The Protest

Sometimes, I take walks here in Germany and encounter unusual things.  Yesterday was one of those episodes.

I came out of the Mainz Romer-Passage....in the old part of town...and there in front of the big door was some young guy (probably eighteen to twenty)....in some artistic pose on the cobblestone street, in some protest episode.  Four or five folks were standing around here and handing out brochures.  It had something to do with food, I suspect....but I'm not the kind of guy to ask a bunch of questions over this type of protest.  The picture says enough.

If it'd been my son laying there....I would walked up....kicked his butt and told him to get work and not lay around half-naked on some Mainz street.

But the real image....the real attraction to this little circus 'act'.....wasn't the guy laying there or the brochure people.  Across from this....a meter from where I was standing and taking the shot....was this Islamic gal....probably a Syrian.

She was standing there in some moment of analysis....deep in thought.  You could tell....she was asking herself questions.

My impression was....she was standing and thinking.....'I've come all the way from Damascus to Mainz....traveled over rough roads and paths....spending weeks hiking to Germany....and these crazy Germans lay around on the cobblestones like this?'

She probably turned and walked back to the apartment and said down to have a chat with her cousin, mother or relative.  She needed an explanation why people would be this way, and the only answer some older mature Syrian would offer.....Germans are crazy.  The chat will go on for an hour and eventually the younger gal will agree....the Germans must be crazy.

Normally, this would trigger a fear factor.  But Syrians haven't had much of a chance to hang around crazy people, and this might be more entertaining than what you normally get on a Saturday night in Damascus.  Maybe it's worth hike.

Somewhere in the mix of things, Germans on the traditional path of protests and weird behavior have to be aware now that third-party individuals have arrived and don't really have much of a past experience with protests, dissent and revolt (at least the type of revolt that Germans imagine).