Opening Minds, Embracing Cultures (eBook)

The time had come. After more than a year of planning, I was standing at my gate at Düsseldorf airport waiting for my already delayed flight. It was hard to say goodbye to my family and my girlfriend Rebecca. But like the long and meticulous planning, the anticipation and the excitement of stepping into the vast unknown, goodbyes are just part of it. Goodbye to old habits. Goodbye to everyday life. Goodbye to friends and the all the more difficult goodbye to family. This year will be the first time ever that I will not spend Christmas with them. Instead, I will probably be in Cape Town, 9,500 kilometres away from my birthplace Ennepetal and my family.

Rebecca had given me another surprise to take with me on my trip, which I looked at while waiting at Düsseldorf airport. She had created an email address to which my acquaintances, friends and family members had sent me their wishes for the start of my world trip. It was a very moving moment for me and so beautiful to read each of the warm words. Even today my voice gets shaky and I start to tremble when I think back to that moment at the boarding gate. It was a goodbye that I had chosen for myself, that I had wanted so much for myself and that I just had to accept as the beginning of a new chapter in my life.

I had become a rather cool person in recent years, not showing my feelings in public and crying extremely rarely even behind closed doors. Yes, I was even warned that I would forget how to cry and show my feelings and would no longer be able to do so at all. It was nothing I was proud of, but I could not and would not change anything about myself. But at the moment of saying goodbye, and especially as I sat alone at the gate reading all the news, I suddenly felt unexpectedly left alone. This moment was to be the first of many on this trip in which tears ran down my cheeks without thinking about it. I just started to cry.

So whether I wanted it or not, off I went: the plane was finally ready for boarding, I said goodbye to the friendly airport employee checking my boarding card, entered the plane, took my seat and waved one last time to my home. My first home.

1. Istanbul (Turkey)

The first destination of my trip was on shaky ground until the very end. The original idea of starting the world trip with Istanbul had faltered due to the then increasingly deteriorating diplomatic relations between Turkey and Germany, particularly as a result of the arrests of Deniz Yücel and Peter Steudtner. Nevertheless, it remained my wish to begin this great journey in a city that I already knew very well. So there were no major alternatives for me and it was clear to me that I would either travel to Istanbul or, after a delay, to what was actually the first new country, Lebanon. During my last visit in 2014, I gave a presentation at a public event that was politically agitated about the general behaviour of the police at demonstrations in Germany compared to my observations in Turkey at the time. However, an arrest could be largely ruled out as long as I would appear as a regular, non-politically motivated backpacker during my time in Istanbul. That had become my firm motivation by now anyway. I was left with a queasy feeling when I boarded the plane to Istanbul in Düsseldorf, but it was clear to me that I owed it to the dear people there to visit them again and see with my own eyes how their life had changed.

I finally landed in Istanbul almost two hours later at around 10 pm. Shortly afterwards, I stood nervously in front of the Turkish immigration control. Fortunately, the queues were remarkably short at this point. The airport was very empty overall. This meant that I could not doubt my intention for long, because it was already too late now anyway. I pretended to be bored, tried to look as indifferent as possible and greeted a Turkish police officer with a quiet but audible "Merhaba abi” ("Hello, big brother"). I handed him my passport, he eyed me with the typical bored look of a Turkish man. Before I could say anything else, there was the moment I had been dreading. The moment of silence. It didn’t last long, maybe only 10 or 15 seconds. It seemed like an eternity to me. So while I waited tensely for his reaction, I watched the people behind the control. They were young men in civilian clothes, obviously from the Turkish police or the Turkish secret service - as I already knew them from 2014 from the anti-Erdogan protests from Taksim. Back then, they had mingled with the demonstrators, acting rather inconspicuously and observing what was happening. Until they were able to locate the alleged leaders of the demonstration, who then abruptly struck: With a loud "Polis!" ("Police!") they made themselves known, arrested the respective persons, dragged them out of the demonstrating group of people and took them into custody in a car behind the hundreds of police. From this point on, it was no longer possible for me and the international reporters, whom I accompanied during the demonstrations out of pure political interest, to follow what was happening to them. As soon as the police bus was full enough, it drove off protected by a police squad and disappeared into the confusion of the metropole. I took this risk at that time because I wanted to understand what drove young people my age to the streets. I, as part of a generation of young Germans who had never been to a large demonstration in their home country and always saw the German police as friends and helpers, was curious. Curious to know how I would have fared if I had been born in Istanbul. Because I had already been politically active as a liberal in Germany since 2010 and had always been primarily interested in issues of international policy, my thirst to experience for myself and to see the extent to which citizens in Turkey were actually increasingly deprived of their human rights and their freedom to express their opinions and shape their lives was naturally all the greater.

At that time, together with other exchange students, I had met with the German Consul General of Istanbul, who gave us advice on how to behave appropriately. After this meeting, it was clear to me that I had to be with the international reporters at all times so as not to run the risk of looking like a demonstrator. At the same time, it was - at least at that time - quite safe to be in a group of international photographers at a demonstration, as they were almost always protected by the police. They were left to go about their work in peace. Of course, there were situations where demonstrations escalated within seconds, where you had to hide together with other photographers in a nearby McDonald’s restaurant and the one or other irritant gas grenade was detonated. And of course I reached my limits there. But people helped each other, the photographers handed out wet cloths or gas masks among themselves, for example. I remember one situation where the owner of the McDonald’s restaurant on Taksim even provided us with free burgers and gave us shelter until the situation calmed down. One can accuse me of recklessness without any doubt.

Back to the situation at the entry point at the airport: So I stood there and waited for a reaction from the police officer. For a few seconds, nothing happened, he just looked at the picture on my ID card and at me in turn. What followed was a movement that instantly brought me back to reality. He flipped to a blank page in my passport, lifted the entry stamp and pressed it firmly. Already it had happened. So simple. So quickly. And so liberating. No one was waiting for me behind him to arrest me or subject me to a more detailed check. Everything was exactly as it had been when I first entered the country. Had I perhaps been influenced too much by the German press? Was I too afraid of something that would never happen in the end? I don’t know, but five exciting days lay ahead of me in my old acquaintance Istanbul and soon I would be able to answer all the burning questions: What has changed and what hasn’t? How do people behave, what are the reactions of the younger generation? Of course, I also had to do everything I could to get out of the country in good health. For me, that meant first and foremost no posts in the social media, if at all, they had to be absolutely apolitical and show Istanbul and Turkey as a country exclusively in a positive light. My anticipation was as enormous as my excitement. After arriving at Taksim late in the evening, I first went in search of something to eat. On the way back to the hostel, I got a little lost because I had somewhat carelessly not taken my mobile phone with me and finally fell tired into bed. The tensions of the day had kicked in. Well, what is my conclusion from the first two days in Istanbul? After initial difficulties, I have arrived in the city quite well. I feel the usual tiredness in the evening that this city gives you every day anew, thanks to its size and volume and its muezzins calling to prayer. I learned to love this city in 2014, and I quickly realise that this love remains today. I love the smell of hot brewed Çay (tea) and fresh fish pouring out of the restaurants as you walk across the Galata Bridge. I love the simit vendors standing everywhere, all selling the typical ring-shaped pastry at the same price. I love the dedication of people selling water bottles and handkerchiefs on the street to supplement their income or pension. I love sitting in a café writing these words while an Arab couple sits next to me and the woman is practisedly pushing fries through her niqab, or at the next table two Western-looking middle-aged men are holding hands. Istanbul is a city for all people. It lives precisely through its contrasts. Its diversity and openness to other cultures and lifestyles cannot even be found in a modern German city...