But not all is well out West either.....

specifically Germany where it ain't easy to be different.

1) On New Year's Eve an Afghan family in Berlin was attacked with baseball bats by a bunch of 'Rechts-radikale' (neo-nazis).

2) A multicultural community centre in (former) East Berlin, hence a proud member of post-Sovietistan, is regularly attacked by the NPD (the neo-nazi party), who as their most recent effort left a (cooked and half-eaten) pig's head outside it. The leader of the institution is a Turkish woman.... The centre works with migrants from various corners of the world, who often have come to Germany as refugees or as those Germans from the FSU who Germany (in a probably much regretted moment of generosity) allowed to migrate to Germany in the late 1980s and 1990s. This experience should be enough for Germany to reconsider seriously the silly rule about nationality being in the blood forever, over many generations, rather than in the soil of the country someone lives in. (Remind me to blog about refugees and IDPs.)

3) Musafira, who blogs here, is a Muslima (a muslim woman) of ethnic German descent (see above, there are not that many Germans who don't look, well, pink), married to a chap of Kuwaiti descent. Recently married. So, as is young married couple's wont, off they went for a honeymoon, to an idyllic little cottage which they rented in some rural area in Germany. All was well, until one evening they heard a knock on the door. When they opened, the police stormed into the cottage, up the stairs, into the living room, four armed police officers were in the garden.....what had happened? The inhabitants of the 200-soul village Harnwiede ('soul'? - they don't deserve the term) had given the police a list of reasons why they were worried about the tenants of the cottage:

• they were of 'southern' appearance
• the wife spoke very good German (what about all those integrated Turks who also speak excellent German)
• they arrived late in the evening by taxi
• they are supposed to have recently married but appeared distant to each other
• the house is at some distance from the village, and near a motorway service station
• they paid the rental in cash
• the curtains were closed constantly

All very very serious crimes, obviously. OMG, my tenants also keep the curtains closed all the time, and the husband looks southern (he's Italian). These were obviously enough reasons to make the police think this was a serious terrorist risk. The case is now subject to court action; it has now, two months after the event, finally hit the press. Musafira, whose first name is Kathrin, in her blog makes it quite clear how fed up she is dealing with people's pre-conceptions about who she is: 'Wow, she rides a bike?' People photograph her when she does, in muslim dress. I can relate a little to how she feels - the one thing I hate when I go to the UK is when people tell me what is my nationality, which is not the nationality in my passport and of my choice. But for me there's little danger of being mistaken for a terrorist - I'm too old, for starters.

4) But of course in the UK we have our own problems with people who are different, though nowadays, who is different at all? Just when Musafira's event happened, the Guardian reported an engineer on holiday in Northern Ireland being detained because he was black. He ended up spending two nights in a high security prison. I suppose Northern Ireland is like rural Northern Germany, both rather provincial and not used to different people (though in Norn Iron, I mean, come on....). The Northern Ireland Equality Commission took on his case and got him 7,500 GPB compensation.

5) Coming back to Eastern Europe.... in Lithuania last week, while walking past some skinheads with a dark young man, one of the skinheads was heard to utter 'monkey'. Luckily it was day time, he was smiling (about what?) and we know what Lithuania is like in this respect - totally unreconstructed!