Acceptable foreigners

It happened again, when we were out walking the other day. We ran into a neighbor we hadn't yet met, and got talking. When she heard my accent in German, she asked me if I was English, and when she heard I was Canadian, she entered into a typical enthusiastic discussion about the usual things: Vancouver is very nice, the Rocky Mountains are beautiful, I liked Montreal, etc. (frankly I can't remember which). She then turned to G. and asked where she was from. The answer came: "Original from Novi Sad in Yugoslavia", and you could see our neighbors face drop in disappointment, and all she could utter was a mild "oh".

Once again, I must emphasise that this wan't a one-off (see Not Speaking Your Mother Tongue), but was the latest of many examples where it becomes apparent that certain kind of foreigners are preferred over others here (as elsewhere). The fact that G speaks perfect, though mildly accented German, has lead to some comic situations. For instance, people often guess wrongly, and then ask expectantly and enthusiastically if she is, perhaps, Swedish, only to be again visibly disappointed when she turns out to be something else.

As to the preferences here, broadly speaking: Italian, French, Scandinavian, Swiss, British, Irish, American, Canadian are in the good camp; Russian, Polish, Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Turkish are not. The first group can come to Germany, work at whatever they were originally trained to do, speak appalling German, while having an accent typically considered to be charming, and live in your neighborhood. The second group are generally to be avoided unless they clean your house, or do any number of less desirable jobs, and if they should move into your street, the typical grumblings about There goes the neighborhood are uttered, and gradually, as numbers increase, that part of town starts to be considered dangerous.

I don't particularly want to have a go at Germany. The other countries where I've lived have been exactly like this. Certainly all over North America there are race issues, and this aside, most people would be much more interested to have somebody from New York, London, Paris or Rome as a neighbor than one (say) from Novosibirsk, Guayaquil or Podgorica, this mostly being a question of who would be the more glamorous. The English, as a very general rule, often dislike, or at least avoid, foreigners, but probably have particular unfavorites, including (alas) Germans. I think the tendency to (metaphorically) round up a group of foreigners and consider them inferior, or at least project some stereotypes on them is sadly one of those things that all humans do. And inevitably this comes with some kind of ranking scheme as to who is better than whom.

There isn't a happy ending to this, at least not yet. But I was uplifted somewhat when we visited G's brother's student digs in Mannheim for his birthday party. Apart from the usual quaint student goings on - I honestly, truly, not-making-it-up, kid you not, there was a guy with a goatee in a Che Guevara T-shirt playing a didgeridoo - I was encouraged to see several couplings across the desired/undesired groups - German/Polish, German/Uzbek, etc. I often forget that Heidelberg, where we live, is the archetype of old Germany as clearly opposed to Mannheim, which is very much the new. And moreover, the new generation of people is much more open to multiculturalism than the old. Give it ten or twenty years, and perhaps all of this will become moot, here and elsewhere.

The Best Moments in Croatian Football

I've traveled often in Croatia with Serbs, as I've said before. I don't have a lot more to add this time, but the opening of Euro 2008 (the football competition I mean) last night reminded me of one humorous incident from two years ago.

I'm not a big football fan, but I do like to watch big matches, such as the World Cup, and I watched many games from the 2006 World Cup. During the beginning of the competition, I was again in Croatia, with G's parents. And one fine day, after a fine lunch in Stara Baška , G's father reminded me that it was time for the match between Serbia & Montenegro and Argentina.

Now, Croatia, like most places, went pretty silent when the national team was playing, and indeed most of the World Cup matches were on somewhere, but Stara Baška is a small place, and there was no sign of a television where we were sitting. After a brief search, I found one in a quiet interior room. G's father and I (of course, rather predictably, the ladies weren't interested) dithered about whether to ask the people running the restaurant if they would let us watch the match there.

I've said before that I'm a bit nervous about certain people in Croatia - almost a Don't mention the war kind of feeling - and in this restaurant most of the staff were men of my age, which places them among those people who are likely to have the strongest feelings (i.e. it was people of my generation who ended up doing most of the fighting after all). But they had been very kind to us, and we had tipped generously, and the customer is always right - dirty Serb or not - so we eventually plucked up enough courage to ask the Konobar, if we could, pretty please, watch this match quietly on their TV. He nodded and smiled, as if suddenly his suspicions were confirmed - a lot of people recognise G's parents' distinctive Novi Sad accents - and probably he had made some guesses already. He lead us to the room, turned on the TV and then left us, though I noticed upon leaving, he muttered something to another Konobar in the distance (e.g. I imagined: Hey Ivica, two Serbs want to watch their team get destroyed, or something).


