Tuesday 25 September 2012

Deutschlandia


So I was going to call this missive ‘Deutschland uber alles’, in doing so combining the title of the seminal Dead Kennedys song, ‘California uber alles’, with my location.  My partner Susi, who is German and travelling with me for the rest of the journey, learnedly pointed out that maybe the Kennedys weren’t the first to use such a phrase and, given it was the anthem of a group of chaps responsible for a few global fracas’s last century, it may not be appropriate as a title.

A fair point, but my time here highlighted how much of a leader Germany is in terms of sustainability, and in an unofficial theme that’s organically developed through my travels, a night, or several, on the town. It’s also hard to escape the leadership role of Germany in holding the European Union together, with The Guardian coining the phrase ‘The Accidental Empire’ in recognition of this.
Tharandter Wald
I spent most of my time in Germany staying with Susi’s sister in Tharandt, a small town of about 5,500 souls near Dresden, before catching up with friends in Berlin for the weekend. It’s fair to say you don’t come to Tharandt for the nightlife, it’s quiet nature is why people reside here and Susi’s sister lives in the penultimate house on the edge of town, surrounded by the Forest Botanical Garden of Tharandt that leads onto the magnificent Tharandter Wald, the oldest forest in Saxony. Sitting around an open fire one evening with the stars in the sky the silence of the surrounds was at times quite stunning, only broken by the crackling of the fire.
Ralph
Tharandt isn’t a place I’d have expected to come across interesting sustainability examples but walking home from the station one day we came upon Dresden local Ralph, recharging the bemusingly named Kangoo (a cross between a kangaroo and an Obama speech) electric vehicle he had on trial. 

Ralph is definitely on the leading edge of the uptake curve and was prepared to overlook the current six charging stations in the Dresden region, a range of 180km and a recharge time of 6 hours for the free electricity he’d receive if he purchased the vehicle from the sponsored charging station. In conversation it’s apparent that Ralph is both interested in sustainability issues and looking to the future when charging times are predicted to come down to 30 minutes next year. This improvement is part of an overall German government strategy that seeks to have a million electric vehicle users on the road by 2020.
 
A walk through the afore mentioned Forest Botanical Garden of Tharandt also surprisingly revealed a highly professional information trail focused on sustainability in general (including a peculiar table contrasting the number of Google hits associated with ‘sustainability’ and its German counterpart 'Nachhaltigkeit' ), and the interaction of climate change on the forests of Germany, and the ability of various species to adapt.

With all these positives you’d not quite expect games of nude twister to be spontaneously breaking out on the streets, but if my journeys between Dresden and Berlin were any indication a simple smile, impulsive ‘hallo’ or even simple nod in your general direction wouldn’t go astray. 

Having been travelling for a while I booked a seat from a car sharing website to save money, and potentially meet a few locals for the ride from Dresden to Berlin. I unfortunately missed a seat in a one Marvin Sontag’s Golf 6, and instead found myself on a Friday afternoon stood in a McDonalds car park by the side of the motorway outside of Dresden waiting for Michael and his 2 door Saxo. Michael arrived dead on time and I soon met the other passenger for the journey.  Crammed into the back seat I played the role of the overtly friendly Aussie for the first 10 minutes, asking questions about the trip and the lives of my companions before giving up on the strained responses and travelling the rest of the trip with my headphones in. Booking into a cabin on the way back to Dresden a few days later I had a similar joyful experience with the other two travellers who were fiercely competing with each other for the world title of longest time spent mimicking a face like a bucket of bolts.

In terms of my time in Berlin I spent many long hours with an old friend, and one met travelling in Belize testing the theory as to whether the city has the best nightlife in Europe, and potentially the world at the moment. As it was the start of Berlin Art week we interspersed our nocturnal activities visiting the highly engaging Art Berlin Contemporary Exhibition.

I stayed in Friedrichshain, an area, like many in the former eastern part of Berlin that, due to the readily available cheap housing post the fall of the Berlin wall, saw an influx of artists and creative types. Now it’s a hub of the Berlin nightlife and I was amazed how much English I heard as we moved from bar to bar. 

I’m not the only one who has noticed and this article sums up the backlash against tourists from the rest of Europe that have been flocking to the area. Fortunately for the Berlin locals I know of just the person who will gladly bring the edge back into their neighbourhood, if politely requested.

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