Junyi Bu
October 3, 2023
The anthill swarms with day shift workers orderly scurrying to their next destination. The train halts to a grinding stop, although this one isn’t heading to our destination. Our train seems to be consistent – at being delayed. Today, nearly 900 trains will make a pit stop at Hamburg Central and tomorrow, we will be on the early morning train to Bremen.
The Schnoor quarter of Bremen has a cobbled charm – artisan shops line the streets where the homes nearly touch. The city’s icons are based on a Brothers Grimm fable where outcasted animals became Bremen’s town musicians. The resulting image is endearing and everywhere: a donkey, dog, cat, and rooster stacked on top of each other like a Jenga tower. A busker’s jazzy rendition of “You Got a Friend in Me” reverberates off the into the marketplatz, which is bustling on an overcast day.
Berlin feels dystopian with war memorials and sculptures in every intersection. We spend our morning getting lost in the Bode and exploring Egyptian tombs in the Neues museums and our afternoon perusing along the East Side Gallery, the Topography of Terror, the Bradenburg Gate, and the Jewish Memorial. After 24,000 steps in one day and an overload of history in our minds, we prepare to board the train back.
I try out my tongue in German and fumble in the face of confused Döner owners and taxi drivers. With each word I attempt to translate on my phone and each conversation held in close proximity that I can no longer casually “overhear”, I am made acutely aware of myself as someone who has foreign painted across my slanted eyes. In the German countryside, I am hyper aware of my migrant body and the urge to establish myself as a Canadian-foreigner and not a Chinese-foreigner. Hyper awareness is the distinct feeling of being a Canadian immigrant, an ELL student, and knowing that your lack of nativeness speaks before you can. In our cellar home, I cook food that reminds me of home and eat it like it’s a triumph. It reminds me that my food and culture are knowledge.
In the art classes, we are tasked with teaching fundamentals. The value of art in the German school system is seemingly parallel to most places in the world: low, reflecting poor attitudes toward the value of art in society. Here, students can’t use visual studies as a university entrance mark like they can in Canada. Paradoxically, Germany is home to many fine arts museums and historical collections. What we have seen in our school so far is heavily discipline and technique based. It could be possible that because “creative” art, which manifests in illegal graffiti, is the most visible in society, creative development in schools is stifled. In lieu of being placed in the forefront and potentially creating divergent, non-conformist thinkers, art seems to be placed in the back seat in the school agenda.
Last week, we engaged students in a four corners debate where students had to relocate to the corner they most sided with in response to the statement: the voting age should be lowered to 16. Students chose their positions first and when it was time to move, everyone flocked towards the “disagree” side of the room to my surprise. When my high school social class was asked the same prompt, most students swayed towards the “agree” side. In a later conversation with the teacher, we uncovered that students were feeling uninformed about modern politics, but very informed on historical politics (e.g. “we know more about Hitler than modern politics!”). University in Germany is free to attend and on average, students finish their degrees at age 28. Here, the looming threat of the job market is not as pertinent. In the face of a different society, students are not as heavily encouraged to be independent at an early age and there are a lack of student-run clubs to testify to that point.
I’m excited to experience more of Hamburg, the school, and the surrounding area in the month ahead. Next on the itinerary: finding the comfiest sandals to bring home for my family.