In a parking lot outside of Munich’s main train station, Lars Biederstedt meets the people he’ll spend the next five to six hours with. Biederstedt drives from Munich (where he works) to Berlin (where his parents live) almost every weekend.

As we climb into his seven-seater van, he tells me about his other ride.

“I have a Triumph Tiger, an English motorcycle,” Biederstedt says, “And when the seats are out, the motorcycle can come in, and when the seats are in, I can carry people or my family.”

Biederstedt never drives to Berlin alone. Instead, he offers seats in his van through a website called Mitfahrgelegenheit, one of those wonderfully rich German words that means, essentially, “a lift.”

Sabrina, a student in Munich, found the offer on the website. She contacted Biederstedt and booked a one-way trip for about $40.

“The train is more expensive,” Sabrina says. “Besides, going by car is nicer, friendlier. You can get to know other people.”

Soon, Biederstedt’s other passengers show up, and as they all pile into the van to escape the bitter cold, he quickly tells me that he’ll make just enough from his passengers to pay for gas and upkeep on the van.

And then the van doors close, and the trip is under way.

This is a scene that plays out all over Germany thanks to the Mitfahrgelegenheit website.

It all started more than decade ago, when three friends at a university in Würzburg needed to help keep love alive.

“One of us had a girlfriend, not living in Würzburg, so we had a demand to travel in a cheap way,” says Michael Reinicke, Managing Director of Mitfahrgelegenheit.

He and his two friends decided to build a website where people could offer and accept cheap rides between German cities. The idea, spread mainly by word of mouth, took off. First, it was mostly students, but soon others were curious about the service.

“We think all trips by car could be shared,” says Reinicke. “Whenever you want to go with your car, you could take people with you, and therefore reduce carbon emissions and your costs.”

For the first six years, Reinicke and his pals worked on the website in their spare time, but by 2007, it had grown into a full-fledged business.

In 2010, they expanded to six other countries, including Spain, Poland, France and Great Britain.

And because “Mitfahrgelegenheit” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue for non-German speakers, they renamed the company Carpooling.com.

Call it whatever you want. The company estimates that one million people per month are now using the service.

Passengers and drivers alike can size each other up via an online ratings system. And most people seem to get along just fine. Some better than others.

“We wouldn’t have met if there wasn’t Mitfahrgelegenheit,” says Julia Mallek, who met her future husband, Dominik, on a shared ride in 2008.

On a Skype call she continues: “We talked for three hour. Then he was the last person I dropped off, and he said, well, perhaps we can see each other again sometime, and I said yes. And one month later we were a couple.”

Mallek is then interrupted by the sound of the baby crying, and you can hear where their story goes next.

Carpooling.com makes money in three ways. First, it takes a small percentage of the proceeds from each ride. But the bigger money-spinner is advertising on its much-visited website. The company also custom-tailors its software for large businesses that want to offer ride-sharing for their employees.

And the website offers discounted tickets on German trains and busses, so that people can combine various modes of transportation to book door-to-door trips.

Now, the company has plans to enter the US market.

“Even in the US, the financial crisis, has had a deep impact on how people think about traveling,” says Carpooling.com CEO Markus Barnikel, who lived in the San Francisco area for years as an employee of Yahoo!

Barnikel admits that carpooling in the US has never really taken off. For one thing, he says, you don’t want to get stuck at work while your travel buddy suddenly has to stay late.

But he also thinks the Carpooling.com idea could change that.

“We would allow people commuting to companies to say, ‘When I know I’m going to leave, let’s say an hour or two in advance. I’m just going to pick another ride, and get another person to take me back home.’”

“I think that kind of offering, with this kind of flexibility, will be very appealing to the North American market,” says Barnikel.

I put it to Barnikel that many Americans think of their cars as a second home, a place they don’t normally invite strangers.

He says that may be true for an older generation, but he thinks younger Americans feel differently about sharing, especially if they can save money.

For example, he says, look at the success of the website Airbnb, which allows you to rent out your apartment or a room in your house in much the same way carpooling.com does for spaces in cars.

And, Barnikel notes, the fact that you can go on the website, and see the profile of who you will be riding with will also help reluctant drivers and passengers overcome any trepidation.

For the company, though, there’s a host of US regulatory and liability issues to be dealt with at federal, state and local levels.

“Each time we enter a new market, this is one of the first areas we study,” says Odile Beniflah, who works for Carpooling.com out in New York City. “The legal implications of taking someone in your car, the implications on car insurance, whether commercial drivers can do carpooling or not, we study all of that.”

“The German law from that perspective is a very strict law,” she notes, “and so because we had to comply with the German law, we think we can easily adapt to other countries.”

Beniflah says there are already hundreds of ride-sharing and carpooling websites in the United States.

But with the exception of a few, like Ridester and ZimRide, they mostly focus on very local rides, not longer-distance.

Carpooling thinks its long experience in the business will give it an advantage. The company won’t say, though, exactly when or where they intend to roll out their service in the US.

Accompanied by a 20 strong trade delegation, she is scheduled to meet President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao in the capital.

This is her fifth visit to China, a strategic economic partner for Germany.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. Much of Europe looks to Germany to help pay the bills, but many there dream that China will swoop in and solve the Eurozone’s debt crisis. Today, German chancellor Angela Merkel went to China to discuss Europe’s financial woes, and she’s apparently asking China to contribute to a bailout fund. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad is in Beijing. What is China’s response to this request, Mary Kay?

Mary Kay Magistad: Well, today Angela Merkel met with Premier Wen Jiabao, and he did call the European debt crisis urgent, and said that China is considering more participation in helping to resolve it, possibly by contributing to the bailout fund for the euro. This is new. Up until now Chinese leaders have been saying you know, we’re very interested in Europe getting out of the debt crisis, it’s important to us. Europe as a whole is China’s biggest trading partner. And over the past year trade has fallen off because of the economic crisis. What seems to have changed is that the Chinese government has recognized that if it doesn’t step in this could drag on a lot longer than is comfortable for its economy.

Werman: So it’s kind of self protection. Is there anything else in it for China?

