Signs advertising lectures of the Lectorium Rosicrucianum, the Gnostic Christian order of the Rose-Cross, were plastered all over town. For years, I had wondered what they were up to. Weren’t they like an offshoot of the Freemasons, the people behind most conspiracy theories?

One day in January, I decided to find out. I had become bold after visiting a mosque and a presentation of Transcendental Meditation. I thought it couldn’t become any weirder than that and checked out their monthly plan. There was a lecture on the “two life fields”, the third part of a series, so I went.

What surprised me was that the Rosicrucians had their own building, right in the middle of my city. Their symbol, a triangle in a square in a circle, was next to the door. A friendly man invited me to come in and showed me the way upstairs. I took the elevator. There was a lady at the entrance who led me to the seminar room, a brightly lit white room that almost burned out my eyes.

I sat down and waited. It turned out that I was the only visitor that evening, so the four students of the Rose-Cross, all serious appearing people around 40 to 50 years old, sat around me and their apparent leader, the lady who had shown me in, red the lecture from some sheets of paper. I wasn’t able to take any notes in that situation and I couldn’t get a transcript without any problems, so here a short summary from my memory:

The world is made up of the beyond and the material world. Humans were banished from god to the material world because of the original sin, but still have a divine essence. Humans didn’t want to remain god’s reflections but wanted to become like god.

I asked whether that means that there are still humans that are with god, if only some committed the sin. The Rosicrucians said that that is still the case. It all sounded like out of some fantasy book I once read and I had to concentrate not to chuckle Which was really hard to do, because next came the Jesus-impulse, some kind of divine impulse god brought to earth I guess.

The lecture was over. I asked whether I could get more information and they told me this was part of a twelve-letter introduction. I could get the letters for twelve Euros, but not all at once. They would giver each letter to me only after such a lesson. I asked about other literature and they showed me some books. I flipped through them while they watched me. I found references to Alchemy and 19th century occultists like Helena Blavatsky and Rudolf Steiner. I sighed. “This thing about alchemy, is it meant metaphorically?” They agreed. I also learned that they have study centers in different countries. The Rosicrucians wouldn’t let me see their temple room, because it would only be opened for temple services. I was invited to come to one of the public services.

Before I left with the promise to return – I said I will never form an opinion about a group after just one visit – they gave me an issue of their magazine, Pentagramm.

If that's not a suspicious name for a magazine...

Half a year later, I had a look inside the magazine. The topics inside were not necessarily the same as on the cover. Was that symptomatic for the whole organization? And what was up with all those different Rosicrucian orders, all claiming to be the original ones?

I checked on the internet, when the next Temple-Service would be. So, ten months after my first visit, I returned, on a Sunday morning. The first thing I was told by the lady who had greeted me back then was that only the beginning would be public and that I had to leave then because they did something secret or private or whatever. Which of course made it even more interesting.

Once again I was led to the large room with the white walls, some plants, and light chairs with purple upholstery. There were maybe fifty people, sitting silently in this terribly bright room. Most were in their forties or older, I spotted maybe two people who might have been younger than me.

Suddenly, the lady said: “Dear guests, dear friends, the temple is open.” She sounded a bit insecure, as if something terrible waited for us there. Or maybe she just wasn’t a good public speaker. In any case, we slowly walked out into the hall again and up some steps, accompanied by piano music, like at a Christian service.

The Temple was a cold room with a golden cross with a rose on it at the wall. I had never felt so far away from God since visiting Auschwitz. Speaking of Poland, among the people taking place, one face seemed familiar. Could it be that… no, he wouldn’t go to such a place, would he?

I looked straight ahead again, because the ritual started. A woman read a ritual text which was rather boring, especially because she sounded insecure and monotonous. When she said “Amen” at the end, no one answered. A man took her place and started with a sermon. It was so much material that I could hardly take it down afterwards. Something about Astral and Ether Energy. A tree in space whose roots led into the lower dimensions meaning the different religions. A quote from some Hindu text. Energy nets. A bubble of energy created by Jesus and his disciples that is re-energized by new religious movements. A flying Tyrannosaurus Rex. A white, a red, and a golden rose symbolizing some sorts of energies.

OK, I made up the stuff about the flying dinosaur, but I think it wouldn’t have been totally out of place there.

Next was the songbook, a white hardcover book with the Rosicrucian logo, printed in the Netherlands, this is were this particular branch was founded, and without any notes. Each page was one song. How convenient. The lyrics were about become divine out of one self, and because I disagreed I didn’t join the singing.

After the song, the two priests – or whatever they are called – left and we remained standing. Silently, we then walked out one by one. I almost stumbled on the steps, must have come from all the divine energy working on my avatar or something. We sat down downstairs and waited for a while.

Then the man who looked familiar approached me. I actually knew him from something related to Poland. He told me that he had been a member of the Rosicrucians for fifty years now. If I was interested, I should come again, but never feel forced. I would feel it if this was my way. I felt nothing special. He then said that it might be like visiting a cinema, were you also remain silent and show your respect, and then maybe it can touch you. Now, that sounded familiar, especially in relations to Poland, but that’s another story that will be published later. In any case, the closed meeting was a regional planning meeting with lunch, so I understood why I should go and left.

Various Rosicrucian flyers

On the way out I talked with an elderly lady who has been a member for twenty years about it. She said the temple service had been a typical one, but usually there would be more songs. She had been brought up as a Christian but something had always been amiss which she found with the Rosicrucians. Her test to see if what they were up to was right was whether it was in accordance to the Sermon on the Mount. I have no idea if that’s a valid “compatible with Christianity” text, in any case I had seen enough for that day and walked away, there were still two other religions to visit.

I haven’t really had the chance to visit any strange religions since my move, so when the local for-.free newspaper had a notice that there would be a talk on who will go to heaven, I thought it sounds like something for me. I was hoping for some kooky sect, because I had missed one of them the other month. The info only had the time and address and nothing on who would be giving the talk or what organization it was. So I got up one Sunday morning and went on my way.

I walked and walked. The distance was much longer than it had looked like on my map. I was anxious that I would show up to late, like the last time I wanted to go to some weird thing here and I had been so late that I gave up half way.

This time I had planned enough time though and finally reached the house. Jehovah’s Witnesses. Didn’t see that coming In fact, I hesitated. Should I really enter? But I had already visited Islamists and Rosicrucians, so how bad could it be?

The parking lot was packed, but the people had already entered. I opened the door and came into a front room with the coat racks. I hung up my coat and continued. They were just beginning to sing as I entered. It was a large and simple room which looked like an American wooden church. There were no pictures, no cross, just an obscure Bible quote about God’s name being Jehovah.

Someone noticed I was new and handed me a bible and a songbook. I flipped through it. Wherever it should say God, it said Jehovah. Or sometimes Jehovah God. Which of course is etymologically totally weird.

The song was over and after a short generic prayer, a guest speaker somewhere from Eastern Germany gave a talk on the afterlife and how you have to be a Jehovah’s Witness to go to heaven. I had expected more of it. Then there was another song.

The next part of the service was a Watchtower reading. An elderly lady who sat in front of me offered to give me a copy, but I rather read through the raunchy bits of the Song of Solomon in the Bible. The article was intended for children and had twenty parts. One guy was the host and another older man read the paragraphs. After each part they would ask the people what they had learned and they’d repeat – sometimes verbatim – what had been said in the paragraph. The children did it too. It was about that you have to be earnest before you are baptized and what duties a grown up had as a Jehovah’s Witness. Something about pioneers, which of course sounded like the communist pioneers of Eastern Germany and something about full time duty.

