a word of German at the time. I was pretty much plonked into school and learned the language firstly just by miming things to other kids to get my point across. Kids learn pretty quickly though, and by the time I returned to the UK six months later I was pretty much fluent (unfortunately I've gone backwards since then! ;). My German cousin also started school in Germany at the age of eight. Coming from Tanzania, she couldn't speak a word of German either and when we were kids she told me that she was asked, "can you swim?" She didn't have a clue what was being said so she just nodded and followed the other kids to the pool. When she got to the pool, with arms flailing, she very quickly learned what the words "can you swim" meant.

I guess kids that age have brains like sponges which makes it very easy to pick things up. However I would hate to imagine how my life would have turned out if my future had been determined based on my academic ability in these six months in Germany, aged eight.

I think the more immigration there is, the more awareness there is about the challenges that kids of immigration face. I'm not saying I'm an expert by any means on the German education system, but I'd hazard a guess that the more chances a child gets from a young age, the better they do in life. I don't think a school system shake-up would necessarily be a bad thing.

Would you like a baby with your latte?

Anyone familiar with Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg district will be well acclimatised to the sight of prams, buggies, babies, toddlers, kids... You name it, anything child related, Prenzlauer Berg will have it.

It does after all, boast one of the highest birthrates in Germany. So if you're young and single, or not so young and child free, your choices are really either to like it or lump it. You're going to trip over parked prams when reaching for the light in your block's hallway, you will have to dodge the buggies on your way to the supermarket with the skill of an Olympic athlete, and you will also most likely have to put up with the sound of screaming kids while enjoying ein milchkaffee in your favourite café

Berlin has been described as both Europe's king of café culture and king of kiddie culture – to a humorous degree. Germans think that cycling along pulling a cart filled with 10 toddlers is a very normal thing to do. Any of the tourists taking pictures of this amusing sight might beg to differ.

Take a walk around Berlin at any time of day and the multiple cafés on any one street are likely to be packed with people watching the world go by, taking a quiet moment to read a book, catching up on the latest news, working on their laptops or simply meeting up with friends. Hey, I'm in a café right now... well I suppose I had to say that to make my point... but yes I really am right this moment sitting in a café.

For the record I don't mind the sight and sound of kids as I sip on my latte – in fact I find them a rather entertaining distraction. But for anyone who likes to drink their coffee minus the noise of children, their wishes have now come true in the form of Prenzlauer Berg's first ever child-free café – and people are loving it!

"My regulars were not finding it peaceful," Christine Wick, owner of Café Niesen, told German tabloid B.Z.

"Recently there were more and more parents with children, which is why we rented a premises to serve as a special, separate area for adults only.”

And judging by comments on Facebook, the café's child-free zone looks likely to be a hit. One Berlin based friend of mine wrote on his wall: “Trying to find a place to work... all the cafés are overrun with screaming babies.”

The replies to his comment said it all: “Go to that café with the child-free zone,” said one.

“Oooh where is that?” said another friend eager for a baby-free cup of coffee.

But why this story has become such a talking point – even working its way into newspapers around the world - is anyone's guess.

ABC news make it a political issue, quoting on their website Social Democrat Stefanie Winde, who sits in the Berlin state parliament.

The new child-free zone is "not acceptable," she is quoted as saying. "We are a society that is having fewer children. We need to be more tolerant."

* This is a copy of a blog I wrote a couple of weeks ago for Cafe Babel. I haven't had a chance to write anything for either this blog or cafe babel since then, sooo I thought I'd copy in that blog here and add another few posts here soon too.