Friday, August 13, 2010
On July 15th, we left from the Munich Train Station and traveled to Frankfurt, Germany. Believe it or not, 300,000 people pass through this station every day, from the cities suburbs and other German cities and Western Europe. It is filled with tourist shops, food stands, drug stores, a McDonald's and Burger King, of course.
Just north of the Main Train Station is the Turkish German district. It might surprise you to know that beginning it the 1950s, Italians immigrated to Germany to filled the labor shortage that followed millions of deaths in World War II. When the flow of Italians ebbed, in the 1960s, Germany turned to Turkey for guest workers. They came by and large with the expectation of working in Germany for a few years and returning home with savings in order to open business. However, many did not return and soon invited their families. Now Germans of Turkish descent have lived in Germany for three generations. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russians who claimed a German ancestor came. Riding a train in Germany reminded me of a New York City train on which I hear Russian and other languages. Germany is indeed a multi-ethnic society.
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