They also discussed a picture of a boy reading a bible on the schoolyard, which everybody said was great because you wouldn’t be given cigarettes and could read the bible in every free second. So much for a social life. So they basically repeated everything two to three times and I read the weird bits in the Bible for amusement. Towards the end they had a special treat for everyone. It was a letter from the German leadership saying that in April a kind of service counted twice the amount of brownie points. I didn’t quite get what that was all about.

I could have gone straight out and no one would have stopped me. But now I already was there. So I lingered a bit and a man approached me and chatted with me. He was polite and said some interesting things about their faith – apparently the Jehovah’s Witnesses have no trinity and 1914 is a special date fort hem . He even wanted to give me a book but I knew I didn’t want to read it. He also told me some personal things, like that his father was a Nazi and that the Jehovah’s Witnesses had been persecuted by the Nazis and deported to concentration camps. He also told me that they are now an accepted church in Germany. Good for them. The service was really boring though, in hindsight.

Scientology is considered to be a dangerous cult in Germany, about which you are warned at school and who might pose as the bogeymen in TV thrillers. They are not recognized as a church with tax benefits, because German church law states that the religious group has to have humanitarian goals. They are also, together with left winged extremists, right winged extremists, islamists, and foreign terrorist organizations a separate category in the yearly reports of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. And probably the only group from that list I hadn’t visited yet. Anyways, Scientology often complains that they are treated unfair and compare the public view of them with the pogroms against Jews in the 1930s, which doesn’t make them any more popular in this country.

Scientology is the only group I will not visit in my hometown, because I am too afraid they would photograph or otherwise monitor me. Even this entry might be too much, but I guess it’s not really worth monitoring me because of this text, and even if they do, they wouldn’t bet he first organization doing it.

I used to live close to a Scientology center, but was afraid to go there, especially as a teenager. This was, of course, a long time before I started going to all kinds of groups, including what one might file under “dangerous cults”. One day, when I was maybe 15 years old, a Scientology member talked to me close to my home and gave me a flyer about some “awesome movie” about the earth. I asked him why it wasn’t in the local cinemas when it was that great and left. Sometimes, they would leave magazines at our porch which decried the “terrors of psychologists” and the “Nazi methods of Germany” against Scientology. I read some of the articles to have a good laugh. When I was 20, I bought a copy of Dianetics for two German Marks at the flea market and placed it next to the Satanic Bible in my bookshelf for laughs. I even read the first 10 pages, but it was too boring to read and I put it down and forgot about it.

In recent months, I saw some more documentaries about Scientology on TV, read some of their documents meant for internal use published on Wikileaks, and even passed the German headquarters, but my friends didn’t want to join me on my quest, so I didn’t enter.

Scientology's Info Point

One day, I was in some other city again and saw one of their information booths. I was intrigued, but then I saw something even more interesting next to it: a group of young people wearing masks like in the movie “V like Vendetta”. Anonymous. A group anonymously organized via internet message boards which make fun of Scientology by taking pictures of them and informing people of their dangers right in front of them. So I took pictures as well and even got a picture taken of me and Anonymous, which might have been a silly idea, because then, Scientology might have taken a picture of me, taking pictures of them, taking… now I’m confused. In any case, I didn’t go to Scientology’s information booth, because on some days you don’t feel like jumping from one weird group to the next and remain safe from agitation.

Anonymous in Action

The next time I would meet the cult, I would be even less prepared. Just two days later, I was walking home from a 13 hour work day. Two men approached me and asked me if I liked to read. Did I really look that nerdy? I was tired and walked on, telling them I had no time. Then I stopped. These were crazy dangerous cult people, weren’t they? Hare Krishna or Scientology or Transcendental Meditation. I turned around and smiled. “I am sorry, of course I love to read!”

They had a bunch of books under their arm, in various languages – I could make out that at least one of them was in a language using Arabic letters – and asked me if I knew the book. It was something about lists to answer to support your inner self, or something to that effect. Sounded like one of the books my boss at the time liked to read. I don’t approve of these books on an intellectual and theological basis, but flipped through it saying that after such a long workday I wouldn’t really be able to process this now, even after he told me that he could give it to me cheaper than in a store. One of the men, they both looked middle aged, and now I realized they were wearing windbreaker jackets with Scientology organization names, asked me if I knew the book, to which I replied that I have a copy of Dianetics. I told him the story of how I got the book, I just didn’t mention the other books I have around it. “You know, I have 200 or so unread books, it’s just one of them.” He said that there are housewives who read it every day and teachers who don’t get. I almost said “Yeah, I also don’t get it.”

Suddenly, one of the men asked me if I struggled with my baser instincts. “That’s a personal question and I won’t answer it to a stranger on the street.” Then he asked me what makes me want to help people. “I just met you, that’s a personal question, too.” Ah well, I guess Scientologists have enough training not to be disparaged by such answers, so they gave me a flyer and I wished them a good evening. The cover said something about having difficulties in life and looking for answers, the back had the local address. I will not visit them.

All names have been changed to protect the innocent.

I knew this was going to be a terrible idea, even outright dangerous.

But let’s start at the beginning. At work, I had a colleague named Jens who always wore black clothes. Occasionally, his shirts would have a black sun logo, a symbol associated with the SS and neofascism. He would sometimes wear New Balance sneakers, a brand of shoes popular with neofascists because of the prominent letter N, which they use as a code for “Nationalismus” or “Nazi”. In Germany, symbols of illegal organisations, such as the Nazi Party or the SS, are illegal to wear, so there is a whole body of codes, like the number 88 or wearing Alpha Industries shirts, their logo being by chance reminiscent of the illegal SA

Be that as it may, Jens was a decent guy, never talked about his political views, and left the minorities at work – blacks, jews, muslims – alone. We even befriended him, not like his quasi assistant Mark, who was openly right winged but also a bit simple and just 20 years old, not that that excuses such a worldview. Now, Jens would sometimes talk with my office mate David and me about music, as we all liked weird subcultural stuff like death metal or industrial. One day, Jens told David, who is Jewish but not practicing, that he was going to have a neo folk party at his place, a suburb of the town where we lived.

For those who don’t know neo folk, it’s atmospheric music with a slight folk touch associated with the gothic movement and heavily infiltrated by neofascists. In fact, it’s one of the music genres identified with nazis, in this case more the “intellectual” ones, not the nazi skinheads. I think I had never listened to neo folk before, but I decided it would be a really stupid idea to go there, so I invited myself to the party, put on a black t-shirt with an anti-American slogan, and met David and Mark at the main train station to ride to the suburbs.

After a long walk past a brothel and a lot of snow, we reached Jens’ apartment in a small house just outside the city limits. Jens, wearing a black shirt and tie with a clip showing the black sun, opened and smiled. He had been drinking since four in the afternoon and it was eight PM. As expected, his appartment was rather conservatively furbished, there was a small wooden train spelling “Jens” above the TV, pictures from the wedding, and apart from a huge black flag with the iron cross surrounded by oak leaves and the TV with videos by Death in June or Boyd Rice, everything seemed normal. There were thirteen of us. Jens, his wife Anna, David, Mark, and I, two skinheads with girlfriends, one without, Anna’s teenage sister Conny and her boyfriend, and some weird guy I couldn’t place, apparently a truck driver.

Neo Folk Music Video, one without Swastikas

Jens introduced us to his friends and family and each of us got a horn for Odins Trunk (Odin’s Drink – honey beer) and Wikingerblut (Viking’s Blood – mead with cherry juice). Anna sat next to us and told us how exiting she thought it was that we listened to death metal and the band Deine Lakaien (David) or industrial and noise (me), just like her husband, because her own colleagues happened to be boring people who were only into what was on the radio. David, always the gentleman, said: “What I like about neo folk is that it’s not just music but also has some content to it.” “Yes, I like the nature and folk aspects”, Jens said. “And the Fatherland!”, Anna added. She walked on, David and I looked at each other, and giggled.