Magistad: Certainly good will, but in the past that hasn’t been high on China’s list for reasons why it would spend billions of dollars or invest billions of dollars somewhere else. There was a lot of push back back in the autumn when China was getting pressure, getting asked from Europe you know, could you help out? A lot of Chinese were saying online, why would you do that? You know, we need money for schools. We need money for better hospitals. We need money for all kinds of things here, why would you be putting China’s money elsewhere? And the government could come back and say you know, one way that we have money to spend on things like schools, and hospitals and so forth is we trade with other countries. And if those countries go down it’s gonna hurt us too.

Werman: Will that be enough to keep the Chinese people quiet?

Magistad: Hard to know. The Chinese people haven’t been very quiet lately. There are 500 million of them online now and they’re very vocal these days.

Werman: What does China make of suddenly being perceived as this white knight being able to come to the rescue of countries in Europe?

Magistad: I don’t think China sees itself as a white knight, and if anything, instead of throwing up its hands and saying “Whoa, that’s not our role; our role is to look for good places to put our money, good investments for us to make for our purposes; and we think you guys should get your house in order because it’s good for you and it’s good for us. But you know, if we invest in you it’s because we see benefit for ourselves. We’re not doing this out of charity.”

Werman: Has anybody in China discussed a worst case scenario in which a big global session happens and where China might find itself it that were the case?

Magistad: Well, I think going back to 2008, a lot of Chinese analysts were looking at worst case scenarios, and that was why there was a big infusion of cash from the government in stimulus spending. Now, the government feels that it actually has a bit of breathing room to be able to slow down you know, white hot economic growth, and think more about the quality of growth, recognizing that it can’t keep putting so much money into infrastructure and into real estate, which is what was driving growth. It needs to be thinking about ways of increasing domestic consumption, and that means fundamentally changing the structure if the economy, including having more of a social safety net for ordinary Chinese citizens.

Werman: Let me ask you this, Mary Kay, just to go back. Merkel also apparently asked China to use its influence with Iran on its nuclear program. How did that go over?

Magistad: Yeah, she said that she’d like to see China persuade Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program. And Wen probably listened politely, but later told Chinese journalists that China objects to Western nations politicizing what he called the normal commercial relationship China has with Iran. What he was referring to is that China imports about 11% of its crude oil from Iran, that makes it China’s third biggest supplier of crude oil. And China opposes sanctions and really doesn’t want to get involved in that way. If anything, it’s gonna use its clout to try to make sure that there isn’t too much pressure on Iran.

Werman: The World’s Beijing correspondent, Mary Kay Magistad. Always good to speak, thanks.

Magistad: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

But beyond the issues of jobs and money, Spaniards seeking their fortunes in “Alemania” [the Spanish name for Germany] run into a whole bunch of cultural challenges. Some of them are well known, others surprise.

I doubt any Spaniard has left for Hamburg or Berlin without having heard that Germans are punctual. Very punctual. Spaniards, it is also widely known, are not.

But because they’re prepared for this difference Spanish workers in Germany usually adapt quickly. I’ll be at work by 8:30 has to mean 8:30. Not 8:45, 9:07 or next Thursday.

But for 20-year-old Patricia Cigala, a native of Murcia in southeast Spain who’s been in Munich for three months, it isn’t Germany’s highly organized work schedule that’s thrown her off. It’s what she sees as Germans’ equally regimented social lives.

“This city is really big,” she said to me, waiting on a freezing morning for a bus that would take her visiting mother to the airport. “Sometimes you find yourself in a (German) acquaintance’s neighborhood and you want to just pop by, unannounced.” She shook her head. “Don’t do it.”

Cigala, who’s found a job in catering, said that in Spain friends and neighbors constantly drop in without warning. Not only are they welcome; it’s a given that they’ll be served coffee, a beer, whatever’s on hand. “Here, you have to have a date,” she said. “A date and a time. And you have to set it up days, sometimes weeks, in advance.”

Cigala said such formality gets under her skin – much more than the cold winter air – but that she was learning to adapt. It was either that, she said, “or move back in with my parents in Murcia, and find a job earning $800 a month.”

20-year-old nanny Ana Abad, from Madrid, has a head’s start on Cigala. Abad’s been in Munich for a year, and said she’s made some close German friends. Sitting in an all-night bar in the Old City, Abad told me, “Germans seem very closed off at first, but in the end you realize that they’re not cold at all. I’ve made true, good friends here.”

She said that she also suffered initially due to the Germans seemingly distant attitude. But she said time, and an open mind, were the keys to winning over the locals.

When I met Spanish architect Ana Garcia Puyol at my hotel it was clear how little time she’d been here. A day, actually. She greeted me with the stiffest, straightest, most uncomfortable handshake I can remember. Very un-Spanish. Very un-German, even.

Turns out she didn’t know that I’ve lived in Spain for the last eight years. That’s where I was coming from, culturally, when I leaned forward for the traditional Spanish double-kiss. She resisted, I backed off, fearing I’d snap her elbow.

Later, when she realized I lived in her home country – and especially that I speak Spanish – her demeanor changed. She relaxed, opened up, told jokes. And I thought, Ana’s warming to me is like a sped-up version of how Germans will warm to her.

At first there’ll be distance. But one day, with persistence, Ana will speak the language, get to know the customs, and the doors will start opening. The demeanor of the Germans she meets will change, they’ll relax, open up, start telling jokes*. She’ll have made friends.

In my experience it’s only then that you can really know whether you want to live in an adopted country, or go home.

*Perhaps nowhere is the breech between Spanish and German culture wider than when it comes to humor. Both sides know it. Each think they’re funnier.

Juan Alberto Fuente and Jose Sandino search for their new home - a youth hostel - in Munich, Germany. They've just arrived from Malaga, in southern Spain, in search of work. Both are experienced industrial engineers but Spain's economic crisis had them sitting on their hands. (Photo: Gerry Hadden)

The number of unemployed people in Spain has surpassed 5 million, according to the government. That’s about 23 percent overall – the highest rate since 1994. For the young, the jobless rate is nearly 50 percent. Now, a generation of desperate Spaniards is seeking work abroad. It isn’t the first time poverty has driven Spaniards from home, but such exoduses have been of unskilled laborers in the past. This time, more of Spain’s best and brightest are leaving.

