Integration always means the same thing. Someone tries to become part of a whole. But the face of integration differs: our authors had a closer look at their hometowns. They found a bike, a slang dialect and a doner kebab.

Riding a bike: Maaike Luttikhuis from Amsterdam

"How do they know which one is theirs?" a little girl asks her mother, while her father is devotedly taking pictures. Tourists in the 'fietsenflat', the big, multi-layered bicycle shelter near Central Station in Amsterdam. As I put my bike in the rack and run to catch my train, I realise that from the girls' point of view the funny question makes sense. To someone who has never seen so many bikes as are gathered here in the ‘fietsenflat', they all look the same.

The Amsterdam ‘fietsenflat' is a cultural phenomenon. Though dozens of tourists visit it every day, to me it's nothing special. Everybody in Amsterdam owns a bike, knows how to ride it and uses it on an everyday basis. And yes, we do recognize our own bike amidst the large heaps of rickety skeletons that you will find in front of almost every building. Cycling is our way of living.

The bicycle as an indicator of integration. Last year, I left university and became a German teacher. I hadn't yet forgotten the struggles in front of the bike-shelter in the schoolyard of my own uptown school, where almost every morning a few students were injured trying to fight their way in in time for the first lesson. Consequently, I was surprised to find a nearly empty schoolyard on my first day. Instead, I saw a long caravan of morning moody adolescents slowly moving from the subway station to the school.

The school where I was working is in a suburb of Amsterdam. It is what in Dutch we call, politically correct as we are, a ‘black school': a school in which over 70 percent of the students have a migrant background. Most of my students have Moroccan or Turkish parents. And indeed, they don't know a lot about... cycling.

One day, Hakan, Ahmed and Hamid didn't show up in class. I expected their absence to have something to do with the test I had announced for that morning. But ten minutes after we'd started, they tumbled in, a little out of breath. Where had they been, I wanted to know. "Well miss, you know, miss, we wanted to get a kebab, so we took Hamids bike." "What? The three of you, all on Hamids bike?" "Yes miss, and then it broke, and that's why we're late...".

Malena's bike was broken too. That morning on my way to school, I'd overtaken her. She'd been pedalling like mad, even though the pedals kept slipping with every step. She'd yelled to me: "Will we still be in time, miss?" And then: "I'll get it fixed this afternoon!!"

And Emin seemed to be reading his books very diligently in class. As this is quite exceptional, I walked up to him with the intention of complimenting him for working so hard. Then I saw what book he was reading with such fascination: Theory for Moped Riders Exam. He looked up and grinned at me: "I'm gonna buy myself a scooter, miss."

A few days later,  gazing thoughtfully into the schoolyard, I noticed my boys boastfully handling some sort of tools. I smiled. My little Moroccan show-offs. The group of 14-year old boys crowded around my colleague Jim, who was apparently giving them instructions. Only then I saw what they were fighting over: they all wanted to be the first to get to fix his flat tire. They'll do fine in Dutch society.

Speaking Verlan: Hermance Grémion from Paris

"C'est ouf" sounds rather strange to you? You're not alone.

Photo: Tatev Mkrtchyan www.youthphotos.eu

soirce à zeurtroi du tam

Many foreign exchange students in France often have a hard time understanding French expressions like "geudin cette teuf". You may find some of them in dictionaries nowadays, but certainly not all of them. Is this just the French being crazy again?
Not quite. The verlan, as this youth slang is called, relies on a simple principle: the sounds which make up words are placed in reverse order. "C'est ouf" therefore stands for "c'est fou" (that's crazy), while "geudin cette teuf" means "dingue cette fête" (what a freaky party). Verlan itself refers to the inverse of, yes, "l'envers".

The French language has mainly been shaped by the influence of the great and noble Académie française. The central government considered regional dialects a threat to the nation's unity and they were successfully repressed during the 19^th century. Thus, it is somewhat striking that a "yoof speak" has developed at all. But the French also like to rebel against authority. Verlan has its roots in this mentality.

Verlan was originally invented about 30 years ago on the outskirts of Paris and other big cities, in the famous banlieus. Its main purpose was to prevent the police from understanding conversations among youths in what they regarded as their territory between shabby tenement blocks. They talked drugs, crime, and everything else people thought was happening in the infamous outskirts. But they also talked about their private lives and expectations for their future. Why should the police know about that?

Young people from the banlieus face a host of problems. From the beginning, they are  regarded as "difficult" at school because of their background. They have far fewer opportunities to study than the children of well-situated bourgeois families from the western suburbs of Paris. They have almost no chance of getting into one the famous elite universities. Most of them belong to the second or third generation of immigrants. Raised on the periphery not only of their cities but also of society itself, the fight for integration is their biggest challenge. Verlan gives them a sense of identity while society still associates them with anarchy, violence, and threat. Integration started with identification with fellow immigrants and thus with separation from the host society.