Later, we were standing in the kitchen checking out the good old German bread, when Conny started a very boring conversation with David about how awful work as a nurse had been. After one or two sentences, she started to rerpeat herself and it seemed that she wasn’t one of the brightest people at the party. Just when it got unbearable, Mark ran into the kitchen and shouted “There is a bird room!!!”

The bird room, Vogelzimmer in German, was just what the name suggests: A room with a bird cage for six parakeets, some more “bird furniture”, and that was it. Jens’s face turned red and he couldn’t tell us the names of the birds. He rather showed us the electric dog with the glowing green eyes and the dancing cow in the kitchen. It was time to get out some of that Kümmerling (herb liquor/ digestive). I also gave Jens a bottle of cheap Macedonian wine I still had from a trip there, which he commented with something about the singer of Deine Lakaien being from Macedonia.

It's easier to take Pictures of Skins when they are asleep...

I usually try to mix with the guests and not just hang around with the people I already know. So I sat next to one of the skinheads and we talked about our work – he was a carpenter – and I told him about Schokakola, the famous chocolate with coffee and cola nut that was already used in the War to stay awake. Funnily enough, his Nazi knowledge didn’t include that story.

Not being in a situation where they would have to prove themselves, there was no talk about politics whatsoever, they just sang one or two songs by the Nazi band Landser, and some song to the melody of Yellow Submarine about not being right wing. “Wir sind gar nicht Rechtsradikal, Rechtsradikal, Rechtsradikal.” I never knew that fascists where into irony, but David and I couldn’t stop laughing when these songs were sung.

Sometime around one AM, a neighbor showed up to complain about the music. Conny, who, like most of the people, was hopelessly drunk, decided it was a good idea to run upstairs and tell him that he was a boring party pooper, while Mark went missing. While everyone in the living room started a debate on how stupid Conny was in their opinion, David and I finally found our colleague lying on the floor in the guest room.

"David" beats "Mark" with a Pillow

He had just thrown up in the bathroom, because booze and pot didn’t mix well, and now he wanted to sleep. “No way!”, David shouted, “You have to make a move on that sister in law of Jens. You have to become his relative!” So he beat Mark with a pillow, while I noticed the rune pictures and the cabinet with an extensive fireworks collection in the room.

Prepared for Ragnarök?

Later, Jens made David drink some spicy sauce, but then he and I also had some of it, with bread. We turned on Body Count’s Evil Dick, a song mixing heavy metal and hip hop that I had last heard in 12th grade when we wanted to shock our English teacher. David and I discussed who at work was a MILF. It was almost like a normal party with a lot of drinking.

Around two thirty AM, most of the people had gone. The truck driver started some porn movies on the computer screen. Mark complained about muslims in Europe and that they should stay in their countries. Jens went to bed. Mark, David, and I still had half an hour before the next train would drive us to safety, so Anna sat next to us, because we were the last guests who weren’t sleeping. She seemed to be quite nervous, maybe because she couldn’t quite decide who or what we were. Suddenly she started complaining about how we hadn’t liked the music. Sure, right now, for chill out, we were listening to death metal, but before that, it had been her husband Jens who had DJed. So David told her that we liked neo folk and had asked many questions about the particular songs and bands. Anna said that she orignally was into techno, but had learned to love this kind of stuff after meeting Jens. It seemed to be a compromise between his taste for industrial and noise and the stuff she liked. She still seemed a bit uncomfortable, so we left when it was time and almost missed our tram at half past three.

The Leftovers

When we parted at the main train station, I put on my headphones and started listening to Asian Dub Foundation for a change. Mark would catch the wrong train and have an odyssee across the villages around our city. I was groggy for two days, because I am not used to alcohol. I am not sure if the whole party was worth it, but it certainly was something to remember.

I’ve edited the Ramadan text (even found a whole bunch of typos) and will hopefully now be able to add some new material which I collected in the last months.

Also I will now go semi-public (i.e. it has been pubic all the time, but I’ll show it to more people).

In another attempt to become famous, I went to a three hour long casting for cheezy German TV shows. They are fictionalised court room shows, because taping real cases is not possible. In truth, I just wanted to find out what such a casting is like, and as I didn’t want to go to a casting show where you sing and it gets broadcast, this sounded like the thing to do.

The production team was in my city for two days and had applicants come every other hour to a hotel somewhere outside the town center. In my group, there were about 30 men and women from all walks of life, so I guess they screened 600 people. Everybody got a number and a paper to fill out, then we were told to wait in a small room.

When it was our turn, we had to improvise a scene with all 30 of us in an elevator that got stuck. Then whoever wanted to had the chance to show some talent, which I didn’t do, because I thought it was silly, and in fact most presentations were embarrassing to watch. After that, we had the chance to present ourselves and tell them what qualification we have. There were actually some semi-professional models (most of them Iranian), people who frequent reality shows, and even a former opera singer.

With this preliminary screening done, they named about twelve people, among them all the 18 year old girls in short skirts who had said they wanted to become movie stars, and asked the group to go outside for something. Then the three women who did the casting said: “Congrats, the rest of you are in the next round.”

So we got short role descriptions to improvise with, something about me being a guy who’s interrogated for killing my neighbour who raped my teenage daughter, the filthy bastard. Six men were led into a room in which two ladies from the production team would tape us. I had to introduce myself in front of the camera and then play the short scene with one of the women, who was standing next to the camera.

I was supposed to go form denial to angriness and then breakdown. Now, I wasn’t screaming as much as some of the other men in our group, but I think I managed the improvisation on the spot and the break down quite well. I tend to be a calm person and thought that my role would rather be as some kind of government official in such a show. In the end, all of us got into their database for the next run of their shows. As of February 2010, the only mail I got from them was an invitation to a reality show about getting out of debt with the help of your parents. Of course I didn’t reply, because I neither have debts nor would I want to broadcast it if I did.

Erich von Däniken is a staple name in UFOlogist cycles. The self-appointed expert on astro-archaeology is famous worldwide for his books with outrageous claims about extraterrestrials. Luckily for me, the Swiss author born in 1935 speaks German and gives regular presentations of his… let’s be neutral and call it “views”.

I had shied away from going to one of his “lectures” at places like my old university previously, because they were just so expensive, and even my weirdest friends didn’t want to join. In 2009, I saw an advertisement for his latest program, to be presented in a theatre. The admission was from 20 € upward, and I got a back seat on some balcony from which I could hardly see him.

Von Däniken showed us his slide show with some videos and tried to explain everything. Rhetorically, he was rather good and even funny, so I almost didn’t mind how far away from facts he moved.

He basically stated that aliens most likely exist and will come back on Dec. 23rd 2012. As mentioned, the Mayan calendar. Though von Däniken did say that the date might be wrong simply because we do not live in the year 2009. There was this conspiracy in the middle ages to wipe some years away! So what about the Islamic and Jewish calendars, were they part of the conspiracy, too? Nobody knows. He talked about generational ships, which would land in some place, colonize it, and build new ships which landed somewhere else so that eventually, humans would inhabit the whole universe. No, actually they did so right now and the more ancient civilizations in outer space appeared so powerful that they would be like gods to us. Then there was the theory of trans spermia – space semen that would make humans exist everywhere. I am not making this up, he is. Von Däniken then showed slides of archaeological “evidence” with settlement patterns in Europe. Also, indigenous people with space faring gods and quotes from the Old Testament and Apocrypha to “prove” that aliens had come to earth in the past. Without knowing much about archaeology or astronomy, I could have proven him wrong about almost any point, but sadly there was no chance for discussion. I think I only said something aloud once – when he said that that a Jewish prophet didn’t even mention God in his text. Well, of course, because he was a Rabbi, and Jews refrain from saying YHWH, so he would have said Adonai, for “the Lord”.

What I thought was weirdest was when von Däniken went into detail about all those aliens showing ancient man how astronomy works. Why not show him the printing press and steam power and tell him about democracy and human rights? Why not show him what is right and what is wrong? No, maps of the stars!

Well, you didn’t convince me, and I didn’t spend another 20 € on some book. Still, it was a delightfull evening with some fun videos of spaceships.

The Text was proofread and approved by my dad.

Some Background

I was born and raised in Germany, but I have family in the States and have visited them quite often on vacation. My parents and I hadn’t been to the USA for some time and especially not over Christmas, so we decided to go there in late 2007. The following is part transcription from what I wrote on the flight there, part based on my extensive notes.

The Flight

It began with a surprise – because of fog and ice, our connection to the airport for overseas flights was delayed. We ended up in a three hour line to get our flight changed and a hotel to spend the night in Frankfurt am Main. This would be a story on its own, with a drunken American girl hitting on a newly wed Arabian couple and so on, but I disgress.

The actual flight to Chicago was scheduled a day later. We arrived rather early with a cute German emo girl we picked up at the hotel who had been living in the USA for so long that she had lost her native language. We spent some hours sitting in front of the check in, surrounded by Arabs, the men with long beards and skullcaps, the women partly or fully veiled. The frightening thing about the situation was that many of them were coughing or sneezing, as if some disease was going around.

We landed in Chicago. Cold and snow seeped into everything. The place looked dirty and chaotic. At the immigration office, they asked me, an American citizen, for my occupation and where I would stay in the US. This was a procedure that was totally strange to me, who recently travelled throughout Europe, including non-EU-countries. My German mother even had to give her fingerprints and a picture was taken by something like a webcam, as if she was some kind of criminal.

Then we were in the States! Well, an airport, which basically looks the same all over the Western world, but America nonetheless. Slipping out of my shoes for security checks, and then my first culture shock – the toilets. Everything was infrared controlled, but not as I wanted it. Also, the individual compartments were almost as large as my complete bathroom at home, maybe because of the many obese people in the USA.

My parents finally agreed on going to an Italian food place at the airport. Yes, our next flight was delayed as well. After the order, something very weird happened: We got cheap plastic forks and knives, but a cloth napkin – what a combination. My dad remarked that America looked slightly shabby, and with that he didn’t mean the charming Mediterranean way. Then the waitress wrote her name on the paper table cloth – Mary – and introduced herself with some small talk. The food was rather spicy, which I enjoyed. Foreigners often say that German food tastes rather bland, but they just overdo their spices and have desensitized their taste buds. At the neighboring table, total strangers started a conversation with each other.

Many aiport personell seem to have some other native language than English, so it was no wonder that we could hardly understand the announcements of a Caribbean. On the next airplane, a flight within the USA, the pilot was wearing a Santa Claus hat and the stewardess… reindeer horns. I am not making this up.

De-Icing

Again, people started introducing each other immediatly, but didn’t really converse as they had nothing to tell each other. I sat next to my family though, so no stories from me.

Small Town America

Finally, at 9:30, we arrived at our destination. My uncle picked us up to drive us to the suburbs, where my grandparents live. It was all just large roads and huge advertisement panels for stuff noone needed. After a while we reached the snowed in small house which has been the home of my family for over fourty years.

American Suburb

The garage door opened – they actually have a garage, a large one which also doubles as a shed – and my grandma was there. Sufficient to say, this brought up a lot of nostalgia and warm feelings and so on, but let us move to the house itself.

It would take volumes to descibe the house entirely. An old person’s home with lots of old pictures and artifacts, some brought from Germany, stacked everywhere. A huge TV set in the living room, opposite to it a small plastic christmas tree. Which is rather strange for me, because trees are supposed to be made of, well, trees. A certain kind of pillow and sofa, almost baroque in ist ornate way, but maybe that’s just American. The morning newspaper had one page on world news, all of it on Asia and rather superficial. A perfect self sealed world.

My Room for the Stay

My room was the old children’s room in which my father used to sleep, left as it was when he left for college in the 1970s. A picture of Jesus hung on the Wall and the bed had more than two sheets. After the long flight, I could do nothing else but jump inside. In the far distance, the horns of the American trains blared, something ethereal, as you would neither see a train nor use one – I think in the US they are only used for cargo, not for passengers.

Monday

After I got up, my grandmother told me that I should keep my shades down so that noone could spy inside. This is in suburbia where no American walks around outside. We then started to rearrange all the German Christmas nick-nacks she proudly displayed on the dinner table so that we could actually use the table for eating breakfast.

I Guess "Ethnic Needs" Means Dark Colored Patches and Wax for Dreads, or what?

Still being a bit groggy from the flight, we drove to Walmart. Some years ago, American supermarkets appeared huge and full of exotic things. This was at the time when I was still a kid and liked GI Joes, which weren’t available in pacifist Germany. Now, we laughed at the fat free milk and the fact that there were more different kinds of pregnancy tests than condoms.

Condoms, Pregnacy Tests, and Stuff Against Smoking

What is also really frustrating about the US is that because of the different tax laws between states or even counties, they don’t put the taxes on the price tags so that it is always a guessing game about what you will pay, unlike in Germany where I sometimes enter a shop with 50 cents and then pick up something for 48 cents and know it will be enough at the register. Then there is the paying itself, which is often done via check where in Europe you would use something like a master card which directly takes the money from you bank account. Many Germans don’t even own a credit card. There were some people collecting money for charity outside the mall who wore Santa hats and rang bells, but the christmas attire annoyed me so much that I didn’t give them anything.

We picked up my grandfather, who lived in assisted living. In the car, he started singing some old tunes, which made me very sentimental even when I didn’t know the particular songs. Back at my family’s place, the TV was turned on again.

Christmas

Tuesday

It was Christmas, and naturally the day started with going to one of the many local churches, even if it’s weird to celebrate the day on the morning of the 25th, not the evening of the 24th like Central Europeans are known to do. Concerning different Christian groups, Germany roughly has 30% Catholics and 30% Lutherans, with maybe another 10% other Christian denominiations. In the USA, of course, this is very different, because you might find more than twenty different Christian organisations in one suburb. The place we went to is a medium sized Christian denomination that much of my father’s family is affiliated with, so it wasn’t a surprise to meet many relatives at the service which my older uncle led. They even included a little Christmas play, which I found weird, but then I am not a Christian.

Christmas with Jeezus

After Church, we all drove out to my aunt for the big family gathering. There was venison from an animal shot and prepared by my aunt’s oldest son, which was delicious. Traditionally for Christmas, there were many akward moments, but I should better not include them here. The presents I passed around, bags of sweets and lemonade from Germany, were well received. Some of the cousins played the piano, family pictures were taken and people started telling stories. My father’s cousin had some adventures as a missionary in Africa. Then, just to annoy the “uneducated rabble”, he, my younger uncle, my father, and I started talking in French and German. We also poked fun at my only female cousin for wearing a so called purity ring, something I always thought was an Urban Legend from the US.

Downtown (I Think this is Close to the Cinema)

That night, some of us went to watch the Tim Burton movie Sweeney Todd, which my cousin had seen as a musical, so that we were both able to convince some of the others to go. I was surprised that people under sixteen were allowed to watch such a violent film, but the US has so called parental guidance, meaning that when one of the parents acompanies the kids, a horror movie suddenly becomes something a kid can watch.