The match opened, and any Serbian football fan must now remember the outcome with pangs of regret. It wasn't that Serbia had bad players, but they played very badly - rather selfishly I thought, and certainly all subsequent analysis of the team said that they weren't playing as a team. Anyway, after just 6 minutes they were down 1 goal. The Croatian Konobars came by smiling after this goal, and after the second goal for Argentina (31 minutes) they started to cheer. This continued, but by the fourth goal for Argentina, I was impressed to see the sense of sympathy that one football fan has towards another at times like this. Naturally, the Croats didn't want the Serbs to win, but 4-0 is a humiliation (in fact, we left before it worsened to 6-0), and the Žao mi je - I'm sorry - that came afterwards, even with a smirk, seemed touchingly heartfelt.

I was reminded of a humorous Viz comic that I had seen some years ago, entitled Best moments in Scottish football, which consisted of nothing but some of the worst moments for the English national team: David Beckam's botched over-the-top-of-the-goal penalty against Portugal in Euro 2004; David Seaman looking whimsically at Ronaldinho's goal from a corner in the 2002 World Cup.

But cynicism aside, after this little Serb/Croat exchange, I was struck by how Football, that great War substitute, was working its magic again. I'll definitely cheer for Croatia this month.

Getting to know Baka Mila

Former-Yugoslavs seldom want to talk about the past. And for somebody of Western Canadian extraction this is almost sacrilegious. By this I mean that we, in Alberta, have so little history that every nugget is savoured and honored. Quaint ceremonies I remember from my childhood include celebrating the Province's 75th Anniversary, and many cultural or heritage days when people show off where they came from, dressing like their grandparents and so on.

Just why Serbs, Croats, etc. don't dwell on the past is perhaps obvious. I think this was put most fittingly in the Thames Television Documentary Series The World at War as: Old men forget, particularly when it hurts to remember. With so much bad stuff lingering in the past, who wants to think about it, let alone tell some outsider all the gory details. For the curious, this can be rather disappointing or even irritating, but obviously one bites ones tougue.

Over the years, however, I've accumulated a lot of details about G's past, and particularly about her grandmother, that I hope will finally prompt me to sit down and get her to tell me everything. This will have to be done, I realise, by me, in my broken Serbian, perhaps coaxing the rest of the family to translate the hard parts. No matter how hard I try, G. doesn't really want to do it. And it will be difficult, since Baka has little patience for my Serbian - she's never left Yugoslavia, and often berates me for not speaking it better. Trebaš da uceš Robert - You need to learn. And as is so typical of people lacking a more worldly perspective, she shinks me quite the dunce for not speaking properly.

Despite having stayed in one country (that became six and soon probably seven) all her life, she has obviously had a fascinating, event-ridden life. I think most grandparents have a lot to tell, and I don't think mine were any exception, but there is something more in Baka - more than anything I've ever been directly exposed to. In Canada there is the occasional war death, and the odd farm tragedy, but we, of course, never had a revolution - at least not in living memory - whereas Baka lived through two. And life in Canada, on the whole, has been so darned good for people who either moved or grew-up there. Good stories always need a healthy dose of tragedy.

What I know about Baka is sketchy. I know that she was born in the late 20s in Srem, a part of Vojvodina, and mostly brought up in a rural environment (her brother still lives on a farm today). Like everybody else, her life was turned upside down when the Nazi's invaded the region during the second world war. Her father was taken prinsoner - I think he was in the Army, but I'm not sure - and I know that he died in Germany. This is because G. explained to me why she was laughing at something Baka's brother was saying, one day a few years ago:


You know, I'm getting so old, I can't remember anything. For instance, I can't remember the name of the City where father died. I remembered that it had something to do with fast-food: Pizza, Burek or something, but I couldn't --- ah, Hamburger --- Hamburg! that's the place.

It was later revealed to me that he (that's G's great-grandfather) had died apparently after being subjected to human experimentation. Now I suspect a lot of people would tell a similar story about a relative, particularly if they were feeling angry about the Germans (or even wanting mildly to boast), but in this case it was apparently admitted by the German goverment in the 80s, but any attempt to extract money (these people aren't stupid afterall) failed, as I was later told.

I then know that Baka, at 15 or 16, joined the revolution, which basically meant that she marched in the 40s with most of the others of her generation with Tito and eventually helped free the country from the occupiers, not to mention presumably at least being near to nasty masacres that also happened at the time. Along the way, she ended up meeting her husband to be, who was one of Tito's Generals. G' remembers him as a very old man, which he must have been since he was 30 or more when he married his teenage bride.

After the war, and because of her husbands elevated status, they lived very well. Apparently the General had been quite the bourgeois before the war, but (likely to save his skin) had given all of his fortune & property to the state, only to be given it, and probably a lot more back as a member of the upper eschelons of the Communist Party. I don't know much more than this, but it is incredible to see the kinds of hand-me-downs that Baka has given G over the years. She has, for instance, an incredibly chic Parisian jacket, dating from the 50s, that must have cost a fortune, is still in mint condition, and which G. still wears, and which is always admired, to this day.