Munich’s airport shuttle stopped on a recent morning to let off arriving passengers downtown. Among those getting off on the freezing sidewalk were Spaniards Jose Sandino and Juan Alberto Fuente.

Sandino and Fuente are thirty-something industrial engineers, from Malaga, in southern Spain. Each has more than a decade of experience under his belt. But Spain’s economic crisis has left them jobless. And turned them into immigrants.

The two clean-cut, shivering men make their way to an information desk at Munich’s main train station, and try out their beginner’s German. After a long subway ride, and getting lost a couple of times on the street, Sandino and Fuente find their new temporary home. It’s a giant youth hostel, filled mostly with young backpackers.

Their room is small and bare, with two wooden beds, a desk, a closet. It’s hard to believe now, Sandino says, but not long ago his construction consulting firm back home was netting him six-figures. Then the housing sector collapsed and so did his business. Sitting on his bed, he says he can’t believe that just this morning he was saying goodbye to his girlfriend and family.

“This move has been complicated, he said, “because my girlfriend is pregnant, and alone now. Our baby is due in July, then they’ll come join me here, where we don’t know anything or anyone.”

Sandino does know one other person here, his traveling pal and bunkmate Juan Alberto Fuente. They met during an intensive German language course this Fall in Malaga, and decided to take the plunge together.

Fuente says he could have just gone on living indefinitely with his parents, knowing he’d be taken care of, but that was not his goal in life.

“If you send out tons of resumes and no one even calls you for an interview,” he said, “you have to go out and find work. You can’t just sit on your hands for years and years.

It’s not about the money, he said, but about feeling useful.

Spain’s near-23 percent unemployment rate is driving highly educated people like Fuente and Sandino abroad by the tens of thousands. This year more people left Spain than moved there for the first time in more than a generation. And Germany’s a principal destination. Here, unemployment is below 4%. But coming north is hardly a waltz through the edelweiss, says Cristina Rico, a long-time Spanish resident of Munich. The unprepared, she says, usually fail.

Having a tea in a Munich café, Rico said a lot of Spaniards heard about how German Chancellor Merkel called for workers to come last year, and misinterpreted it.

“Spaniards have a distorted idea of finding work in Germany,” she said. “That it’s easier than it is. I’ve seen people come here and turn around and go straight back home. They had diplomas but didn’t speak English or German.”

And thus they had no way to communicate.

Cristina said that over the last year she was bombarded with so many emails from unemployed Spaniards curious about Germany that she started a Facebook page, called Spaniards in Munich. Every day people log on with questions about jobs, housing, healthcare, German courses – and diplomas. In Germany, with its strong vocational schooling, even so-called unskilled jobs require a certificate of study. For example, Rico said, even to work in a pet-store you have to show you’ve been trained for it.

That’s what’s been frustrating 20 year old Spaniard Ana Abad for more than a year. Abad came to Munich from Madrid without first finishing her university studies in communications. Now, she said on a recent evening, she needed that diploma.

“I tried to find internships but it was impossible,” she said. “So I took this babysitting and housecleaning job in order to have money for my German language studies. I hope to finish my communications degree via long-distance by June.
‘
And look for work here, she said.

Several Spaniards interviewed here said if you have a diploma and a decent level of German you can usually find a job quickly. Economist Marten Olsen, with the IESE business school in NY, said one reason is because hiring in Germany is less costly and risky than in Spain. He said the cost of hiring in Spain has risen 24 percent in recent years, because of wage and benefits increases. At the same time, he said, productivity has stayed nearly flat. In Germany, he said, it’s been the opposite.

“Spanish workers have only become a little more productive but wage compensation has gone up a lot,” he said in a video presentation from New York. “Germans a lot more productive than the Spanish ones and wage compensation has been only gone up only a little.”

In other words, he said, it’s become relatively cheaper to hire people in Germany than in Spain.

In the old days, Olsen said, Spain could have devalued its currency, the peseta, to stay competitive. That would help stem the exodus of workers in today’s crisis. But with the euro, that option is out.

Juan Alberto Fuente, one of the engineers who’d just arrived from Malaga, said he wasn’t optimistic about Spain’s future. He said he saw something that shocked him on his way in from the Munich airport, and underscored the current difference between his home and here.

“The first thing I noticed was that there are tons of trucks on the German highways,” he said. “In Spain there are virtually none.”

Truck traffic is a major indicator of how productive your economy is, he said.

With young educated men like Fuente and Sandino leaving, there’s a growing concern that Spain may be undergoing an authentic brain drain. The government has played that down. And Spaniards here in Germany said even if it is true, it’s only temporary. Most said they’ll go back to Spain better educated, with real-world experience and real money in their pockets.

But that’s likely to be years from now.

“It’s called djondjon,” he said, “djondjon being an abbreviation for champignon, which means mushroom.”

Everyone’s brought an item representing their culture. In exchange, they get a jar of the Korean pickled dish kimchi.
The kimchi’s made by American artist Kate Hers and her German partner Hanjo Rhee. This is opening night of their exhibit, “Dr. Rhee’s Kimchi Shop.”

“It’s a pop-up kimchi shop that will open for one week only,” Hers said. “It’s pretending to be kind of a shop in the sense that we are not actually selling the product that we have, we are going to barter with it.”

They chose to barter with kimchi because Hers and Rhee both come from Korean backgrounds. They want this installation to spark a conversation about race, ethnicity and difference – and the promise of free food was a good way to get people in the door.

“We thought, okay, let’s ask people to bring something that they think would represent their own nation or their culture,” Hers said, “and they’ll also fill out this very bureaucratic form — for example, is your cultural artifact an artwork or another type of national treasure?”

Jeni Fulton, who’s brought some English tea to the Kimchi shop, puzzles over the form. It looks like one of those blue landing cards you get on an airplane.

“I’m really not sure about the relevance of some questions,” Fulton said, “like star sign, race, ethnicity. I’m not even sure what the between race and ethnicity is.”

Kate Hers wants visitors to experience a taste of German bureaucracy, but also to ponder how to identify themselves. She said after World War II, there was a hesitancy to talk about difference in Germany, and now many people lack the vocabulary.

