Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof!

 

 

Ein neugefundener Freund in der (k)alten Heimat schickte mir ein Foto von einem Buch mit dem Titel "Die RAF hat Euch lieb", welches er sich als Reiselektüre für seine heutige Bahnfahrt von Hamburg nach Berlin mitgenommen hatte.

 

Leseprobe

 

Er war schon eine Stunde vom Hauptbahnhof Hamburg weg ehe mir klar wurde dass er kein plötzliches Interesse in die britische Royal Air Force hatte, sondern etwas über deutsche Terroristen in der Bundesrepublik der späten sechziger Jahre lesen wollte. Diese ganze Sache war mir doch völlig entgangen denn ich war schon in 1965 nach Australien ausgewandert, ehe diese Verrückten begannen das Wirtschaftswunder dass wir mit harter Arbeit aufgebaut hatten wieder zu zerreissen.

Wie Bettina Röhl in dem Buch schrieb, "Die Bundesrepublik der Sechziger- und Siebzigerjahre war ein Glücksfall in der deutschen Geschichte. Die junge Bundesrepublik hatte Glück. Vielleicht in dem Ausmaß, in welchem sie es hatte, nicht verdient, aber doch selbst erarbeitet. Nach den Schrecken der Nazizeit hatte sie, anders als die DDR, das Glück, im Westen Deutschlands zu liegen und Teil der westlichen Allianz zu werden. Vom Start an hatte sie Glück mit der Einführung der D-Mark am 20. Juni 1948 und einem gelungenen Grundgesetz, mit dessen Inkrafttreten im Mai 1949 die eigentliche Existenz der Bundesrepublik ihren Anfang nahm."

 

"Fahrradmitnahme reservierungspflichtig" - how I love those German compound words!

 

Was mich viel mehr interessierte war seine Durchfahrt durch meine Geburtsstadt Stendal, von der er mir den obigen Videoclip schickte.

Also, das sieht auch alles ziemlich trostlos aus und ich habe wirklich nicht viel versäumt indem ich mich immer gegen einen späteren Besuch gewehrt hatte. Mietkasernen, kahle Bäume, und nirgendwo sieht man ein Kängeruh! Die können auch weiterhin ohne mich auskommen.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

A picture is worth a thousand memories

 

 

A good friend in my (c)old hometown in Germany sent me this photo of the "Arbeitsamt", which is like our Centrelink, except in Germany they don't just shovel out the money to the unemployables but "haff vays of making them work".

Having lived for most of my childhood and early teens across the road from the "Arbeitsamt" at Cyriaksring 47, it is debateable whether I sucked in my lifelong Protestant work ethic with my mother's milk or absorbed it through the ever-present sight of this forbidding building. Leafless trees, grey skies, grey figures, and not a car in sight as they came on foot or at best by bicycle, with just a lucky few by motorbike.

"Der Ernst des Lebens" hadn't touched us children yet — although the adults around us left us with no illusions — and we got our fun from touching those iron lamp-posts outside the "Arbeitsamt" which seemed to have been badly earthed because touching them send a mild electric shock through anyone who dared. Those who were lucky to have a "Groschen" or two, would rent a "Ballonroller" from the make-shift hut on the right in the photo, one of which was a fruitstall from which a blond and buxom young "Fräulein" straight from the pages of a "Kraft durch Freude"-brochure sold such exotic fruits as oranges and bananas.

Those were the "Nachkriegsjahre" and I was yet to taste my first orange or banana, which is why I still remember, seventy years later, a sporty young bikerider who, day after day, would lean against the fruitstall and buy and eat one banana at a time. Only years later would it dawn on me that he may even have hated bananas but needed an excuse to get the attention of that "Kraft durch Freude"-Fräulein. How innocent we were! And how poor we were without actually knowing how poor we were!

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

2 + 2 = 5

 

 

Right on cue — it couldn't have come at a better time because this is the worst time — this documentary film, produced, written and directed by Raoul Peck, follows the career of George Orwell, particularly the lessons from his novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (1984), and how his political observations are even more relevant in present-day authoritarianism.

Of all the books everyone claims to have read, unsurprisingly, George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (1984) is high on the list. Surprisingly, few actually have, even though it ought to be required reading in every school in every country in the world (well, except in Russia, North Korea, and, as I discovered first-hand in 1975, in what was then Burma).

 

 

Here then is your chance to catch up by watching the film adaptation and/or read the book online at www.archive.org. "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." How appropriate!

 

This is a 2003 BBC Television docudrama telling the life story of the British author George Orwell. Chris Langham plays the part of Orwell. No surviving sound recordings or video of the real George Orwell have been found.

 

I am waiting for the 2025 documentary film "Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5" to become available on DVD in Australia. As always, we are a bit behind when it comes to watching anything more demanding than footie.

"He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

P.S. And here's the book that goes with the documentary film:

Will this be my last post before the lights go out forever?

 

 

Easter is a moveable feast, as are the ramblings of that madman in the White House who once admonished the Ukrainian leader that he was playing with World War III. Look at what he himself has been doing for the last four weeks!

 

One thing we've learned in this war is that anytime the US president puts a timeframe on something, it's all but meaningless. However, being a Grammar-Nazi to the last, I am offended by the comma after "Power Plant Day".