I know as well that her husband fell foul, as so many others did, of the Communist leaders, and was on the verge of imprisonment when Tito died, and he was thus able to salvage something of his reputation and manage a peaceful retirement.

Baka herself is a rather traditional Serbian woman. She believes in maintaining an antiseptically clean household, and holds the tradtional notion that no meal is worthy of eating unless it has been the product of at least six hours of toil, preferably involving at least two 4AM mornings (for instance to make stock or Ruski Salat from scratch). However, there are signs of her revolutionary youth. Until her health started to fail (she's nearly 80), she cycled everywhere, and always (at least to me) seemed to sport clothes more suited to a Communist than a little old lady. The image of her on the bike always conjured up images of plucky Chinese revolutionaries.

I'm dying to know more. What was her husband like? What did he do? Why did he fall foul of the party? Did she meet Tito? Where did that Jacket come from? Was life luxurious for them? What happened on her march after the war? And most of all: what does she think of what has happened to the country to this day?

I know that she didn't like the break-up of Yugoslavia. I think she rather had that old-persons incredulity about it all (e.g. This can't be happening). I know that during the Nato bombing of her city, when G's parents spent a lot of time in her fathers company's office in Budapest, that she shunned shelters preferring to hold fort in the family house, even scaring off some drunken Nationalist who thought that he should have the house instead of these traitors. I know, in essence, that this charming old lady - who likes a tidy kitchen, who watches hours of Latin soap operas, who doesn't give much away, and who (let's face facts) doesn't have long to live - has a great story to tell. I just hope that I can coax it out of her and then do justice to it before it is too late.

Not speaking your Mother-tongue

As I said before, our dog speaks Serbian. I commented last time that this gets me into trouble in Croatia (sedi, sijedi, sidi), but I neglected to mention that it causes a rather obvious problem in Germany. We both traveled last week, meaning that we had to dump Monitsa in a dogs home, and though I tried to tell the keepers that Moni spoke Serbian, they didn't seem much interested in tailoring their Deutsch dog supervision techniques accordingly. However, the husband of the pair did mention that he understood a few words of Serbocroatian, since his mother was from Croatia. And by a few words, he meant and Dobar dan and Hvala and not much else. So his Mother tongue, was really his Father's tongue only, since he barely spoke a word of his Mother's.

I wouldn't have batted an eyelid had it not been that this was the latest of many examples of people like this I've met in Germany and to a lesser extent in England: namely, those who speak barely a word of one of their parents' languages. And add to this untold numbers of couples where one half does not speak the language of the other.

Now I currently work in a very polyglot environment. We work in English, live in Germany and come from everywhere. Only a few stray English people speak only one language, and even many of them try their damnedest to learn at least German. People are young, meaning that there are many kids about, and it often impresses me how many languages kids can learn simultaneously seemingly without too much incident. E.g. Tartar with Mother, Russian with Father, German at School, and of course English out of general necessity. It greatly surprises me, then, to see so many examples of second generation immigrants who speak nothing at all of their language of origin.

I often wonder what possesses people, moreover, not to speak their native language with their children. Or for that matter, how one half of a relationship has no apparent desire to speak the language of the other. How, after all, can you ever really understand somebody if you can't speak to them in your most comfortable manner? And what about all of the relations? These days people in (e.g.) Eastern Europe always speak English, or at least try to, but German is on the decline anywhere in the former Yugoslavia except the Croatian coast for obvious tourist-driven reasons. Speaking to relations is obviously important to form bonds with them, but even this doesn't seem always to change attitudes. In one instance, half-Serbian Germans actually spoke no word of Serbian despite having spent nearly a month every summer in Vojvodina with their mother's relatives.

One pattern emerges. The people in this category are not - despite being in cross-cultural relationships - usually very worldly. And I suspect that a feeling of envy runs through one half of the relationship at the thought that a child will speak a language that they have never bothered to learn. Maybe they think there is no point in learning a language - what use would Croatian be ever? (As a Canadian from Alberta, I certainly understand this rather redneck statement, since many simple folk feel this way about French) Or perhaps they think that two languages will confuse a developing child - advice from monoglot, unworldly grandparents might help to reach this conclusion. And if I can be permitted to add a sniff of racism to the argument, I have yet to see a case of a German/French, German/Italian or German/English couple where the children do not speak both languages.

Whatever the reason, I think it is a crying shame. I think that any language enriches a person, and even has practical advantages (Serbian or Croatian will ultimately help somebody speak/understand Russian for example). An opportunity to learn a language from a native early in life is not to be missed, no matter what theories, prejudices, hang-ups or insecurities a monoglot partner has.