In the worst case, this lack of understanding can take an abusive turn. For instance, Hers has been called things like “Fiji” on the street, and last year, she was confronted by Neo-Nazis on a train. But she said the problem is often more subtle, like Germans not believing she’s American because she looks Asian.

“When my answer isn’t exactly what they expect it to be, then there tends to be a series of questions that for me are much too private. For example, I would never go up to a white person on the street and say, ‘Where are you from?’ And when they tell me Germany, then say ‘But that can’t be! Where are your parents from? How did that happen?’ It just gets very uncomfortable very quickly,” Hers said.

Many of the Germans at the exhibit seem aware of the issue. Marco Foersten said he thinks it’s because Germany, relatively speaking, isn’t that diverse.

“I think people are curious,” Foersten said. “People really don’t see anyone from a foreign country in Germany that often, and they don’t know anyone from wherever.”

Hers knows the exhibit may only a reach a select group of people, but she still hopes it can help move the conversation forward.

“I mean I know these things happen in New York, too. I’m not saying that Germany is somehow more violent or more racist than other places,” Hers said. “But at the same time I have this feeling that people just aren’t as tolerant or as educated in terms of issues surrounding diversity.”

Hers and Rhee plan to save the items people bring to the exhibit. They hope to tour with the collection and start new collections in other cities — because many places have the same problems talking about difference.

They believe the world will end in 2012 because of now-famous glyphs on the ancient Mayan calendar said to herald the end of this age.

But there may be a glitch in the glyph: German experts in Mayan doodle-work now tell us that though an age may indeed be ending, the world will absolutely not. Everyone who thought the lights would go out on the next winter Solstice must now unpack their astral suitcases, go home, repaint their houses, figure out how to talk to their kids, look for jobs.

The world is not ending. For a small few the news is no doubt disappointing. It’s more complicated to continue on, on this loony bin of a planet. No doubt there’ll be some resentment toward the ancient Mayans for getting our hopes up. Even though, for all we know, the after-life could be decidedly worse than what we’ve cooked up here.

It’s not the Mayans’ fault that we misread their runes. That we penciled in our escapist desires on their pin-up calendar. They had every right to construct ages and eras out of the infinite spinning of the stars. We do the same thing. Our latest millennium even ended with a misinterpretation of its own: Y2K. When computers were supposed to stop computing.

It may be that we owe the Mayans an apology. Who are we to think we can dodge the thorny issues of our time by just going up in easy smoke in some wintery apocalypse? We are going to wake up on December 22, 2012 to the same problems that will hound us when we go to bed the night before: poverty, injustice, war, famine, and environmental degradation. Much of it stirred up in the fear-shackled minds of men.

Just as we’ll all wake up this Sunday, New Year’s Day, 2012. As a species, we’ll be steering this ship for a while longer yet. How long depends on our courage to face our shared problems… rather than kicking them down the road for the next generation. If we pass the buck I’m afraid we won’t go out with a big, easy Mayan bang, but via a slow, torturous process of self-annihilation…involving a scarcity of food and water for growing populations, the spread of war, a total breakdown in civility. If we let things come to that, we’ll look back on next year’s Mayan opt-out with nostalgia, and even longing.

There is cause for hope in the ancient Mayan prediction, though. It says that all systems based on fear will be transformed. If that’s true, if someone were to really pull that one off, then the Problem behind all of our problems would dissolve away.  Then, a new age truly would be beginning.

Wenders has a new movie out called “Pina.” It is a documentary about German choreographer Pina Bausch who died a few years ago at the age of 68.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. A new documentary called “Pina” is a dance film made by a filmmaker who didn’t get dance until he saw the work of German choreographer and dancer Pina Bausch. Acclaimed filmmaker Wim Wenders remembers going to see his first Pina Bausch dance work in the 1980s. It was called Cafe Maller and it featured six characters. Wenders says he had an unexpected revelation.

Wim Wenders: There it was and I realized that these six people on stage told me in 40 minutes more about men and women than the entire history of cinema had done and without a single word and without a plot. And I just sat there and was shaken. And realized something big had happened in my life and that I had had a wrong impression of dance all along. Then again, this wasn’t really dance – this was a strange new thing. I didn’t know what it was I just knew it was magic.

Mullins: Wim Wenders wanted to capture that magic on film. He met Pina and they decided to collaborate. But for the next 20 years, he struggled to find the best way to translate her style of dance into film. Then he went to the movies and had another revelation.
Wenders: And there it was: I saw my first 3D film in the summer 2007. U2 3D it was called. A concert film. Put the glasses on for the first time not expecting much. And there it was. What we been looking for for 20 years. The answer was on the screen. There was finally a tool that commanded space. And finally I could be in the very element of dancers. I could be in their waters, so to speak. I could be with my cameras in their kingdom and that space.

Mullins: So you found the solution, but life took hold. Something happened.

Wenders: Well, we actively together prepared the film. So when we were finally ready, and close to starting to shoot, Pina passed away from one day to another. Really tragically…

Mullins: That was… It was literally within 5 days wasn’t it?

Wenders: Yeah. We just heard one morning Pina passed away.

Mullins: Do you mind telling us what it was? Do you know?

Wenders: It was cancer in a very advanced stage. She had not even a week. So for these dancers it was the unimaginable that Pina was gone. So, I announced to everybody that we’re not gonna make the film anymore, that it was over. And walked away from it. And there wouldn’t be a film now if it hadn’t been weeks later for the dancers who decided to continue as a company. And I had talked with them, you know this doesn’t sound right that you don’t want to do it anymore because Pina was looking forward so much to her pieces being filmed in this new language that the two of you were gonna develop. So walking away is not the right thing. And I realized talking with the dancers that they needed this film more than anything else as a way to come to terms with that loss. So we just decided to make a film for Pina. Couldn’t do the film with Pina anymore.

