Tour

Same thing each time I in Germany be, having passed through times earlier, I again did not notice any difference between one side of the border and the other. There must have been something wrong with me. I had been told all my life there were differences. And there were this time; I checked them out.

I was always practising my new psychology. The principle of it was fairly simple. World wars and all - why were these people so utterly nuts ? Why not be systematic ? I am a tourist here and am what I am. I would study the reactions and differences in locals, counties and countries. I was something most people would notice. Noticing they would have to react. It was instant prejudice if it was, and subliminal perhaps unconscious even to the perpetrator. The thing was that I was to be always the same in every case and every country or the study would lack comparative consistency. They had to same-thing react.

Germany was the only country I encountered hostility. Coming down the side-walk: I am better than you are and you had better get out of my way ! And they meant it. I didn't argue. He is from here and I am not. That was my rule. To be polite, you go by their rules. Besides even though I am half nazi, I was not a fist-firster or fist-columner.

The big scene of course was the "Wall", called 'the Iron Curtain', by those of the likes of Gabriel Heater, the authoritative voice of radio news in the late forties and early fifties. The bulwark of the story is recounted in my story Walls. However it was for me, maybe the most episodic of the trip's drapery. We're over here and you're over there. And we don't like you.

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