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As a reporter on the Obitarians Desk in the New York Times, I write about the lives of famous – and not so famous – people who have left their mark on history. I also speak German, that’s why I noticed that I spent the month of May in Berlin and filled in a colleague.
Before I left, I worked with a tutor to polish my conversation skills. I asked her if she had great ideas for articles that I could pursue.
“Well, you know,” she said, “the city of Bielefeld? Everyone says it doesn’t exist.”
About 300,000 people live in Bielefeld, but I will admit that I only knew that it existed.
For Germans, Bielefeld is the equivalent of, for example, Scranton or Cedar Rapids – cities where you can say about them that you can not think of anything bad to say. For almost the same reason that Scranton was the setting for ‘the office’, Bielefeld had become the ass of a joke.
Like many jokes nowadays, it started online, although it started in 1993. It came in the form of a Goofy conspiracy theory: that the existence of Bielefeld is a sham, and everyone who says is different in the plot.
Over time, the city became a byword for boring. Songs are written about the extreme boring, including a carried out by A talking piece of bread called Bernd – After all, this is Germany.
Now, before the good people from Scranton or Cedar Rapids come after me, I have to add that Bielefeld’s joke considered me a bit forced. I know what it’s like to come from “Flyover Country”: I grew up in the 1980s in Nashville, who today, for all his bachelor party and country music glamor, was about as unobtrusive as you could find then.
Every city has its own story. I decided to write something about Bielefeld’s.
It helped My article Huge that Bielefeld experienced something of an Cinderella moment. The football team, Arminia, had a banner’s season; The team won the title of the third division and reached the final of the DFB-Pokal Cup, a big tournament.
In that last round, the team was the underdog against Stuttgart, and it ultimately lost. But in the weeks before the competition it was the national favorite. This seemed like a good time to venture into the real Bielefeld.
I arrived in Bielefeld by train from Berlin, in the expectation that I would find the city center filled with the anonymous shops and restaurants that have made up many German cities.
Instead, I found a cross between everyone’s statue of an ideal German city-paved streets, half-ravaged houses, a large late-gothic church and all the accelers of a well-to-do American suburb-luxury boutiques, cozy cafés, a luxury watch store.
Of course a window full of Rolexes does not provide an interesting city, let alone a healthy city.
I finally met the mayor of Bielefeld of 16 years, the Avuncular Pit Clausen. He offered me coffee while his dog, Scotty, a Labrador mix, sniffed my vast hand.
Mr. Clausen considered me the kind of human, pragmatic mayor that you would expect to find every successful city.
He clearly loved Bielefeld, but he was also modest. There were many things he could have brag about. The city has a respected university. It is the home base of various multigenerational private companies, the type of companies that the German economy has long been housed.
But what Mr Clausen really wanted to discuss was the Bethel Foundation, a vast collection of hospitals, rehabilitation facilities and supported living spaces for people of all ages with disabilities. The residents of the foundation work in the city, and some of them have a fan club for the football team.
“We think this inclusiveness, treating people like them, is very, very deep in the heart in our urban society,” Mr. Clausen told me.
That feeling of inclusiveness was something that I heard from many people I met in Bielefeld. It even came in my chat with Mael Corboz, born in Alabama’s captain of the football team of the city.
He arrived at a team at the bottom last year. Instead of cleaning up the schedule, he told me that management has put confidence in the existing line -up.
“We did it in the right way,” he said, on the sidelines in the city arena. “It wasn’t, ok, this team didn’t make it. Let’s throw them away and get new players. It looked more like, ok, there are some good things here. Let’s work on this.”
It is a small example, but it fits the Bielefeld ethos. It may not be the most exciting city in Germany; But again, it doesn’t want to be. But it should definitely be in the race for the most humane. And for that we must all be happy that Bielefeld exists.
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