Mullins: So what we see on the screen, including the scenes of Pina herself who is stunning to look at despite the real heaviness of a lot of the works that she’s doing. She has such a beautiful and kind of simple smile about her. I don’t know if she was lighthearted, if she was intense but maybe you can describe the particluar dance -

Wenders: This is Cafe Maller with Pina herself on stage, six dancers, sleepwalkers, the strange story of attraction and and rejection and love and loss -

Mullins: The dance itself takes place in what’s supposed to be a cafe. There are only tables and chairs – I think black tables and chairs – a few of them around. And I should say you can hear something in particular in this audio. Describe what we’re seeing here.

Wenders: Well, you’re seeing two sleepwalkers who are attracted to each other but they don’t see each other. they seem to want to reach each other but they don’t know how and somebody else intervenes, a third character and he puts the woman into the man’s arms. He’s holding her in his arms and then he’s dropping her as if he doesn’t have the strength. So she falls onto the floor and the 3rd man comes again and puts her back into his arms and again she drops and it gets insanely fast the way she’s being lifted up to his arms and falls to
the ground…

Mullins: Boom! She just goes down every time.

Wenders: It’s really… You are scared for her because she really falls to the ground hard. You don’t really know what’s happening but you realize this is an incredible metaphor about men and women and about trust and love and about losing each other and dropping each other and lifting other up again. It really really gets to you, I tell you. Pina developed this unique system of questions and answers. She would ask her dancers questions about a subject and they were not allowed to answer with words but strictly with their bodies – with movement with gestures with dance. And Pina would work on these answersand drop all the cliches and really come to the core of what everybody had to say. With their bodies to her questions. And we assimilated that process and I asked the dancers questions about how she had seen things in their dances that they didn’t even know themselves. And as I’m not a choreographer I asked them to answer with something that Pina’s eyes had been on and that they had developed together with Pina.

Mullins: Well the affection that the dancers feel for her is unmistakable in the film, you know. There were individual quotes that they would say, that Pina would tell them. You know, like show me – Oh, I know, one of them was “I want you to scare me.” and that was all she said. Almost kind of what you hear about like Woody Allen’s directing. You know, the…

Wenders: [Laughing.] I think they had a lot in common actually.

Mullins: yeah, maybe so. I mean, she would really entrust the dancer to do the right thing, and you could see how inspired the dancer became just at that one suggestion.

Wenders: Yeah, Pina didn’t say much. Actually some of the dancers didn’t get any advice for years. Pina just watched them…

Mullins: For years…

Wenders: …and it would continue. And she herself once said it really amazingly. She said, “I’m not interested in how my dancers move,” I mean that’s unbelieveable for a choreographer to say, “I’m not interested in how my dancers move. I’m interested in what moves them.” And that shows the radical approach by Pina. That she really believed that dance is about us and tells us who we are. And that it is a universal language that we all understand. And she proved it.

Mullins: Did she leave you with one comment in the early part of your filming this that you remember that guided you in making this after her death?

Wenders: Well when we started to talk and develop the film we wanted to do together, Pina very quickly established two ground rules. And even when I made the film without her I stuck to these ground rules. One was no biography. She just wanted it to be about the work. No biography, please. So we refrain from that. And the second one ground rule was no interview. She just hated language and she just hated to talk about the work and explain it or interpret it. So we refain from that as well. There’s no…

Mullins: Did you hate that?

Wenders: I quite agreed with it because dance is some – it is a language. It is completely a language on its own. And to talk about it is sort of doubling it up or taking some of the magic away. So even the few words that I know about Pina and about how the dancers work with Pina – it’s never explanatory. It’s never sort of interpretive.

Mullins: Wim Wenders, a pleasure to talk to you. It was a beautiful film.

Wenders: Thank you, Lisa.

Mullins: “Pina” is director Wim Wenders’ new feature-length 3D film. It celebrates the work of the late German choreographer Pina Bausch. The film opens tonight in New York. You can watch a trailer and see a behind-the-scenes video on the making of “Pina” at theworld.org.

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Trailer of the movie

The Making of Pina – 3D

Energy costs are hard enough to pay in winter and some people are refusing to pay.

Anchor Marco Werman discusses the impact this is having with the BBC’s Chloe Hadjimatheou in Athens.

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Marco Werman: Many people in Greece are strapped for cash and they’re now parting with even more of their hard earned money. As part of the deal with its creditors the Greek government is raising taxes on a whole range of things. For example, it’s hoping to raise two billion euros by the end of the year through an emergency property tax. That tax is being added to homeowners electricity bills in an attempt to reduce tax evasion. But some people are refusing to pay saying it’s just not fair, especially with winter coming on. I spoke with the BBC’s Chloe Hadjimatheou just back from Athens. She says the government is determined to force the issue.

Chloe Hadjimatheou: No one as far as we know has been cut off yet. The government has extended the deadline specifically so that people won’t go without electricity over Christmas. But they have said they will cut people off if they refuse to pay and we’re gonna start seeing people cut off in January, although now groups of activists have started forming. Specifically, electricians have started gathering together and calling themselves electrician activists, and they vowed to reconnect anyone who’s being cut off.

Werman: Right, and at least one neighborhood that you went to, those electricians are actually getting some surreptitious help from the mayor. What’s happening there?

Hadjimatheou: Well, the mayor of [inaudible 1:13], which is quite a poor district in northern Athens has created an office in the town hall for people who can’t afford to pay, and also people who are refusing to pay, to go and seek legal advice. And parallel to that he has gathered together a group of these activist electricians and he has vowed that anyone in his district that’s cut off will receive help from an activist electrician. I met one of these electricians who told me that he’s had advice from the national electricity company, from employees there on how to go about making these reconnections. So they’re prepared and they’re ready to go ahead and illegally reconnect anyone, and they’re prepared to take the consequences too.

Werman: And what are they doing, taking you know, automobile jumper cables from power lines and just hooking them up to the house?

Hadjimatheou: In fact, this electrician showed me how it’s done. It seems that their is a little spark plug inside the electricity box that the electricity company would come and remove. So they’re prepared with these little spark plugs to go and reinstate them in the electricity boxes. It’s that simple really.

Werman: Won’t the utility companies figure that out? Can’t they see you know, if juice is going to a disconnected home?

Hadjimatheou: They probably can and it may end up as a little war of spark plugs.

Werman: Well, for individuals it doesn’t sound like it’s going to be necessarily a dark Christmas, but certainly a bleak Christmas this year in Greece.

