Flohmarkt

So every Saturday just a few blocks from where I live, there is a 10 story flea market that springs up along the river. You can find almost anything you might possibly want in this flea market, from bicycles to lamps to socks to rifle scopes . . . . and I'm not kidding about that last one. But in all honesty, I wouldn't say that it is that much different from a flea market back in the states, but what is interesting is how the styles of selling differ.

On one of my first weekends in Frankfurt I actually found my kitchen table here. It's the base of an old iron sewing machine so it's incredibly heavy, but very cool looking. I made one of my friends, Jon, help me carry it the 10 blocks back to my apartment. He at 6'4" and me at 5'4" made quite the sight hauling this thing down the street. And the thing must have weighed 200 lbs. Insane, but I was just so glad to have a place to sit down and eat something while I waited for my furniture to arrive.

So back to the market, there are both Turkish and German sellers at this market and each has a distinctly different style of selling, the Germans tend to be much quieter, much less ostentatious in how they sell. The Turks on the other hand are out there, in your face, shouting following you down the sidewalk, always selling, selling, selling. They've really carried so much of their selling style from home into Germany. It's interesting.

The relationship between the Turks and the Germans is quite tense and has been for a while. As I understand things, back in the 50s and 60s Germany relaxed many of its immigration laws because it had a very low rate of unemployment and needed workers to come into the country to fill low-paying, labor jobs. The Turks moved very quickly into Germany because there was a lot of opportunity for them. Unfortunately, as unemployment rates went up over the years, none of the Turks left Germany, so a real sense of resentment started growing among the Germans about how many Turkish there were in Germany, and they were taking all of these jobs, and actual Germans were unemployed. . . . you get the picture. Basically there is quite a lot of racism directed against the Turkish who are living in Germany. It doesn't seem to be quite so obvious from what I've seen, but I have heard that there are quite a lot of problems. Particularly from the more disenfranchised young German men.

There are definitely some interesting similarities between racial tensions against recent immigrants in America and the current situation in Germany. Particularly in regards to how quite a few people see Mexican immigrants as taking away job opportunities domestically. The problem with that view, from what I see, is that most native born Americans don't want to do the work that recent immigrants are willing to do. As far as I can tell, the same situation also seems to exist here in Germany. It's an interesting point of similarity between our two countries.