November begins.

The thing I never ever remember is that shops shut on a Sunday. I love and hate this: one the one hand it’s laudable and admirable and gives everyone a day off and makes the week feel really different; on the other hand it’s really annoying when you’ve forgotten to get enough food.

I’ve been away for the weekend just outside Berlin – halfway between Berlin and the Polish border – with some members of the four Berlin SMD groups. The SMD, as I have doubtless explained before, is the German version of Christian Unions, and there are three universities in Berlin (Humboldt, Technische and Freie) as well as various Fachhochschulen (which are pretty much universities as well). On this weekend there were people from a variety of places of study, and it was much fun.

I am so glad I remembered my hot water bottle. The bitter memory of my youthgroup weekend away being totally spoiled (it was meant to be a post maths gcse coursework treat) by not sleeping one night because of being cold means that whenever I go on such trips I always bring it with me. Thank goodness I did. We stayed in what amounts to the glorified outdoors. You had to go up a rusty rickety fire escape to get to it, it was in the roof with basically no windows and no working radiators. The beds were relatively comfortable considering where we were, but our thick sleeping bags needed coats and towels on top to make it warm, and I slept in all my woolly jumpers. Thanks to the hot water bottle I did manage enough sleep, but was grumpy anyway this morning.

I had a bit of a very weird incident on the train coming home, though. At Berlin Ostbahnhof – four stations before I got off and two before the others – this man got on the train. The train was one of those super-efficient German double-decker smooth-as-butter trains. He looked like he came from the Middle East somewhere, he was wearing long flowing clothes and carrying a big rucksack. Anyway, he didn’t sit down, instead he stood right behind our four-seater and swayed back and forth muttering things in Arabic and sometimes responding in German to what we were talking about (which was also in German) … but then once the others got off and it was just me and this German guy called Thomas left, he started actually moaning and everytime he said Allah … obviously there I was thinking right this is it I’m going to be blown up by a terrorist … I don’t know if my paranoia persuaded me that he was also talking about Bin Laden but I swear he was … anyway when I got off the train he did too and he followed and just kept laughing and laughing. It freaked me out. And also showed me how hyper-aware I am about all that kind of stuff. He was plainly just a mentally ill man being odd on the train. If he was dressed as a Westerner and speaking German I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. But he wasn’t, and I did.

Moving on… the weekend itself was such fun. The place itself was beautiful. It was right by a lake and the sunset over it was spectacular.


The theme of the talks and seminars was Identität and so the first evening was spent playing various games and other (surprisingly non-awkward) ice-breakers trying to work out in different ways various ways we deal with our own identity. It’s clear we identify ourselves differently depending on who we’re talking to: in England I identify myself as a southerner when talking to northerners, in Europe I identify myself as English when talking to Germans (for example) and in a more ‘global’ context I’d probably identify myself as European … not sure on this one … but definitely I feel much more like I could identify myself as being European when talking to any americans, for example.

It was also a great chance to make proper friends, because you were spending quality time with people. I certainly bonded lots with the girls in my room. Hooray! Finally we are moving beyond the superficial level of friendship with some people…!

The talks were also really interesting – all about where we actually find identity – do we base our sense of self on the judgements of others, others who will naturally fail in our expectations of them as we will in theirs of us? How much value do I place on my appearance or my health or my reputation: what would I seriously do if any or all of those things were somehow destroyed?

We seem all to be on a search for affirmation, fulfilment and identity, and often we seek to satisfy ourselves with sources that actually don’t satisfy us at all. It seems from all I have been discussing with students so far (Christian and non-Christian alike) that living in a big, buzzing, exciting yet at times totally overwhelming city turns this dilemma technicolour. Everyone I have spoken to seems to agree fundamentally that what we are looking for is something or someone that will accept us without conditions – something or someone who will take us as we are and say “yes, I love you just as you are and you don’t need to, nor can you prove yourself to me.”