The good year (Part I)

published 29 Dec 2007

It must be freezing in Berlin.

When I arrived there in late March, spring was just beginning. I stayed for eight weeks, long enough to observe the days getting warmer and daytime getting longer, and indeed, towards the end of May, temperatures of about 27 degrees Celsius enabled people to go out into the parks and bask in the sun.

Now that 2007 is about to end, I look back to my experience in Germany not as an isolated holiday or the highlight of my year. Well, okay, on the surface it is, because I’ve been home seven months already and yet I am still in a daze. Like any good memory, the thought of the places I’ve been to and the people I’ve met gives me that warm, fuzzy feeling.

And yet it’s not just a highlight. My Berlin experience is more than just a one-time thing. It lives. My two-month exile had a lot to do with my metamorphosis — why I feel I’ve fared relatively well this year and why I have reason to believe that the coming years would be even better.

***

There would have been 15 participants to the course on financial and economic reporting, offered by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development to journalists from Third World countries. But one, we were told, didn’t catch his flight. Imagine that. Of the 14, two were from the Philippines (I was with Liberty, business editor of Sun Star Cebu), two from Pakistan, two from Ghana, two from Cameroon, two from Kenya, two from Zimbabwe, one from Uganda and one from Nigeria.

Initially, everybody was guarded. Some were even in their national costumes or in coats and ties, rattling off their credentials as though compelled to justify their presence. In the meantime, I was quiet and observant. Each of us was as different from the others in hue as in the accent of our English and our journalistic backgrounds back home.

Pretty soon, and quite aptly in the city where we were, all these walls came down, aided by constant discussions and workshops in class and shared experiences of fumbling through maps or getting train stations right together.

We had weekend picnics where each prepared a dish from his or her own country (I cooked seafood rice, not finding any bagoong even in the Asian shops there. Lib made adobo.) We had fun with language barriers. For example, the African girls wanted to have their picture taken in the apartment complex, and called Victor, the guy from Nigeria, to shoot. While Beatrice (Kenya) and Diana (Uganda) revealed their pearly whites, Marie Noelle (Cameroon) maintained a sober look, staring intently at the lenses.

“What’s your problem, Marie?” asked Victor. “You should show your teeths!”

“Show my what?” repeated Marie, a little vexed. Marie was a writer in French and her English was limited.

“Your teeths! Your teeths! For the camera! So the picture will be nice!” By then, both Beatrice and Diana were on the floor, doubled over with laughter, while the other two kept explaining themselves to each other.

There were more memories to share. One Friday night, Beatrice, David (Ghana), Joseph (Ghana), Khan (Pakistan) and I went clubbing, dancing to hip-hop tunes until four in the morning. When we returned to our respective apartments, it was already light, and my arms and legs felt like lead that I could barely crawl to my door. In another weekend gathering, I brought along the only OPM CD I was able to smuggle into my suitcase. My classmates like the band Freestyle all right—but I had to translate “Bakit Ngayon Ka Lang” as it played, line for line. Then followed a lengthy discussion on finding one’s soulmate, if ever one did exist.

After a while, we knew more or less who had the flair for showing off or dominating the workshops, who preferred to be alone, who were inseparable like twins, who would rather shop for cargo pants rather than for shoes, who ate nothing else aside from her comfort food (French fries and we were not even in France!), what one’s favorite expression was, who liked to laugh, scribble and exchange notes in class. At the end of the course, we were no longer just “journalists from Third World countries” as we were often introduced as a group. To each other, and to some of the staff of the Institute, we were Lib. Adelle. Sarah. Steve. Jacques. Mernat. Ndaamu. Irfan. And so on.

These traits do not come as a function of our country of origin or the color of our skin. Religion may shape our habits, but not the core of our person. After all, our being born in this nation or of this particular race is purely out of chance. What we make of ourselves, however, is the most deliberate we can get. People, from wherever they are and wherever they go, are just that. No one is essentially better off or worse off, because we average out much less the same. The uniqueness of the individual is what is universal.

***

Right in the middle of the eight-week course was an educational trip to several other German cities. We traveled by coach, driven by a young German named Mike who, in his in powder blue long sleeved shirt and yellow tie, looked more like a stock trader. A former lorry driver, Mike insisted that out there on the autobahn (highway), he should maintain a speed of 100 kph, no more, no less. He was visibly irked when there was a traffic buildup that slowed his pace. But you wondered why he never stepped on the gas pedal even when the road was clear and it was tempting to hit 110 or 120. The restraint was remarkable.

We headed to Frankfurt and visited the Frankfurt Stock Exchange as well as the headquarters of the European Central Bank. In the late afternoon, Lib and I spent hours talking by the River Mine. The following day, we crossed another river, the Rhine and visited a medieval castle in the state of Hesse that had been converted into a museum. In Dusseldorf, we toured the newsroom of Germany’s leading business newspaper, the Handelsblatt, and spoke to a group of union workers. In Hamburg, where the cars were flashier and the neighborhoods more posh, we visited an automated port by the river Elbe and marveled at how precision can run those complex machines. (I also learned that hamburgers did not originate from there.) In Wolfsburg, we toured the Volkswagen plant, run, as they say, 98 per cent by robots. We visited the Hyde Park Soltau where, as I had written in a previous column (Colossal, May 11), I mustered enough courage to experience the Colossus—the steepest wooden roller coaster ride in the world, according to Guinness. These, on top of the normal sights, mostly historical, that local Berlin had to offer its visitors.

Equally interesting—and more inspiring —of these travels were the journeys in between destinations. But I am running out of space. More of these musings, and my point, finally, next Saturday.