Week #7 in Germany

This has been an amazing week. To start the week off, I finally got paid and the same day I met one of the most beautiful people. By the end of the week, I was able to call that person my partner, and I am greatly looking forward to the coming weeks with him. On Monday we met for hot chocolate, and both of us were expecting to just drink a hot chocolate and talk for maybe half an hour. However, hot chocolate turned into lunch, which turned into tea, which turned into watching "How I Met Your Mother" at my apartment, and since then we've only been apart to go to school and work. I guess technically you could say we're still on our first date, and we couldn't be happier. 

My partner, Mehmet, is a Master's student at the Fachhochschule here in Offenburg. We met through my roommate, Yasemin, at an international party. Both Mehmet and Yasemin are international students from Turkey. Here in Germany, I feel like it's important to say Mehmet is an international student from Turkey, as opposed to just saying he's from Turkey. Even he hates saying where he's from until he knows a person, and "proves himself". Germany has a relationship with the Turks that could be comparable to the U.S. relationship with Central and South Americans, mainly Mexicans. In the 1960's, West Germany invited "Gastarbeiters" from other countries, such as Morocco, Greece and Turkey, to come and work, because Germany had such a strong economy and needed laborers. The foreign workers were meant to stay only temporarily, but there were many Turks who stayed in Germany. This created a type of "third culture". In the U.S., many Latinos speak of the "third culture" as a type of boarder between being an American and being from their original culture. They are somewhere in between the two, and don't really belong to either group. It is the same with many German Turks. Several haven't embraced German culture, because they don't want to lose their original culture, but in doing so they are also much different from the people in Turkey. People typically say the Turks in Germany are more Turkish than the Turks in Turkey, because the German Turks try to keep the traditional Turkish customs alive. This causes much contention between some German Turks and some Germans. This is comparable to in the U.S., where there are some Americans who yell, "go back to Mexico" whenever they hear someone speaking Spanish. Another source of tension is the economy. Just like in the U.S., there are people in Germany who say the "Auslaender" are stealing jobs from the natives. 

So, with the history of the German Turk- German native relationship, when a German meets a Turk, the German generally has preconceived ideas about who the Turk is and what the Turk is like. The native might assume the foreigner is just another immigrant who's disregarding German culture and stealing German jobs. Thus, when someone asks me where Mehmet is from, I feel obliged to give the longer response of, "he's an international student from Turkey studying his Master's in Germany", so people know he's not the "stereotypical Turk". At the same time, I hate recognizing stereotypes. In my opinion, stereotyping is the promotion of ignorance and racism, and therefore should not be tolerated. However, as long as people fail to accept different cultures and constantly promote their own lifestyle over others, stereotypes, prejudices, racism and ignorance will continue to exist. But as the world gets smaller, and people become more connected, I can dream of a day when these barriers will collapse.