Hadjimatheou: Yes, may people feel very upset about this and although the government is saying that they have collected about 80 percent of the taxes they have sent out (so many people aren’t prepared to take the risk), there has been a very large backlash. And people are sitting and waiting to see if they will be disconnected next year. Many people say they feel they’re being blackmailed by the government and they just won’t play that game.

Werman: The BBC’s Chloe Hadjimatheou, thank you so much.

Hadjimatheou: Thank you.

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Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. The German city of Koblenz is known for its wine, its beer and its mineral water. So you might just think the big event this Sunday involving tens of thousands of people might have something to do with partying. Well, it doesn’t. The German army is planning to diffuse a 4,000 bomb. The bomb and some other unexploded ordinance were discovered last week in the Rhine River in Germany. About 45,000 people are gonna have to be evacuated in case any of the devices explode. Mark Patton is covering the story for the independent military newspaper, Stars and Stripes. A 4,000 pound bomb, Mark, with 3,000 pounds of explosives, where did this particular one come from?

Mark Patton: This bomb was dropped on the city by the Royal Air Force during WWII.

Mullins: The British Royal Air Force in WWII, so it’s been there for like 65-70 years sitting in the Rhine River?

Patton: Absolutely, but one reason it’s just now coming to surface is the Rhine River has, it’s at its lowest level it’s been in almost 100 years, according to the German press. So with the severe lack of rain you know, the WWII bombs are starting to surface.

Mullins: You mean there have been others as well?

Patton: There have been others. It’s not uncommon at all in Germany for unexploded ordinance from WWII to surface. You know, three instances I can think of just in the last couple of months around this area. And there’s also last year, just to emphasize that these things can still be dangerous, three explosives experts with the German government were killed trying to diffuse one of these. This was a 2,000 pound bomb.

Mullins: The big bomb itself, how big is it?

Patton: It’s definitely a big boy. It’s 4,000 pounds and the press release issued by the city said it’s about 10 feet long.

Mullins: 10 feet.

Patton: Right.

Mullins: How does one move a 10 foot, 4,000 pound bomb?

Patton: They’re not gonna move it before they diffuse it. They actually already setup about 350 large sandbags around the bomb to try to form a dam around the bomb. And they’ve already started to try and pump some water out around it because part of the challenge for the bomb disposal experts is actually reaching the area they need to in order to diffuse it, because it’s lying now in 16″ of water and part of that in mud. And the Germans plan on diffusing an American bomb that was actually found with the British one. And this is about a 270 pound bomb, so they actually think this one is going to be more challenging to diffuse than the larger bomb.

Mullins: So describe first what’s gonna be happening on Sunday.

Patton: Okay, Sunday, the city of Koblenz is evacuating about 45,000 people. And you’re talking about a total population in the city of 106,000 roughly, so a pretty major evacuation. And they’re gonna start the mandatory evacuation at 9AM. They’re also evacuating some local hospitals as well as a prison.

Mullins: Where are all these people gonna go?

Patton: The residents, they’re going to go to evacuation centers that the city set up. The hospital patients, they’re going to be transferred to other medical facilities temporarily. And the prisoners are also going to be housed temporarily in other security establishments. And the city is advising people to shutter their windows, take medical supplies and take their food, similar to what back in the US what officials would recommend people to do in the event of a hurricane.

Mullins: Bombs rained down on Germany during WWII, but is there any notion of when these particular bombs might have fallen?

Patton: There’s really not because the city of Koblenz was heavily bombed during WWII. It served as the headquarters of some pretty high ranking German army officials. The city was destroyed, so it’s hard to pinpoint or it’s hard for the officials to pinpoint a year during WWII.

Mullins: Mark Patton, reporter with Stars and Stripes in Wiesbaden, Germany, thanks a lot.

Patton: Thanks for having me, always a pleasure.

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Anti-Semitic board game 'Juden Raus' (Photo: Wiener Library)

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Lisa Mullins: In mid 1930s Europe, the storm clouds of World War II were gathering and in Germany Adolf Hitler had begun his campaign of antisemitism. He was very effective at convincing Germans there was a Jewish menace. A holocaust museum in London is now displaying a chilling reminder of how that fear took hold. The Wiener Library recently relocated and it put on an exhibit in the new space: items that were formerly in storage. Among them, a board game. Think of it as a sinister version of Monopoly. Museum director Ben Barkow describes the game.

Ben Barkow: It’s called “Juden Raus” or “Jews out” and it is a bright yellow board. The board is in the form a town and you walk through the streets. You roll dice, you walk through the streets and you are hoping to land on circles which represent Jewish businesses or law firms or whatever, and the little wooden figures that you play with represent the Germans and the Jews are represented by small yellow cones, cardboard cones, with grotesque caricatures of Jewish faces painted on them. If the wooden figure lands on the Jewish circle, it “arrests” the Jew. The wooden figure goes back to his home base, puts the Jew into something called the “sammlung punktz” or the “collection point” and then goes back into the town to try to hunt down another one.

Mullins: So the more you collect. . .

Barkow: The first one to round up six Jews is the winner.

Mullins: Remind us when this game came out.

Barkow: This game was issued in 1936.

Mullins: And the timing represent what? In terms of treatment of the Jews.

Barkow: 1936, the year of the Olympic Games, two years before the November pogroms. By the mid 1930s, German society was absolutely saturated with anti-Jewish propaganda at every level. It started in the cradle. We have books for really tiny toddler, full of images of Hitler, full of messages that Jews are bad and so on. The regime was certainly trying to create a generation of willing executioners. That much is beyond doubt. So I think for a German family, the idea of the board game, maybe they thought, “Our children need to get into this mind frame to survive in this society.”

Mullins: Is it the Nazi regime that put out this board game?

Barkow: No. Interestingly, it wasn’t. It was a purely commercial product put out by a games manufacturer based in Dresden and so it demonstrates the commercial exploitation of the Nazi ideology and the Nazi antisemitism.

Mullins: So it was a commercial board game. Did people actually play it or is this kind of just a novelty?

Barkow: No. It is documented that it was a considerable commercial success and that many, many copies, possibly up to a million copies, of it sold at the time.

Mullins: And it was considered a family time activity?

Barkow: It was fun for all the family.

Mullins: I mean it was a commercial board game as you say, and it happened before the Nazi policy, the official policy of extermination. What does that tell you?

Barkow: Well, I think it points to the all-pervasiveness of their ideology and their anti-Jewish agitation on the one side and it points to, I think, the easy and cynical way in which the world of business and commerce was able to coexist and profit from this evil regime.

Mullins: We’re going to present a video of you showing how this particular board game works at theworld.org. Ben Barkow, director of the newly relocated Wiener Library in London, the world’s oldest holocaust museum. Thank you.

Barkow: Thank you.

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As Miriam Widman reports, Starbucks is pledging more stores but isn’t doing as well as they’d hoped.

Mnikwa Dlamini, for example, is the current chief of Hhelehhele, a rural area in the north of the country. He’s also an 88-year-old veteran of the war in Europe.

Swaziland is a small country in southern Africa. It gained its independence in 1968.

Before that it was ruled by the British, and before them the Boers. When war came to Europe, the British came knocking.

“All our life here in Swaziland was under British control,” remembers Chief Mnikwa. “It was mostly okay because the British and us had a good relationship. They at least treated us better than the Boers did.”

“We first heard in 1939 that the Germans were fighting with the British. They only said that they used to be friends with the Germans, and then after a while the Germans had started fighting them.”

As the war drew on, the then-King of Swaziland, Sobhuza, agreed to gather volunteers to fight as part of the Allied forces. In exchange, he extracted promises from the British of greater autonomy for his country in the future. But the young Mnikwa, not yet a chief, had his own reasons for signing up.

“The reason why I was eager to go to war was because there were rumors in my home that I might become the next chief,” he recalls.

“I said it’s better that I go to die. It was never in me. I said it’s better that I should go there because the way to heaven I would definitely find there.”

He didn’t want to be the chief because there would be ‘too much noise’.

So Mnikwa and a few thousand other young Swazis registered with the British authorities. They were given boots, khaki uniforms, the works.

In late 1941 Mnikwa was shipped off for training near the Suez Canal. He was soon fighting in the deserts of Libya, and then in Italy.

“[Benito] Mussolini, who was a politician, was friendly with Hitler. We then had to fight the Italians as well.”

“There were lots of bombs around. And they used to have bombs planted around in the ground, and you would touch some of them and they would go off, and people would die.”

Along the way, Mnikwa met soldiers from all parts of the world, including the United States. He remembers that they were “not people who liked to talk to other people very much. They would talk every now and then, but most of the time they kept to themselves.”

The war ended, and Mnikwa traveled back to southern Africa. He spent some time in Johannesburg, trying to avoid the inevitable. But eventually he returned to Hhelehhele to take up his responsibilities.

“I then realized that I can’t just do my own will. Clearly it was God’s wish that I should live.”

There are people who go to war out of a moral obligation, but perhaps not that many. Most sign up to pay their bills, or to pay for college. Others go because they’re told to.

Mnikwa Dlamini, the chief of Hhelehhele, a rural area in the north of Swaziland went because he didn’t want to be a chief.

During the match, some fans displayed a large banner that said, “Corrupt politicians, you will drown under the anger of the uprising.”

Officials stopped the game, and asked fans to take the banner down. The fans refused, though, and eventually the game resumed.

Afterward, the fans displayed the banner on their vehicle. They were reportedly stopped by riot police, and four people were arrested.

That incident has infuriated many Greeks.

“Public feeling right now is being banned. There is some kind of total censorship,” said Nina, who only wants to use her first name.

Nina used to be a member of the ruling socialist party, but she quit last year after the government agreed to austerity measures dictated by European officials. Greece is struggling to avoid default on its mounting debt, and it needs to make deep cuts in order to qualify for European bailouts.

But at no point, according to Nina, were the Greek people asked to approve these measures.

“We feel like we’re entitled to give our opinion on the policies,” she said. “People have to have an opinion on the matters that will impact their lives for the next 20 years.”

Another woman, who only wants to be identified as Sofia, said the message of the banner at the soccer game is resonating – people have had enough.

“Let me give you a joke that’s popular now, and you’ll see exactly what I mean,” Sofia said. “After the arrests, someone said that Greece is the only country that you go in jail for saying someone is corrupted, rather than being corrupted.”

Sofia, Nina and a few others have now started a non-partisan movement called “OXI,” which is Greek for “No.”

They’re using Facebook and Twitter to get Greeks to put out banners on their balconies this week with the simple message — NO.

It has historical overtones.

This Friday is “OXI” day, a national holiday that commemorates when the Greeks said “No” to Mussolini’s request to let Italian troops enter Greece at the beginning of World War II.

But this “NO” is directed inward, at a political system seen as flawed and, above all, corrupt.

“Probably we are focused on the wrong enemy. The enemy is not the crisis; it’s the corruption,” said Costas Bakouris, chairman of the group, Transparency International, in Greece.

He said bribery and tax evasion are endemic in Greece, and people have been turning a blind eye to it for decades.

“One of the problems in Greece is that we are a society that is the most tolerant of corruption,” he said. “I mean, we have a guy caught stealing and they say, oh, he’s got three kids, he’s not going to do it again. We tend to forgive and tolerate things other societies will not tolerate.”

The OXI campaign wants first and foremost to say “NO” to the decades of corruption. Sofia the OXI organizer said they see the “NO” banners as a kind of people’s referendum.

“‘No’ is just the first step,” Sofia said. “Then we have to find what else unites us besides saying no to the bad habits — what is the Yes we want for our future. So it’s a two-step process, and we’re working on it.”

OXI already has more than 1,200 followers on Facebook.

Not bad, the organizers say, for only being up and running for a day.

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Each day seems to bring more bad news from Greece. Greeks are furious over wage cuts and tax hikes; many have lost their jobs. Amid all this economic doom and gloom, you would think the Greeks don’t have much to laugh about. But actually, humor is alive and well in Greece, and it is helping many cope with some dark times.

