Tailor of Inverness, The by Zajac Matthew

Author:Zajac, Matthew [Matthew Zajac]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908737465
Publisher: Sandstone Press
Published: 2013-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

Diversity was the buzzword in Berlin in 2002. Still painfully conscious of the crimes of fascism (though less so of the crimes of communism: the communist period, though full of iniquity, was like a 40-year sleepwalk as a stunned, defeated East German population tried slowly to understand what had happened to them), the city was promoting multi-cultutralism. The huge Neue Synagogue at Oranienburgerstrasse had been restored and a small new Jewish population, mainly emigrants from Russia, had settled in the city.

During this summer of 2002, the centre of Berlin was peppered with around 350 two-metre tall multi-coloured fibre glass bears, the bear being the symbol of the city. The United Buddy Bears of Berlin, you either loved them or hated them. They were psychedelic, two-tone, uniformed, chequered, striped, landscaped, stellar and everywhere. A grassy area between the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate was designated as the exhibition space for the International Bears. Each of the world’s countries was represented by a bear. An artist from each country, or a German artist associated with a country if no native artist was available, was commissioned to paint a bear in a way which represented his or her nation.

The International Bears stood side by side in an 80-metre wide circle, facing inwards, having a pow-wow. The British bear held a cup of tea, wore Union Jack knickers and was adorned with several gilt-framed pictures of, amongst others, the royal family, Wallace & Gromit and a London bus. The Yugoslavian bear was riddled with bulletholes. Other bears depicted Caribbean scenes (Jamaica), national costume (Belarus) and national symbols (India). But underneath all this variety, the bears were identical, all cast in the same mould. I think the concept was that we’re all the same under the skin. My children loved the bears and I liked them too. A couple of young women from London of Cameroonian descent jumped for joy when they found the bear from Cameroon.

We headed out along one of the spokes which connects the city centre to the Berliner Ring, out through the city’s north-east. This was part of the old East Berlin and it showed. With the affluence of the centre behind us, we drove through neighbourhoods which were more down-at-heel, not poverty-stricken, but all part of a quite featureless urban sprawl. We paused at a set of traffic lights beside a tram stop. People were waiting there: a woman in her sixties, a picture of fatigue in a worn brown skirt and cardigan and a look to match, she seemed to be held upright by the heavy shopping bags which surrounded her feet; a group of teenagers in denims, trainers and T-shirts, one with a mullet, Germany being the last bastion of that hairstyle; an harassed mother coping with a baby, two toddlers and her shopping; a man bursting out of his cheap suit, thick-necked and earphoned, carrying a fake leather wallet briefcase. It could have been Newcastle-upon-Tyne or Warsaw. From our passing car, I couldn’t tell whether these people

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