Mind you, the above message is not as grammatically bad as his previous "before all Hell will REIGN [sic] down on them". Why, of all the homo sapiens, did the USA choose the least sapient as president? We should all have listened to his mother!

 

And if you want to believe his latest ramblings, the worst is yet to come! His latest message was so expletive-laden that ABC Radio National refused to read it aloud! And his insane "Praise be to Allah" should go down really well with his allies in the Gulf, I'm sure.

While the rest of the world is kept on tenterhooks, to him and his family and hangers-on it's all about enriching themselves on the misery of the world - just listen to "Are insiders profiting from the Iran war?".

---

Click on "Transcript" to follow the horrible truth word-for-word, such as here:

"Sam Hawley: Yeah, okay, so let's get to the prediction markets in a moment. But on the futures market, there are some analysts like yourself that have begun noticing that something might be afoot. Because last month there was this really interesting movement in the oil future contracts, wasn't there? Just tell me about that. What happened?

Andrew Verstein: Yes, this is the West Texas Intermediate May futures contract. That's a way of speculating on oil prices. And a huge quantity, almost $600 million worth of these contracts were transacted just a little bit before, minutes before, an announcement that there would be a five-day reprieve on strikes due to productive talks. That volume of trading is really surprising for two reasons. One is that it's a lot of volume. It's about ten times what would normally be traded in a day like that. And so it's a large amount relative to what's usually happening. And it happened to be bets in the right direction. So these were oil contracts that pay you if oil prices fall. And oil prices fall if the President says that there are going to be productive talks and less bombing.

Sam Hawley: Right. So just to make this clear, in one minute between 6.49am and 6.50am, thousands of futures contracts changed hands, and that was a quarter of an hour before the US President's truth social post that there were these really productive conversations with Tehran. Have I got that right?

Andrew Verstein: You've correctly stated it. And those were bets that were not just well-timed, but they were very profitable. So those were bets that paid off because the truth social post announced good news for oil markets. Undeniably, the volume and the profitability of the trades are surprising and they raise questions."

While soldiers are risking their lives and people are being killed, these horrible people are using inside information to make millions! The word 'disgusting' doesn't even come close!

---

 

 

I think I just watch ON THE BEACH before the lights go out forever.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

The Haj

 

Read the book onlone at www.archive.org

 

Some books I've read in the past are seared into my memory, not because of the books themselves but because of the settings and the circumstances in which I've read them. "The Haj" by Leon Uris, better known for "Exodus", is such a book.

There I was, after yet another sleepless night, sitting in the early morning sun on the upstairs porch of my newly-acquired house at 43 Wackett Street at Cape Pallarenda just north of Townsville, holding "The Haj", slowly reading out each sentence to kill time, while over the top of my glasses I jealously watched my neighbours driving off to work.

 

Somewhere I still have a photo of me sitting on that porch.
If and when I find it again, I shall add it to the blog.

 

It was a nice neighbourhood and they were nice neighbours who waved as they drove past, probably wondering what I was doing all by myself in that big four-bedroom-two-bathroom house, seemingly with not a care in the world. They possibly even envied me for not having to go to work.

Little did they know that, having gone like the clappers for years, I felt like a fish out of water. Work had always been my hobby, my social life, my whole reason for being, and, having returned from my last big job overseas, suddenly being without it, it did strange things to my mind.

Despite all the fancy work overseas, I had always been ready to work at home for just a fraction of my previous salary in some small mum-and-dad business, or, at best, in a small suburban accounting practice, but to find nothing on offer at all had unnerved me. It was not even a question of money - of which I had enough - but to have a purpose in life, because to me to have a purpose in life meant to go out to work.

The days simply crawled by. A nice couple living across the street at 42 Wackett Street invited me a couple of times for dinner during which they showed me photos of their daughter and expressed their regrets that she lived in far-away Tasmania. They encouraged me to enjoy my 'sabbatical', as they called it, and to 'hang in', presumably until their daughter returned. They were very nice people but checking up with all-knowing realestate.com.au, they, too, sold up in 1989 - click here.

 

My then neighbours across the street. Thanks to GOOGLE Map,
now my fingers can do the walking - click here

 

The neighbours to my left at Number 41 had also tried to befriend me, even if only to get my permission to crane their new swimming pool into position from my backyard. We had a few beers together but I didn't stay long enough to try out their new pool. They, in turn, sold up again in 1988 - click here. I hate to think I had been an unsettling influence!

 

The pointer is above Number 41; my house was to the right of it

 

Reluctantly, I left for Sydney only a few months after I had bought the house, but kept it as a renter for several years. However, as always, trouble with maintenance and defaulting tenants got the better of me, and I sold it in 1992 for little more than I had paid for it, but I still have the "The Haj". No need to read it as I still remember it, line by line, but especially the last line, "... I am so tired ... so very tired ... THE END"

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

P.S. Having written this post from a distance of more than forty years, I am left to wonder why I didn't stay in Townsville. Of course, I have since earned a lot more money down south and also learned so much more than I could ever have learned in Townville, but it makes no difference now that I am in retirement. As Mark Twain is supposed to have said, "I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened".