If where I live in the eastern end of East Berlin is the deep east, Westphalia is the deep west of Germany. It is in fact, so far west, that although the mainstream culture and foods are generally the same as in the east, a lot of the special events and practices are different from the former Soviet Sector.
The west has the Karnaval, a ‘carnival’ where giant floats and public performances are used to vent discontent and anger towards recent social events. Elderly men in the west are more patient and well-tempered then their eastern counterparts. The infrastructure in the west seems to be a lot more balanced and durable than the failed grand plans of the east.
I spent a few weekends going through most of the major cities in the North-Rhine-Westphalia region. Bonn, Essen, Dortmund, Duisburg, Bochum, Wuppertal, Köln, Düsseldorf, Münster, Bielefeld, Mettman, Aachen, you name it. Among the things I’ve already mentioned, I’ve also noticed that the demographics were very different in the west. There are more African and Asian people and a visibly higher proportion of youth and fewer elderly people.
There were so many Asians that I couldn’t stop running into them and having long conversations with them. I just finished visiting all of the sights in Wuppertal and was two hours ahead of schedule so I decided to walk into a local Asian supermarket. Remembering that I’d see Soichi the next day for another one of our exciting cycling excursions, I picked up a Kirin beer to surprise him with.
‘Good choice dude!’ The mustached cashier told me.
‘Yeah, it’s some good stuff.’ I agreed.
‘Where you from?’ He asked.
‘Same place you’re from.’ I nodded.
We started sharing stories about our home cities and he told me how long it’s been since he’s last seen his family. Then he just paused for a while and stared into my face as if his childhood just flashed before his eyes. The he abruptly got back to work and bid me good day.
On my way to the train station in, this one middle-aged man in a grey-checkered shirt looked at me like he knew me when we were waiting on a traffic light. I looked back at him and raised an eyebrow out of curiosity.
‘Where you from?’ He asked.
‘Same place you’re from.’ I nodded.
The man sat to the left of me on this very bus, man not in photo
He started telling me about his children, where they were studying, and how he’s lived in Wuppertal for nearly thirty years. We went on the same bus and were headed the same way so we kept talking. His German still wasn’t very good, but neither was mine. I don’t know why we didn’t just use Cantonese; I suppose it might be because it’d be strange to change languages midway through a conversation.
When we got off at the old market I told him it was getting late and I should really be getting something for dinner before I boarded the train back to Berlin. It was at this time that he decided to reveal that he owned a chain of Chinese fast food restaurants, took me in to the nearest one, instructed the staff to give me any meal I wanted for free, then apologized for having to leave to attend to other business.
Asian noodles in Wuppertal
On my way back to Berlin, the train was delayed by half an hour. Every time I refreshed the schedule on my phone an extra minute was added to the traveling time. This is the thing with trains running within the Rhine-Ruhr region – you can depend on them to be late.
Perhaps they’re too close to the French border or perhaps their westernized railway privatization scheme didn’t work out too well, but it was indeed frustrating. I could feel the helplessness of the train staff when they had to make an announcement after every station on a further delay at every successive stop.
The route of the train was changed in some areas and called at a few extra stops just so passengers could make their connections onto slower regional trains down the line. The train pulled into Berlin just one minute before the departure time of the last regional train. Along with several middle-aged men is suits, we ran out of the first class compartment and sprinted across four platforms to catch our connection just as the doors were closing. Fancy high-fiving businesspeople with white hair.