Wednesday

The day started with a short trip to a car mechanic, which I just followed to have a look what that would look like in the States. Not really that different to Europe, only that they have pick up trucks, which people only use in America and the Third World. Then my parents and I wanted to go out for a walk, but my grandmother was strictly against it, because she couldn’t picture people going for a walk in a suburb. So we borrowed the car and went to an old fashioned American diner to get a lemonade or coffee. It started to snow.

We drove back and the TV was running, again. The main news for everyone was some tiger on the loose. I couldn’t care less. Later that day, we went to church to get family pictures taken. It was the first time in history that all my grandparents’ children with spouses and grandchildren were in one place. One of my cousins brought pizza, because at the time he worked as a courier. His older brother, the one who shot the deer, had to leave, because he got a call. He is in fugitive retrieval, that means finding and picking up people who didn’t show up at court. In other words, a bounty hunter.

Visiting Extended Family

Thursday

We took the next day off for a first visit in the city. On the way, we stopped at a short strip of shops which included a real art store where I found a watch I needed to have, only that they didn’t have it for men. I would get it half a year later as a present from my parents. We then visited my older uncle who was renovating a house.

Between the Suburbs and Downtown. Apparently already Part of the City

I was a bit dissapointed by the actual city though. The Barnes & Nobles had about the same amount of books as our newer bookstores, so it totally lost its appeal. I did get some laughs out of talking to teenage girls about how Pullman’s “The Golden Compass” was not an anti-Christian novel. For my mother, the same dissapointment happened when she entered Victoria’s Secret. I guess when the US has managed to sell all their products all over the world, visiting America itself gets a bit boring, especially given that it is a country based so much on materialism. I found a stationary store that had anti-Bush propaganda. Fun, but nothing I needed to buy, especially because it was clear he couldn’t be reelected.

Bookshop

We visited my uncle and his partner again. His sons were there as well and introcuded me to Guitar Hero, a game I had heard about, but had never seen in action. They were especially proud to show me some German songs, even if I didn’t quite bother.

Friday

The next morning, we visited my uncle’s ex-wife, who is still a friend of the family. Her new husband has Italian ancestors and was planning to open a restaurant the following year. I actually visited it a year later. The TV was running again, with some show on vacationing, even if we hadn’t seen each other in ages.

For lunch, we went to a Cajun food place with one of my father’s old school friends. I think I will have to explain the term Cajun for the Europeans reading this: It’s the French culture from the Louisiana area – think New Orleans – and the word is related to the term Arcadia for Canada. The food is mostly deliciously spiced seafood, and they even had alligator, but we didn’t order it.

Later that day, I bought a bottle of wine labeled something like “Angry Housewife” at Pricechopper, and they put it in a brown paper bag as if I was some kind of drug addict. For the evening, we leapt into the car to go out west and out of state to visit my father’s younger brother. As the ride took some time, we turned on a country western station. Country western is only fun in the Mid West and when you don’t have to listen to it all the time. 106 the Wolf. What a name.

Change of Scenery

Saturday

My younger uncle is a bit… different than the rest of the family. He lives far away from them and has a barn and greenhouses where he grows garlic and asparagus.

The Barn

There is a cat, Dot, that roams across the snowcovered fields, and a dog, Corki, that mostly stays home.

Corki

On Saturday morning, my father and his brother went through old family pictures, while I browsed through the science fiction novels and gay magazines on his bookshelf. On his farm, my uncle runs yearly meetings of pagans and/ or gays. Then I wrote some postcards to friends.

Cow Skull

I got some catfish at the next restaurant we visited in some town in Kansas. For decoration, they had a cow’s skull with a Santa hat. The whole town, which was based on one main street, was kind of pathetic. When I wanted to send my postcards, I found out that the post office, with all its safes and other services, was closed and didn’t have an electronic stamp machine.

Kansas

On our way back, we needed to refill the car, but no gas station would accept cash. Only American credit cards. Finally, at the third station, they actually sold gas to normal, honest people for that green paper which stands for some economic value. With a “Have a nice one, Hon’”, we were on our way again and turned on the radio to tune into Christian music. I don’t think there are any explicitly “Christian” radio stations in Germany. Maybe in such a vast country like America, which has a much higher percentage of Christians than Western Europe, you need to remind yourself of what you are and also in which country you live.

Visiting Friends

After a short stop for some shopping – a half priced book store, whre I was in heaven – we visited my grandfather again at his senior citzen home. The place looked like a hotel, with an aquarium in the foyer and a friendly black porter. My grandfather introduced a verteran of World War II to me, the last war in which the Americans were on the right side, so I had a great deal of respect for him. Unfortuantely, I didn’t get the chance to ask him where he had served. My grandfather proudly showed us the dinging room, the recreation room… it all seemed to be like a luxury liner for old people. And not on the sea. His own room was in stark contrast to it, because, to be polite, it looked a bit messy. My father was able to finish his quarters collection from the small change my grandfather gathered for his poker games, though. This was the last year we would see my grandfather in such a good shape.

Sunday

We visited church, again. We were introduced to a German teenage girl who was spending a year in the US, a common practice for German high school students, and a Russian woman. But there wasn’t anything to talk about with them, because just being from the same area doesn’t mean you have anything in common.

I am not sure about my notes here, but I think we went to a Japanese place where they cooked on a hot plate in the middle of the table, which was fun to watch, even if the cook was from Southeast Asia and not from Japan, but who cares when it tastes good. Note that I had been a picky eater until a few years before this trip, so this time I tried almost eveything that was served. We then visited a good friend of my father from whom I got my middle name who had visited Germany that year and had some nick-nacks from there on his shelves. One of his daughters came home from a night shift after some time and had a nervous breakdown shortly thereafter. The beauty of small town America.

Later that day, we went to this friend’s brother. His daughter, who is about my age, has been an officer in the US Army. The whole country seems to be militarized, with advertisements for the Army in the cinema, recruiting stations everywhere, and every family has someone in the service. I couldn’t live in that place. There were some other old family friends present at the meeting, but I didn’t really know them well. I still got a nice scarf with my initials from one of them.

Monday

To get a bit of rest from all this Americanness, we went to the house of a Dutch church official on Monday. My family has some connections to the leadership of this particular denomination, and in Europe, it’s mostly the Dutch running the show. Note that the Dutch language and German are similar, if not always mutually intelligible. But I come from a German state next to the Netherlands, so they feel like brothers. The house not only had Dutch language magazines, there was a glass table supported by a naked woman. Naked! And no television that was turned on. Apart from the family we visited, some of their relatives from the Netherlands were there and we talked in an eclectic mix of Dutch, German, and English, which is easier than it sounds given that all three are Western Germanic languages. Outside, in the snow, I spoted a cardinal, a bird I had never seen before.

The First Cardinal I Saw In My Life

That afternoon, we visited my father’s aunt, my grandfather’s sister. Her house looked like out of a sweet antique furniture store like they only have in America. She would pass away the next year.

Old Times

Unlike in Europe, New Year is not celebrated with fireworks. Given that noone in my family drinks alcohol, it was a very somber party at my older uncle’s place. We saw Dubya give a speech, but I could restrain myself and not puke on the carpet. My cousin showed up with her then-boyfriend but left soon. It might have been interesting to go join the party they were going to, but apparently it wasn’t to be.

Scary Stuff on Television

Tuesday

It was January 1st and I neither had a hangover nor was I tired. When I came into the living room, the TV was running, again. There was a parade in Pasadena, wherever that is, with a lot of Hispanics in the show juxtaposed by marching bands. When I was younger, I thought there were only blacks and whites in the US. Maybe this was because there simply are only white people in these suburbs and the church camp in New England which we occasionally visited. Nowadays, there are a lot of bilingual signs in the USA – English and Spanish.