It’s one o’clock at the studios of Real FM in Athens, and one of Greece’s most popular radio shows, Ellinofreneia, or “Greek Madness,” is about to go on air. For ten years, the program, which does a bit of call in, and some gag calls to politicians and state officials, has been zeroing in on those in power.

Today’s target, as usual, is the Greek government, and in particular Prime Minister George Papandreou.

“In Greece, we’ve had a tradition of making fun of people in power since the time of Aristophanes,” says Ellinofreneia’s host Thymios Kalamoukis. “Humor is the most important thing Greeks have at this time. It’s the only thing we have left.”

“You can’t listen to Prime Minister George Papandreou and not start laughing,” Kalamoukis says.

I ask him about his favorite “economic crisis” joke.

Kalamoukis tells me that people have taken to saying, tongue firmly in cheek, “George will save the country.” Apparently, even members of Papandreou’s own party laugh at that one.

But, Kalamoukis says he also makes fun of himself, and his callers. After all, he notes, we’re the fools who elected the fools. He says that there is an appropriate word for this in Greek — “harmolipi.” It might best be translated as “joyful sadness” or “bittersweetness.”

“If you go bankrupt yourself,” says Kalamoukis, “you’ll have a better idea of what Greek humor is. Even during the darkest years of our history, the civil war, the military dictatorship, we approached the situation with humor.

“I don’t know,” he laughs, “maybe it’s the sun.”

Burger and Fries

And speaking of the sun, I am quickly introduced to a song here called “It’s Never Cold in Greece,” by the Athens-based reggae and ska outfit Locomondo.

The song’s upbeat sound masks lyrics dripping with sarcasm.

“Do you want to go on a trip to a magical country, where everybody has fun as if they were experts?” the song asks.

“I studied and lived and worked in Germany for nine years, and the reason I came back to Greece was the humor,” says guitar player and vocalist Markos Koumaris. “I couldn’t live without it, and the combination of humor and this wonderful weather is very important for me. I’ve never regretted coming back to Greece, even during this crisis period.”

Koumaris’ bandmate, Yiannis Varnavas, notes that Greek humor is quick, cynical and direct.

Here’s his favorite “economic crisis” joke, which has to do with the kind of job you can get in Greece these says, even with a good education.

“There are two PhD graduates, one with a job and one without a job,” Varnavas starts. “They meet, and here is how the discussion goes: The one without the job tells the one with the job, ‘I’d like a burger and fries, please.’”

Locomondo’s “Magic Carpet”

Corrosive and Poisonous

If you like your Greek humor with a slightly harder edge, then the band Lost Bodies may be more your speed.

For more than 25 years, the groups has been plying its own brand of punk rock. One song, Yelaste, sarcastically invites you to sit back and enjoy it, while those in power take everything from you.

“Laugh, laugh a lot,” the song goes, in a rhythm reminiscent of a German beer hall drinking song. “Even though wages are low and life is too expensive.”

“Forget your worries, laugh…laugh a lot.”

That quickly gives way to a fearsome punk attack inciting “the armies of the unemployed” to “break into parliament and burn it down.”

“Our songs, our music — they’re tragicomic,” says Thanos, the singer and main songwriter for Lost Bodies. “Our jokes are a way of surviving this crisis.”

“Of course, our band’s sense of humor is corrosive and poisonous.”

Well, it is punk rock after all.

I ask Thanos for his favorite joke.

It goes like this.

The Greek Finance Minister managed to turn the Euro into s—. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Lost Bodies “Gelaste”

At least 16,000 people have joined protests organized by the main unions in central Athens. The European Commission is discussing ways of propping up banks in Europe to protect them from the Greek crisis.

Thousands of people gathered in central Athens to stage a demonstration outside parliament. Police fired tear gas at small groups of protesters who were throwing stones.

Marco Werman speaks to reporter Menelaos Tzafalias who observed Wednesday’s protests in Athens.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: A world away from Pakistan there were huge street protests again today in Greece. The demonstrations were part of a nationwide strike that halted planes and trains, closed schools and hospitals and generally paralyzed the country. The crowds were protesting yet another round of wage cuts and tax hikes that the Greek government says are needed to save the nation from bankruptcy. Reporter Menelaos Tzafalias is a freelance journalist in Athens. He says the protests today were led by thousands of government workers who are facing layoffs and growing increasingly frustrated.

Menelaos Tzafalias: They have passed their boiling point. They are desperate. They feel they need to demonstrate, to protest not to change anything but, hopefully, to prevent things getting even worse.

Werman: From a distance, Menelaos, when we hear the news from Greece, the situation does sound desperate. Maybe, you can give us a sense of how these wage cuts and tax hikes are affecting the average Greeks.

Tzafalias: Many families have seen their income drop from 10 to 30 percent these past two years. In some cases, this means they have reached a level where they don’t have enough money to make it through the month.

Werman: So, how do they make ends meet? I mean, how do they even eat?

Tzafalias: The one good thing about Greece is that the family safety net is still there, but many people have seen their way of life change. They don’t go out anymore. They’ve even changed what they eat, and what is moving is to hear families saying that they will have to buy lower quality food for their children.

Werman: And how have the wage cuts and tax hikes affected your own life, Menelaos?

Tzafalias: These past two years I have moved back with my parents and for many people in Greece that’s a situation. Families are living all together again like it was in the ’50s.

Werman: So when you are young and striving to be independent that’s got to be a real blow. How does that make you feel?

Tzafalias: It makes me feel like I did something wrong and I wish I could do something to improve it, but I can’t.

Werman: Who is blaming who here? I mean, do Greeks look at the Euro Zone and say it’s all their fault? I mean, at the same time the Euro Zone is blaming Greece for Europe’s financial mess.

Tzafalias: Greeks did not blame the Euro Zone, but they are starting to blame it now because they are seeing that they are doing all these sacrifices and European leaders are not acting fast enough. At the same time, Greeks demand more of the government. They demand more justice and more accountability. Most Greeks would like the government to become much more efficient and root out corruption in a much better way than up to now. And also collect taxes from tax dodgers; people who keep paying their taxes are at their limits.

Werman: Freelance reporter Menelaos Tzafalias is based in Athens. Thanks very much for speaking with us.

Tzafalias: Thank you Marco.

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