onygo

Last year, I was in Jer­u­s­alem dur­ing at Yom Ha’atzmaut — the Israeli inde­pend­ence day. I had a great exper­i­ence in this won­der­ful city with real nice people. It was a very peace­ful, open and friendly cel­eb­ra­tion in the heart of mod­ern Jerusalem. 

After being in some oth­er bars, we got to The Voice of free Jer­u­s­alem where I had a really great exper­i­ence. They where play­ing Habilu­im what I really liked. So I asked the bar­tender (whose name I unfor­tu­nately don’t remem­ber) which band was play­ing. So it was Habilu­im and he asked where I came from and why I was in Israel. 

So I told him, that I was from Cologne so from Ger­many — I reck­on this is the typ­ic­al order I answer this ques­tion — and that I was in Israel for busi­ness. Imme­di­ately he switched lan­guage and we were talk­ing in Ger­man. He told me that he had lived in Ber­lin for five years and just recently got back home to open the bar. We had a really nice chat and after some time we were stand­ing in front of the bar. 

We were still chat­ting. Then sud­denly some guys in their begin­ning twen­ties came to us and asked us why we were talk­ing Ger­man — and for sure they asked us in Ger­man. Those guys were in Jer­u­s­alem with some jew­ish Amer­ic­an organ­isa­tion. And amaz­ingly crazy they were all eager to talk Ger­man with me. It was a really great situ­ation that showed me how pos­it­ive young people from Israel see Ger­many — des­pite our history. 

When I saw the pic­tures of people wel­com­ing refugees with applause over in Munich, I became really proud about how many Ger­mans react to these huge chal­lenges. I’m proud that a big major­ity is aim­ing to help them. And I’m also really proud, that Ger­many has become the place to be for many people around the world. That refugees choose Ger­many as their des­tin­a­tion. I really love the pic­ture that we send around. Sure, big efforts have to be taken and it will be tough. For both, Ger­mans and refugees. But there is abso­lutely no doubt for me that this will enrich our lifes. 

Dis­claim­er: the Ger­man gov­ern­ment decided to close down the bor­ders yes­ter­day — but I still believe, that Willkom­menskul­tur will be one of the new found­a­tions of the Ger­man cul­ture.