We had a look at the newly obtained old family pictures from the time of the Great War and asked my grandmother who was who. In the opinion of my mother and me, some ancestors on my grandfather’s side looked as if they were not Anglo-Saxon like the rest of the family. Maybe Mediterranean. My grandfather sometimes looks a bit like an Italian, too. But the pictures were from the mid-eighteen hundreds, a time before the immigration of Southern Europeans or Jews. Now, it could have just been dark haired British – or British with foreign ancestry –, but our theory is Native Americans or Mexicans.

For lunch, we went to our favorite barbecue place in town. Later, we visited my older uncle’s girlfriend’s place. She seemed to have a similar taste in books and music to me. My mom said that if it didn’t work out with my uncle, I should get together with her. She was born in Germany, but her Austrian mother and American father moved to the States with her when she was a child.

Childhood Memories

Wednesday

My father was eager to visit some of the places where he had grown up. The first years, he was raised on a farm among pigs and cows. Well, maybe not literally. In this suburb, there is even a road named after his great-grandfather.

Out There

My father always likes to show us a fence post that he put there deep in the bedrock back in the 1960s. The old posts had always been knocked down by cars that took too sharp curves, so they put a solid one there which still stands.

Cows at the Lake

We found a frozen lake with cows around it and we even saw a donkey somewhere. Some of the houses are decorated in outragous ways, like one that has been painted as the Stars and Stripes since 9/11. Take that, terrorists! Also, there is one with numerous inflated and lighted Christmas figures, which scares me.

Merry Christmas Decoration

We visited the traditional American diner in the center of the suburb again to have lunch. They didn’t have what I wanted so they just served me something else, even if it was something I wouldn’t eat. The waitress even got angry when I tried to order something different. At least they had good lemonade. Next door was a shop that sold silly vintage toys.

The afternoon was scheduled for another visit of an old school friend. His children are about my age, but they have all married already. We talked about old times and what everyone was up to. One of the sons has joined a Christian sect called Brotherhood of Christ which lives in seclusion in something called a traditional way, which means like in the 19th century, not like in ancient times. I think it is a bit weird that Christians tend to believe that the 19th century is “the traditional way”, not, say, the 14th or 6th century, but maybe I should read more Hobsbawm.

Thursday

My grandfather had to be brought to the doctors again, so we visited another mall, this time one built like a 19th century factory complex, which looked rather neat. I noticed that, apart from all the Christmas paraphernelia, there was much more Jewish stuff than there would be in Germany. Also, for the first time in my life, I noticed something called Kwanzaa, an Afro-American holiday which I had only heard of in the cartoon show Futurama, and thought to be a joke.

The Big City

In the afternoon, we visited the big city a second time. We first went to a traditional American diner which my father already knew as a teenager and had shakes. I noticed that there were a lot more black people than in the suburb. Then we went to a toy museum but decided it wasn’t that interesting, so my parents went shopping, I guess, while I went to a war museum which I had never visited before. It was informative, and I bought some souvenirs for a friend who is a historian and specializes in that particular war. We then came across a comic shop and I bought a British comic, The Invisibles, even if I asked for the children’s movie the Invincibles.

About 50% of the city’s inhabitants isn’t white – by the American definition – and we tuned into a hip hop channel to get the right feel for the place. Reminded me of the time back in the 1990s, when my grandmother told us not to visit a jazz cafe downtown because “they” were supposedly dangerous.

Midwest Panorama

Near the river, we found a statue of Lewis and Clark and a French language sign in memory of my own ancestors, the Chouteaus.

The French in the States

My father ended the day in the city by showing us the old train station, which had a sign that guns weren’t allowed there. The USA is the only country in the Western culture where people run around with guns.

Sign on Weapons

We concluded the day with another visit at the famous barbecue place, and the whole family was there. It was probably the last time that all of us, my grandparents, their children and spouses, and all my cousins would be in one place, so saying good-bye was quite emotional, and many tears were shed.

Return

Tornado Shelter At The Airport

Friday

The flight back was rather uneventful.

Chicago

At the airport in Chicago, we did meet the Dutch women by chance because they had decided to take a later flight instead of the overbooked plane they were on. Finally, in Frankfurt am Main, I saw the first naked women on the cover of a magazine again. After so much repression in America, it almost seemed like a release.

Arrival

And then I was in London. I hadn’t been to the United Kingdom in ten years, and although it had been a quite important subject at my bilingual high school, I had no idea how 21st century England was like. This time, I wasn’t there because of school or for vacation, but because of a an assessment center (AC) I had been invited to.

June 21st, 2009

I had decided to come a day early to get acclimated, so nobody picked me up from Stansted Airport. First of all, I had to get into London, which sounded easier than it was, because the airport was somewhere out there. The huge train station underneath didn’t look promising but I managed to get a ticket and caught the next train, which looked rather shabby. It took me three hours to get to the place I wanted to go to, somewhere south of London. I had to change trains four times in London proper due to the blocking of some station because of construction sites.

And how am I going to get where I want?

The place where the AC was supposed to be was in a small town and I quickly got lost, but finally found the hotel. It had an African safari theme, I have no idea why.

My Room in the Hotel

It was a bit akward to talk to some native speakers of English again after all my visits to the Balkans where I usually only speak broken Euro-English. It started promising, because my first night in the hotel hadn’t been booked and their machine wouldn’t accept my bank card. So I went into town and tried three different machines until I got my money. It was difficult to navigtate the streets with the left lane driving cars. I also got something to drink and went to eat Indian food. I not only love Indian food, English food is also known to be atrocious, so the choice was a no-brainer.

(Almost) All Religions served. At a funeral parlor.

Assessment Center

June 22nd

The day was filled with preparing the AC and attending it. I won’t go into details here. I was just a bit disappointed that among the many British participants, there was only one black guy and no South Asians. The Germans and Danish participants were more ethnically diverse though. We had dinner in the evening and I noticed how… uncultured some of the British participants were. They talked about holidays on Ibiza and television instead of philosophy or theater plays. Maybe they had the better small talk topics. Although I later did tell the Londoners that I needed to go to Brixton, because all the British gangsta Hip Hop I listen to is from there. Nobody could really help me with suggestions for what to do the next days in town. I thought they could give me some insider advice, but all of them just talked about mainstream attractions as if I was a tourist or they weren’t from London.

June 23rd

At the end of the AC, I got to pet a baby skunk, had a python on my arm and walked a huge lizard on a leash. It would have been an awesome picture, me in a suit and tie and that lizard, but my camera was locked in another room. There was also a parrot, which we almost abducted for our presentation. I joined some of the other participants on the train back and got out in the early afternoon at Waterloo. Even scored the phone number of the Danish girl.

Bad Places and Museums

So originally, I wanted to go to a hotel I had found on the internet, but they never called me back, and I couldn’t reach them on the phone. Close to the train station, I found a sign announcing some bed & breakfast. I entered some really shady looking street called Lower Marsh and found the entrance next to a fast food place where for the love of God I wouldn’t want to eat anything. A man came out of the shop, small and bald, overweight and with a wife beater shirt. He had blue tattoos and a face like a bulldog. Then he asked me if I was looking for a place to sleep. “That’s why I’m here”, I said boldly. I was ready for adventures and felt like some foreign secret agent renting a place noone should know about. Well, I was foreign and wore a suit. I did ask him if it was a quiet place, because by the looks of it, I suspected that it might be a joint that hookers frequent. He walked me up some steps and across some kind of balcony to a tiny room which was a bit dirty.

Maybe They Only Gave People With Ze German Accents The Bad Rooms...

He named the price and I happily agreed. The room’s door didn’t look particulary safe, but I had nothing valuable with me. I then took a shower in some other room which looked as bad, and walked out into the London afternoon.

