A Migrant Pinoy’s Mind Map: ‘Pansit’ and coke in the land of ‘Sauerkraut’*

 

It’s a typical late middle European summer day: the early morning could already be very cold and chilly, but at midday the sun- in one moment- would come out with blistering vengeance, asserting its summery might.

 

And then people, like me, caught unaware with their thick jackets and pull-over on, become disoriented.

 

I’m waiting for my Chinese food to be served in this small fast food near the main train station in Mannheim, nestled between the famous rivers Rhine and the less known- but more romantic- Neckar, in this part of Germany, close to the French border.

 

The temperature is now hovering around 22° Celsius—a difference of 12° since I left home this morning—and, warmed by the woollen pull-over I put on to protect myself from the  early morning cold, I now feel uncomfortably the trickle of sweat forming around my armpits.

 

Too bad, that I couldn’t take my pull-over off.  I only had an undershirt beneath it and not a proper long-sleeves or just even a plain t-shirt.

 

Germans, like most continental Europeans, are rather particular about their appearance, and my wife would always remind me to dress up “properly”.

 

Even though, this dress code is getting less strict these days, especially among young Germans. Thanks to internet, MTV and cheaper transatlantic flights they are more and more exposed to the dominant American way of life.

 

Sneakers, jeans and t- or just an undershirt- showing off their youthful muscles, flat stomachs, or budding body hair- are becoming the norm. At least in Summer.   

 

The Chinese waiter brings me now the simmering bowl of noodle soup and I’m wondering if I just skip it and look for the nearest ice cream stand, to cool off.

 

But no, I’m not going to throw away 9 Euros (450 pesos!), including a bottle of Coca Cola which I ordered, knowingly by force of habit from my older days in Philippines. Pansit and Coke went together back home, always. 

 

Looking around, I see that the small room is almost full of white people – all Germans I suppose. But if they all come from the west, I’m not so sure.

 

Many Ossies -as the former East Germans refer themselves- migrated in droves to the west, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, 19 years ago.

 

This probable mixture of West and East Germans in one room, the ever-smiling Chinese waiter, my Pansit and Coke made me realize how, indeed, integrated and interconnected the world has become.

 

Welcome to the global carenderia! It is fascinating to observe how different threads of history, geography, race and culture would one day fit into just one room.

 

Twenty-five years ago, this world was beyond my imagination and “globalisation”, as a “catch-all, explain-all” word as it is now used -or misused- didn’t yet exist.  

 

I remember discussing with a West German student who was then on an exposure to the Philippines back in the ‘80’s about possible reunification of the cold war- divided Germany and, echoing the then wisdom of the day, we concluded that it won’t happen in our lifetime.

 

Yet, barely nine years after that verdict, world politics changed inevitably- and radically.

 

For whatever reason, Mannheim-  a city of about a quarter million people- reminds me now of distant Manila. Not that I found that  both cities have much in common—culturally, demographically, and maybe specially, hygienically.

 

The only explanation I could find is that Mannheim which means literally in English as “home of man” sounds so much to me like the then much heralded “City of Man” by our own ‘globally’ notorious Imelda Marcos.

 

Now maybe a little bit numbed by newer and more compelling images with its own horrible stories- like the almost made- for- movie September 11 assault of the twin towers in New York; or the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the starving people in Darfur; or the recent tsunami in Southeast Asia, the list goes on-- yet the imagery of the Iron Butterfly still haunts.

 

The picture of a fat but glamorously clad Imelda with her thousand pairs of shoes (some of which embedded with diamonds) side by side with a photo of hungry Filipinos in the ‘80’s still stands out in living memory.

 

Many times I tell people here where I come from and the association would invariably be about the former First Lady and her seemingly insatiable greed for shoes.

 

Ah, poor Imelda. Nobody seemed to remember anymore how she put Manila on the world’s cultural map.

 

Who built the cultural centre, who organized the Manila International Film Festival, who brought European stars like Gina Lollobrigida to Asia, who nurtured world-acclaimed talents like Cecille Licad?

 

Post Edsa Uno, Dos, and Tres, no one recalls her as the architect of “Manila, the beautiful”, which years after her scandalously expensive white elephant-building frenzy, ended up a veritable jungle of chaos.

 

Her dream “city of man” succumbed to the ugly reality of manholes, traffic jams, and flooded dirty streets- not to forget unpaid foreign loans.

 

The temperature suddenly turned cold again and I see people rushing towards the clean and orderly sidewalks.

 

It was a right decision, after all, to order hot Pansit. Rain is coming, in this late summer afternoon.

____

*Sauerkraut is the teutonic version of the Korean Kimchi