Sometimes, community hits you where you least expect it. Since over a year, I’m member of a cheap and cheerful gym, a quite well known franchise in Germany, McFit. And this is, where I recently had a sort of community-epiphany. That’s right: I hereby postulate my theory that gyms are great places to get different people together.
Right now, McFit is into dire-straits PR-wise because the tragedy at the Loveparade only weeks ago is partly blamed on them since their manager and owner was the driving force behind getting the Loveparade 2010 to Duisburg and organizing it. 21 people died in a mass-panic at the world-famous techno-event.
For some more info, use this link: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,711099,00.html
So – I thought it’s about time to say something nice about them (you guys can send the fat cheque later or make my membership a freebie – oh no, now the entire web… well, John Horn’s parents know…)
Well, enough of that, we don’t want to get macabre here. I’m a happy member since March 2009, because all that office
work will otherwise turn me into a total couch potatoe slob – and chasing Orks round the woods every odd two months or so just isn’t enough of a workout for a guy like me who’s well over six feet tall. And the last time I went for my workout, I had a kind of zen-moment. I looked around myself and I thought: My, look at this. Multi-cultural Germany in a nut-shell. Like our team in the World Cup. It was all there. With regards to ethnic backgrounds and all else. Your average German mustachio-Joe working in some factory for a company providing automotive parts, teens and hipsters, some black people who I also often see hanging out at the African store we have near the place I live, Italians (lots), German oldtimers trying to battle the shortcomings of old age like rheumatism with a modest workout – single moms, stressed out media-people (spot the pidgeon!), guys who are probably on welfare, even some manager-types and municipal officials I know. Social stratification working at full blast. People, peacefully united on treadmills and weight-lifting machines, united by the sweat on their brows and by the beat of “The Eye of the Tiger” blasting from the PA. People who otherwise hardly notice one another in the daily struggle outside. Who at best sometimes just try to ignore one another as good as they can.
Wrong, dude! Being a lone-wolf in the gym gets you nowhere.
And as I thought that, one of the coaches approached me. New face, in his early twenties. “Hey, how’re you doing?” Five minutes into the conversation we were shaking hands, having introduced ourselves. Let’s call our new guy Kemal (not his real name, since I couldn’t ask him would he appear in this article or not). We just talked a while, and I was completely absorbed by the correctness of my observation. Would I have struck up a conversation with a guy from Turkey who I don’t know, smack somewhere in the streets? No. Probably not. It just doesn’t happen that often, you probably know this about different kinds of immigrants in Canada. Chinatowns for instance. So Kemal and I talked, about this and that, about how badly he wanted to become a policeman here in Germany, but how obviously someone with the authorities made him fail the test, because he talked back at the wrong moment, yet also how happy he is that he didn’t get into the service because he studies engineering now, and he really loves his subject and the perspective of a technically creative job in the industry.
A Johnism came to my mind, while we were talking: Do talk to strangers (I don’t think John has complete copyright there, but for once I will credit him). It dawned on me that really, meeting in this social microcosm had pretty much enabled our conversation, because some of the bias and reluctance was removed. And I noticed that… well, as well as regarding commuting to work by train, it’s good to get beyond your own fence once in a while. Even if or especially if it is in your gym. When I left, I definitely had the feeling that I’d made a good new acquaintance, if not even a new friend. And I knew that from now on, I’d chat up people more often while working out.
What about you, Gumbooteers? Are you the grim, lonely sportsmen and –women? Or are you socially interactive?
Chuck Norris sez: "Get some talking done, you punks!"
Where did you last notice that community was sprouting up through the tarmac in an unexpected place?