Meanwhile, the "yoof speak" of verlan has been recognized at all social levels. Even kids from the bourgeois families of Neuilly make use of it. It became famous through Singers like Renaud, rap bands like NTM, and movies like La Haine of Matthieu Kassowitz or L'esquive by Abdellatif Kechiche. Even though the French nation has always tried to protect its language from the invasion of Anglicisms, verlan words have been included in French dictionaries. The use of verlan has become common among young French people. Anyone who doesn't understand expressions like "soirce à zeurtroi du tam"* is considered not to be properly integrated or at least as a dumb-ass fool. Verlan has made its way from a dissociation strategy to a symbol of integration.

* "Ce soir, à 3 heures du matin" (tonight at 3 a.m.)

Thoughts from Europe's Doner Capital - David Krebs from Berlin

The good news is: Integration does work.  In terms of what? Well, at least in terms of gastronomy. Take Berlin and have a look at its gastronomy scene. There, you'll find more doner places than any other kind of snack bar, including McDonalds. Hence, you may call Berlin Europe's "Doner Capital",  considering that in Berlin there are more doner places than you can find in probably any other European city - including Istanbul.

The doner was taken to Berlin by Turkish immigrants, who came to Germany in the 50/60ies as (cheap) labor force. Eventough the immigrant workers contributed strongly to the flourishing of the "Wirtschaftswunder", during the recession of the early 70ies the unskilled workers from abroad were the first to be dismissed. This was the hour of birth of the culinary revolution in Germany's snack food sector: Some of the unemployed immigrant workers made a virtue out of necessity and entered into doner business.

Nowadays doner is one of the most popular snack food dishes in Germany - and in Berlin certainly the most popular of all. So, why consider this as an example of succesful integration? Because it shows how integration should work: Integration cannot be a one-way-street. It should rather be a reciprocal process that affects and involves both of the parts that are trying to integrate themselves with each other. In this sense you can say that the Doner culture is a successful piece of integration: German majority society has accepted the immigrants offer and changed their nutrittial habits. I'll have a (decent!) doner rather than a Currywurst. But also the Turkish immigrants modified their way of preparing the dish: instead of the - for German tastes [palatines] obviously too strong - mutton, which is used traditionally in Turkey, the Berlin doner will rather consist of veal, chicken or turkey. Moreover, the addition of salad and spiced sauces is supposed to be an innovation that was only invented after the implantation of the original product in the new German environment. I asked myself whether these modifications were only made in order to please the German clients with their somehow hypersensitive taste. So, last time I went to a doner place I observed very closely how Berlin inhabitants with Turkish background order their doner: indeed, some - not all - of them asked not to add any sauce (as Germans would do in general). However, everybody asked for salad. So you see, integration has worked in a way it should work: as a processus of reciprocal changing of habits, tastes and minds.

But sometimes - one might add - intgration can work even better. Maybe a year ago Berlin's first "Vöner"-place opened. "Vöner" is a fusion from the words "vegetarian" and "Döner". It looks pretty much like a conventional doner but it is made from seitan (asian food made from gluten of wheat) instead of meat. Why should this kind of integration be "better" than the ordinary doner? Well, it's not really better, but, let's say, it's  maybe an even more striking incarnation of the spirit of integration. In a way it's the "integration 2.0". Why? By merging the turkish culinary - meat based - tradition and the German Eco-Hippie-Veggie-movement, from the synergy of this merging process something completely new has arosen. If you want to be the turkish immigrant culture the thesis, German society would be its anti-thesis and than "Vöner" is definitely  the synthesis. Yes, integration is not only a reciprocal processus but it can also be a dialectical one.

By the way, originally, also the famous German Currywurst is not at really a totally German product, yet a Franco-Amercian Synthesis: The sausage was brought by the Huguenots, who escaped from their persecution in France to Germany in the 17th century. Ketchup was a souvenir of the US allied forces after World War II. And then in 1949 a Berlin snack bar owner took the French thesis and the US-American anti-thesis, added some curry powder. And ready was the Currywurst-synthesis!

Now, what's the bad news? Well, the bad news is, that culinary integration is not really a strong indicator for the overall integration. Just because Germans like doner and maybe Turkish immigrants like the way they modified their traditional food in the German evironment, that does not mean: mission accomplished! Culinary integration is probably the easiest part of the story. If you forget about certain religious rules like food to be kosher or halal, there aren't many conlficts that could arise in the snack bar around the corner. Yet, it does not mean that doner seller and doner buyer agree about every other aspect of the everyday life, namely certain crucial issues whether it is about women's duties and men's rights, the idea of honour or whatsoever....

Culinary integration, however, maybe considered as a first step and also as a catalysator for a more profound/pervasive, the real integration. Pity enough, but the doner store is probably one of the number one places where Germans and Turkish immigrants get in touch with each other. I'm ashamed but it's true if there weren't any doner places in Berlin, I would have had way fewer opportunities to talk to people with a Turkish background.