The first thing I noticed across the street was a bookshop. It had a marvellous collection, but I either already had the books or didn’t really need them. It was as if every dream book I was looking for was just around the corner but never quite there. Sadly, I found nothing to buy and had to move on. I walked around to breath in London’s atmosphere. The streets were nondescript, I found comunity colleges and banks, small foodshops and tourist traps.

By chance, I came across the Imperial War Museum, one of the few large museums in London I had never visited before. As visiting was free of charge, I entered, even if I am not as enthusiastic about military stuff as I used to in my youth. There were the usual World War One and Two exhibitions and some modern warfare paraphernalia. Almost nothing about the Eastern Front ot the Warsaw Pakt, but I guess that has never been England’s focus.

Exhibit In The Imperial War Museum

An art exhibition about coping with the holocaust and some more about the Shoa. A sign warned that this might be hard to bear, but I had visited Bergen Belsen, Majdanek, and Auschwitz, so I didn’t really mind. What did scare me was that one of the elevators I was in fell down half a floor before it went up again, so I told the museum’s staff to fix it. What was also weird was that they had taken a lot of the exhibits from the small exhibition on secret warfare, which I pointed out with my German accent to some Englishman, and I think he said that James Bond had needed that stuff.

Stuff Seen Across The Thames

The museum closed just an hour after I had entered, so I went north to the Thames to have a look around.

The Bard

I remembered that the newly erected Globe Theatre would be here somewhere. Someone on rolerblades almost drove into me, which shows how attentive I must have been. The Globe was William Shakespeare’s old theatee, but it didn’t exist for a few hundred years, until an initiative started to collect money sometime in the 1990s. They even visit my old high school in Germany to advertise this. I was at a play in 1999, which must have been right after they opened it, but it was some really unknown piece by the Bard. This time though, I had no idea what was going on, so I just stepped to the counter and said: “Hi there, I am only here today and tomorrow. What do you have?” “Well,” the lady said, “There’s either a groundling place for tomorrow’s As You Like It, or we just got the last free seat back for Romeo and Juliet for 17 pounds.” Maybe it was 27 pounds, but given the current exchange rates, let’s just agree on that it was a good price for such a play and such a place. “OK, so when is the play tonight?” “In 15 minutes. You should decide now.” I walked out to think about it and came back 30 seconds later to get the ticket. Who was I kidding?

The production of Romeo and Juliet was rather good. It was traditional, only that Romeo was black and the monk was Polynesian, but who cares. Also, they had some period music, although the first song was about turning of cell phones – or rather mobile phones in the UK – and cameras. There were school classes and American tourists. In fact, I almost think that the Globe is frequented more by tourists than by local theater fans. They do a lot of scholarly work and education though. What also happened during the play is that one of the groundlings, that is someone standing on the arena-like floor of the theater, fainted, but the actors didn’t notice and continued playing.

Running Around in London

I ended the first real day in London at a halal chicken place, which had unbelievably huge portions for the prices. I’ll explain what “halal” is later. At some kiosk, I bought some postcards for Germany. I later reconstructed that I had been in Whitechapel, Southward/ South Bank, and London City.

June 24th

I got up quite early for my standards as it had been perfectly silent in the room. I didn’t dare touch the food I could have been offered, so I just left after getting back my deposit for the key. I had nothing planned for the day, so I started with a small bookshop with a Polish clerk. After Poland entered the European Union, literally millions of Poles left for the British Isles, which is a bit strange, because nowadays, young Poles know Britain better than I do. I got some presents for friends and walked to Trafalgar Square. Note that all of this is with my suitcase and in blazing heat. There was another bookshop there. It was huge and I spent at least and hour in it and bought an anthology I had been looking for for some time.

Take This, Tesco!

Next was the post office to send away my stuff, where I encountered a man screaming at the clerk because both sides had been annoying each other for quite some time. My possible date for the London Eye then sent me a short message that she would rather go shopping with an old friend. Your loss, I thought, and walked to the London Eye, the huge Ferris wheel that overlooks the city. One of the AC attendants worked there and had promised us to let us in for free. On the way there, I passed all sorts of famous London sights, but I didn’t care because I had visited them as a teenager already. Besides, I don’t really care for Victorian England or the Queen, or whatever they have, I wanted to see the South Asian parts of London or go to Brixton.

Touristy Stuff in London

The London Eye had huge lines, or queues in British English, and steep prices. I couldn’t find the girl from the AC and decided not to go after all. It would have been awkward with my suitcase anyway.

I got hungry, and thinking of English food, I went looking for an Indian place again. I ordered some masala chicken with rice, when I noticed the letters حلال on the window, that is the Arabic word “halal”, for things that are allowed under Muslim laws. It means there was no pork in my chicken curry and no alcohol in my lassi. I asked the South Asian looking man whether he was a Muslim. Not because I was curious, but because I wanted to know where the next mosque is. I had visited some mosques in the Balkans and more recently in Germany and wanted to know what the situation is like in the UK. I couldn’t tell Indians from Pakistanis and didn’t want to ask a woman in a headscarf, so this would be the best place to find out, I thought. “Yes, please”, he answered, which seems to be the typical Indian or Pakistani polite answer. He then said that he isn’t from this area. I could tell from the color of his skin. Just kidding. What he meant though was that he wasn’t from Central London, so he didn’t know any mosques in the area, but gave me rough directions to a place in East London.

The London Eye

I still wasn’t sure about that London Eye, so I spent some more time in a park next to it, read some books and got a terrible sunburn. I watched some pathetic street artists like those living statues, and a school class from Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Blackfriars - Totally Not Like in "Neverwhere"

In the afternoon, I took the tube to Aldgate and ran around the Liverpool Street station area. I was a bit disappointed that the London underground wasn’t exactly like in Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, but parts of it where close to it. I didn’t have much cash left, so I first bought the train ticket for Stansted Airport to be on the safe side. My plane would leave early the next morning. I now had eight Pounds left in my pocket and nothing else to do that day.

Friendly English Pub

After some more running around and almost getting lost, I finally found a street map that pointed to that mosque the guy in the food place had talked about. There was also an interesting used bookstore and some other cute shops on the way.

Brick Lane

Then I was in Brick Lane, the Bengali street in London, which even had bilingual street signs. This was the area where, according to the newspaper I read, Die Zeit, a homosexual guy had been stabbed to death by Bengali teenagers. I was the only white person in the street. That almost sounded familiar. I entered a gift shop for religious needs and bought a Yusuf Islam CD and some stickers for Muslim friends at home and then went to the mosque, a former synagogue which used to be a church. I had a short look at the different prayer rooms and even went upstairs to where the classes were given to children of various ages. In the long corridor, dust particles danced in the light that poured in from above. Sorry for the poetic description, but it was quite picturesque and it’s too bad I didn’t dare to take pictures inside.

Brick Lane Masjid

After some talk with friendly Bengalis, a white Briton approached me and asked whether I was English. To make it simple, I said “no”, he didn’t have to know my whole family history. He then pointed out that my camera looked stealable hanging out of backpack. Whatever. No one ever stole anything from me, and I have been to worse places than London.

With just a few pounds left and a full evening in front of me, I bought something to drink, read the newspaper I got in the plane on the street, chatted with Austrian high school students – I did wear an Austrain t-shirt that day – and went to an indoor market that reminded me of Eastern Poland to buy an anthology about unicorns for a friend. Later, I ffigured out that I was close to the banking district. I wanted to see some sad bankers and walked towards the skyscrapers.

The Gherkin

The Gherkin, a buliding which to me looked like a huge futuristic drill jutting out of the earth. It was quite impressive. Lloyd’s was even better, because they seemed to have had all their plumbing on the outside, which made it look like a refinery on a desolate mining planet.

A Mining Station - or is it Lloyd's?

