No blogging for nearly a week is not a good start for my WHYS work placement next week considering it's a show that places the newsgathering weight on blogging and comments on its website.
I spent the end of December and beginning of January in Berlin, not the first time I've been there (I've played four or five times in Berlin venues) but the first time I've not been working. Turn on the UK history channel and it's a pretty safe bet that there will be a programme about Nazi Germany or WW2 in general on. Times that factor by ten in Berlin. Everywhere you turn there's a Holacaust memorial, commemoration for the resistence members and hundreds of 'Hitler Walks', trails that take you all round sites of Nazi activity in Berlin inevitably culminating in a visit to the site of Hitler's bunker.
I stayed with some German friends, all between 18-25. As I had no phone and no internet I appreciated the cafe culture that still survives there, having been firmly exterminated in London by chain coffee shops. Many of them told me how sick they were of the 'inherited' guilt they felt they had for the Nazis. They said that most people thought that German's had to naturally be pro-Israel to make up for the Holocaust, although most of my friends have serious moral doubts about that country's policy towards Palestine.
We stayed in a beautiful flat (Berlin is extremely cheap to live) opposite a lovely art deco building that was being squatted by punks. The punks in Germany aren't like the typical British 'no future' punk of the 1970s. They are very political, non-racist, anti-fascist etc. However, they are often ill informed and obnoxious in their views according to my friends. They refuse to pay any rent on account of it being kowtowing to the system yet work jobs and have laptops and plasma screen televisions. A notable run in we had with them was at a local gig. One punk girl was telling me how she was an Oi! and that meant she was anti-nazi, pro-israel, anti-racist etc and how society could 'get fucked' etc etc. All her compatriots were highly annoying, moshing and bumping into us and all wore graffited clothes proclaiming their Oi 'membership'. Speaking to my friend I voiced how they must not be aware that the original Oi movement in London was made up of largely violent white racists. Apparently he later passed this onto the girl and she accused him of calling him a fascist and hit him over the head with a beer bottle. Charming.
While I firmly believe that Germany should learn from their infamous past, I still feel it's a shame that later generations are yoked with this taboo on saying anything about Israel, about certain races or anything that could be construed as nationalist, especially. Recently a pop song about love was banned because the lyrics used the colours of the German flag as a metaphor for love. For example 'Red, the colour of my heart', 'yellow, the colour of your hair' etc. These aren't the actual lyrics, which I will try and find out. Oh and did you know that German law forbids all songs containing the words: honour, hero and fame?
Germany will never be able to get over its past (and I mean 'get over' not forget), not least because so much of its tourist economy is bound up in macabre tourism as well as the millions of those who want to learn from this period in history. Jewish Berliners are even making Nazi comedies now with 'Mein Fuehrer - the Truly Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler' causing no end of hubbub.
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