There are 60 stairs to Tante Eva’s third-floor apartment on Friedrichsruher. I reach them after walking from my hotel for 5 km, walking to see this city of my birth, flowers in hand. Earlier, Eva, 91 and living on her own, navigated these stairs, boarded, by herself, a bus, travelled to a
Language lessons (of the heart) in Berlin Read More »
It was a view from a porch or two but there was a third porch I sat on right around the same time, this front porch at home where I grew up, an old manor in Niagara that dates back to the 1870s, where Opa Froese, that is my father, still lives. It was my
Yesterday’s stories. Grandparents. Beauty deep inside. Read More »
(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, November 15, 2014)
KAMPALA, UGANDA — It was still morning in Berlin on this Sunday when candles at the Church of Reconciliation were lit to honour yesteryear’s dead, the brave souls who ran from the uniforms and helmets and strong-armed authorities, who ran for freedom that was torn away, even as their flesh would be torn by barbed-wire and vicious dogs and bullets at that wall.
25 years after The Wall fell Read More »
It was the Ungame and this time the question was for Jon: “Describe your father in three words.” “Big nose,” he started out. The other two words, I somehow blocked out. Then I had to answer the same question about my own father. “Old. Tough. German.” Which is what Jon will be facing, someday. So, careful son.
Germany wins! But my face is still so (im)perfect Read More »
BERLIN – So Hitler was called to lurk among us. And never showed. Not even in Germany.
This regarding Kony 2012, the strange and shrinking campaign that in its posters — now hung virtually nowhere — features Hitler idling behind warlord Joseph Kony and Osama bin Laden.
The square-moustached megalomaniac has made a bigger splash online. On YouTube, an impersonator of the führer is enraged over the world’s apparent inaction against Kony. “Get my laptop,” he tells his generals, with English subtitles, in this satirical video with a million views.
Not with a bang but a whimper Read More »
In Berlin, both presidents had watershed moments, and both are revered.
The JFK-Obama-Messiah factor Read More »
On a warm day on a busy walkway in a large square in Berlin, a young man sits playing his flute for a pocketful of change. His hair is spiked like the Statue of Liberty and he wears a dark tank top. I draw near to him and see his shirt’s message: “Jesus didn’t die for my sins. He died for His own.”
Can this Pied Piper lead us to the Promised Land? Read More »