While I was taking pictures, some locals started bringing a piano and sang a song on the street. I have no idea what that was about, but they laughed when I took a picture of them, so I guess it wasn’t for a movie.

Sudden Piano Session

There was also a bombed-out church with a tent in front for the services. With bombed-out, I mean terrorists, the Irish Republican Army. I walked around it, but couldn’t find anyone to ask about it or to let me in.

I Guess This Is The Altar Of The Bombed Out Church

I later passed another church and asked if I could come in because they had a bookstore, but a man in his mid twenties almost shoved me out because they had some discussion evening to which he didn’t want to invite me. I almost shouted “Those Bengali Muslims are the only religious people who were kind to me today!”, but he was gone.

At Liverpool Station, I figured out that you can still get food when you use a EC card and then took an early train to hang around at the airport. I tried to sleep around midnight, after all flights had gone and the shops had closed. Next to me, judging from the writing on her magazines, was a woman from the Baltics. It was really unconfortable on the iron chairs, I was too tired to sleep and my clothes were sticking to me because of the sweat File that as one of the most unconfortable nights I ever had. At 4 AM, the airport awoke again. There was still some time before my airplane would leave and I even considered using a costly internet access, but I let the hours fly by with my new books and somehow I managed to arrive safely home some time later.

This happened on September 09th, 2009

The Muslim Student Association prepared an intercultural Iftar for students at the university’s international office. My city has about 30,000 students, many of which are foreigners, but not all of them Muslims, of course. It was supposed to be open for guests to present Muslim culture, but I think there was only one guy who didn’t know what was going to happen. In front of the building, he asked if there was still time to smoke, when I jokingly told him he should wait until sunset. Ahmad, Ibrahim, Zeynep, and Ayse showed up as well

Being a real German organization, first the chairpeople had to give a presentation, present flowers to the previous chairpeople (among them Ibrahim and Ayse, actually), and talk a lot. The good thing about Muslim meetings is that speeches can only last until the next call to prayer though. After the Adhan and the dates and water, the prayer was outside, on some blankets the people had brought. I thought it was a bit weird to pray in the open on campus, so I didn’t participate and pretended to help in the kitchen. When we started eating food the students had brought, Ahmad, who was sitting opposite to me, got agitated. “I think we prayed in the wrong direction, something was wrong there, we have to check!” Muslims always pray facing towards the Kaaba in Mecca. Ibrahim, who is often very serious, got out a compass but Ahmad wasn’t convinced. I told him that there was a map outside, so we left the building to check. It turned out that he had mistakenly thought the university was parallel to the main street when in fact it wasn’t. It also turned out that we had locked ourselves out, but luckily there was an emergency button to open the slide doors from the inside.

The Eighth Night – Eating and Singing

This happened on September 11th, 2009

It was September 11^th – no, not that year – and after I had declined tea from a gorgeous Afghan lady with whom I was discussing a photography book about her homeland, I took the train to visit Claudia and her baby. When the sun was on its way to set, I headed to the place where the Naqshbandi usually meet, some New Religious groups center. Just as I was entering, a young, slightly insecure man, Nils, wanted to enter, too. It turned out that he wanted to visit the Sufis as well.

We were early and there was a dark skinned elderly lady wearing a headscarf and a two year old blond and blue eyed girl. “Uncle Mo will now draw a cat for you”, the old lady said to the girl in screaming pink. So I did. After a while I asked her, whose daughter the little one was. “Layla is my older daughter’s child. You might have seen her during the concert, the one who colors her hair black and gets a tan because she doesn’t want to look ‘German’, but then look at her cute little daughter – blond, blue-eyed, a real German! Hahaha.”

Tariq and his family showed up, then the others. After breaking the fasting, small carpets were layed out for prayer and we lined up. I was standing a bit too much on the left and almost bumped my head against some chairs. Tariq must have noticed it because he got out of the line between cycles and rearranged some stuff.

Later, we sat on the floor and ate on a plastic rug, the men on one side of the room the women on the other. Rashid was made to recite Dua, a prayer, during the feast, but otherwise he was more interested in talking about books with me.

It got late and it was time for Dhikr, the mantra-like recitations of praises for God. The local Sheikh starts to intone Suras or one of the 99 names of God or some other praise and everyone starts chanting. The men sit in one circle, the women in another one, which is a bit weird because you have all those men around you but hear distinct female voice somewhere in your back. I was told that not all Naqshbandi groups do it that way, some are silent, some are segregated, and so on. Sitting like that for a long time made my feet go numb. I had to leave in a haste to catch the last train home.

Interlude – Haram

This happened around September 17th, 2009

A number of things are forbidden according to the Qur’an or Hadiths, sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. So one day I was walking down the street when a Bulgarian friend, Ivan, asked me to participate in some market research. As I had some spare time and I also think that research methods are interesting, I agreed. “You do drink beer, do you?”, he asked. “Yeah, sure.” Just some questions and then get a bar of chocolate or something similar as a ‘payment’, I know how this works. So I sat in the dodgy looking room of his institute, next to my work actually. Market research companies always look a bit shady. Then he brought a glass of beer for me to test. I was trying to stay away from alcohol. It was Ramadan, and even if I wasn’t fasting that day, something like this… especially at 2 PM… But I was thirsty, so I tried the 0.3 l of beer and gave him my grades. Alright. Refreshing though. So he got up and got the second beer. “Ivan”, I asked when he had returned with a stronger tasting draft, “is this like a wine sampling where you are only supposed to drink one sip and spit it out?” He shrugged but told me that this was the last beer I got. In the end, I had half a liter on an empty stomach and when I entered the bookstore to check out the latest inspirational literature under ‘other religions’, I started to sway.

The First Day – Id ul-Fitr/ Bayram

This happened on September 20th, 2009

Ramadan ends with Id ul-Fitr, called Bayram in Turkish, when fasting ends and children get stuffed with sweets. Ahmad had messaged me at half past one in the morning that the Id celebration would be on Sunday morning not on Monday. I also had an invitation from the Sufis but decided to pay the Arab mosque, which I had never been to before, a visit. I managed to get up at 8 in the morning after maybe 4 hours of sleep. The streets of my city were empty, until I came to the northern part of town, where Arab men in traditional garb, women of all ethnicities with headscarves or veils, Turks with a fez, and Africans in long loose gowns streamed to the many mosques in that part of town, coming from all directions. It would have been eerie if I hadn’t been a part of it. I wasn’t a Muslim but as I had the same goal that day, it felt natural to see all these people.

Sweets and Tea after the Children were at it

Carpets and plastic sheaths had been lain out in the yard in front of the Arab mosque and there might have been 300 men, most of them Arabs, a couple of black Africans, and a few Turks and Germans. There was even an Arab wearing a traditional red Kefiyyeh which I had never seen before in real life. We lined up for prayer when some people shouted something in Arabian to our row. The Turk next to me shrugged. Then we made out the word “Qibla”, the direction to Mecca, and we arranged ourselves anew. Actually, my prayer wouldn’t have counted anyway because during the first Sajdah I almost stumbled because it was so crouded and I said “oops”. After the prayer there was a long sermon, the Khutba, which I didn’t understand because it was in Arabian. Then tea and sweets, especially for all the kids, which started to collect everything they could carry. Baklava, cookies with dates inside, and some gingerbread with Santa Claus on it, because it was September and Christmas sweets were already being sold in Germany. I met Ahmad and Hussain, but otherwise, people started to form small groups which spoke exclusively in Arabian, so I left soon.

“Why not pass the Salafi mosque next door and see if there are women wearing a Niqab or Burka”, I thought and walked on. The door of the mosque opened and out came some German converts who all seemed to know me. They handed me cake and wanted to invite me inside, but I hurried on to go visit an art exhibiton.