Shruthi Bharadwaj
We started our second day in Nuremberg with a plan and a lot of ambition. My roommate, Uma, had found a refugee women’s support group event at a community center just a bit away from the train station, from which we would depart to Berlin in the afternoon. Over breakfast, we devised how the day would play out. We would travel to the Nuremberg Academy, but one small group would leave early from there, taxi to the community center, and get incredible interviews with attendees and organizers of the event. From there, we were to get on the Nuremberg metro and make our way to the train station by 2:00 p.m.
Our morning at the Academy went without issue. We spoke with Emma about the International Criminal Court, bringing accountability to Russia’s war crimes against Ukraine, and about the future of international justice prosecutions. After an engaging two hours at the Academy, we stopped by Gregory’s Coffee for a snack and to regroup before heading to the community center. Though most of the class was interested in our excursion, we decided it may be best to keep the group going to the center small to not overwhelm participants or distract from the event’s purpose. Sara, Marilena, Uma, and I ultimately decided to make the trip.
Upon arrival at the community center, I was immediately shocked by its beauty – a far cry from the nondescript brown brick blocks that made up the social services infrastructure of my hometown. Villa Leon was a large castle-looking structure with an adjoining glass annex, all settled on a little lake with a path that guided visitors to the entrance. The side of the building, against the lake water, was adorned with a mural of happy people from around the world on a boat rowing into the community center. It seemed to be painted by the town’s children, and I smiled particularly wide at a crudely drawn woman in a sari standing at the helm of the boat. With renewed enthusiasm, the group and I marched over the bridge into the great snag in our plan for the day. After yanking on the front door to no avail and pleading our case with the door’s intercom speaker, we were informed that the center was closed on Mondays and that we would have to visit another day (which we did not have).
Disappointed but undeterred, we decided to give a building across the way marked “familienzentrum” a try. The door to the familienzentrum swung open right away to reveal a bustling kindergarten, and walls decorated with the same bulletin boards that lived in the halls of my own elementary school thousands of miles away in New Jersey. The board was filled with smiling photos of the school teachers, each from a different country and fluent in different languages – I quickly spotted a Tamil teacher and a greeting in Tamil script under her name. Clearly, they take representation in social services seriously in Nuremberg, which I found incredibly encouraging. I didn’t grow up with teachers who understood anything about immigrant culture, and I can only imagine the world of difference it would make for a young refugee child to have adults at school they could identify with.
After getting some names and numbers to follow up on for future stories at the familienzentrum, we decided that it was best to make our way back to the train station to meet with the rest of the group. We were still well ahead of schedule since we didn’t make it to the support group, so as we were walking into the train station, we decided to chat with the taxi drivers milling outside. Unexpectedly, it was the best set of interviews I’ve had so far on the trip. The men we met, Hussein, Umar, and Umar (there were two Umars), were so excited to speak to us about their lives in Nuremberg. Originally from Pakistan, Hussein spoke to us at length about his time in Italy, then in Nuremberg, and his experiences with appendicitis and the German healthcare system. Overall, he had glowing reviews for Germany (and the affordable appendicitis treatment). Umar, a refugee from Syria who walked to Italy, lived in Greece and then came to Germany, had some complaints about the understaffing of social services and was a little less pleased. Still, he laughed and cited his biggest complaint about Nuremberg life as the poor tipping habits of German cab customers.
Though things did not exactly go to plan, I give Nuremberg the same glowing reviews Hussein does, and look forward to what Berlin may have in store for us!
