Ethnic Studies

The longer we're here, the more it's evident that Munich's an ethnic town. We took a tram car last night and every face had this distinct Bavarian flavor. Never occured to me before. Maybe because it makes me ethnic too. Which was actually confirmed numerous times in New York. During the first years there cab drivers would ask me, if I'm Swedish. Sometime in my mid-thirties they started to ask, if I'm Russian and soon shopkeepers started to address me in wild Eastern European languages with a distinct lack of vowels. One day in the locker room at Gleason's Boxing Gym that huge Russian boxer started to even scream at me in a Russian commando tone, staring me straight into the eyes. It think he reminded me of my loyalties to some brotherhood or ethnic group or Red Army unit and it took a bit of convincing until he believed me that I don't speak a word of Russian.

While just mean that I'm not aging too gracefully, final confirmation of Bavaria's ethnic make-up came, when we took a trip to Weilheim, small town deep in the Southern Bavarian plains leading to the foothills of the Alps. Weilheim's only claims to fame are the Electronica band Notwist and it's offshoots and a Christian Conservative vote approaching 90 percent. The buildings there are small and compact. There is a creek running through the middle of town, a market square with a few stalls and the churches sport onion spires. It reminded me very much of those Serb towns and Bosnian villages on the way to Pale, Fred thought it looks very Hungarian. But it was the people who gave us this distinct feel of visiting some remote Easter European place. Sullen, stern faces, some looked like extras from 'Borat'.

Of course there are some pockets of cosmopolitanism. My friend Eckart and his American girlfriend Susan just moved here from Paris the same week we arrived here. We gonna start a support group for recovering cosmopolitans. First therapy results soon...