Going East
17 April, 2007
“Oh no, Sugar Daddy, just a little bit more. “
Proudly, I add the explanation: “This guy in his big fat BMW, he thinks I’ll stop overtaking the trucks and let him pass just because his car is so much bigger. Well, he will have to wait till I decide I’ve had enough of overtaking.”
A happy owner of a driver’s licence for six months, I cannot avoid the challenge of trying to teach others how to drive decently. After some time though, I have pity on the old man and let him overtake. I shouldn’t really care whether he needs a driving lesson or not anyway, I have my own serious thinking to do.
It is a sultry April day and we are driving to Potsdam, Brandenburg. Potsdam is in former East Germany and the federal state of Brandenburg is among the places notorious for its Ausländer-hating young and not so young inhabitants.
Not so long ago I claimed I was never ever going to cross the former inner German border again. Why waste time and money on Ossis when so many of them would love to kick me out for being an Alien and looking it?! (I suppress the silent insinuation that something is not quite right here and carry on with my half-heartedly enraged train of thoughts.)
They let me pay this effing solidarity tax contribution and they go and build new railway stations and parks in East Germany with it, for people who would, who are-
What really makes me angry about it is that no one asks me what I would like to spend my contribution on. Because you see, I already know the answer: on hungry children in Berlin and Brandenburg.
(Inscription: Every fifth child in Berlin and Brandenburg lives in poverty)
While I am busy overtaking a guy in a Mercedes (a Wessi of course), the nagging insinuation finally manages to attack me, full force: YOU ARE ASSEMBLING YOUR COMPLAINTS OUT OF NEWSPAPER HEADLINES. To make yourself more important, as a unique piece in the large jigsaw that is German history and its reality.
While dutifully fighting the feeling that this was NOT FAIR AT ALL, they do torture Ausländer in East Germany, an appropriate counter-argument occurs to me.
BUT I HAVE SPENT QUITE SOME TIME in East Germany and I hated it most of the times! They made me eat meat. With arguments I don’t want to repeat. They asked me, loudly and publicly, whether I understood most of the things spoken in this stupid theatre comedy and I knew they were asking to build up their confidence; I could have analysed The Tin Drum using several literary methods then and there to prove my academic sophistication and knowledge of German. Of course no one would have cared because all they wanted-
OK, OK. Take it easy, shall we? So you are still angry about it?
Yes. No.
I don’t want to have to do with this crazy stuff they do to you in some parts of the world ever again. Having to deal with it is a waste of time, and time is precious.
But this doesn’t mean I am not giving Potsdam, Brandenburg, a chance to show itself in its nicest light.
OK?!
It did help that I anticipated some of the sights that can be seen in Potsdam.
I had the same urge of teaching people manners behind the wheel when I was a fresh driver.
Then I realized it’s so nice to be alive and simply safer to stay out of their way. 
And it pisses me off just about the same when people keep taking my money and I can’t decide who will get it. The last time I checked I couldn’t even dedicate my 0,5% of taxes to Zavetišče za zapuščene živali Gmajnice. And there are about a billion Gasilskih društev.
This superiority seems to be obligatory at the beginning, yes. A few days later, I broke the rules because I didn’t want to wait for another opportunity to find a toilet and it felt great! Ever since, I am a believer in freedom for my co-drivers
Yes, the situation with the obligatory tax contributions is often unbearable. I am allowed to help build useless stuff in a part of the word so many people moved out of and read articles about hungry children at the same time. Hungry children in Germany! Not Africa!
Of course I can still make free contributions to any organisation I choose, but I already use this opportunity, too, and there IS a limit 
. We need a revolution, I tell you. 
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