Is it cos I is brown?

This is the third time it has happened now.

It was a familiar scene - I was waiting for the green man at the traffic lights, my arms weighted by that old favourite of mine, over-filled plastic bags, when my suffering biceps gave out. Putting the bags on the pavement I had barely ten seconds of respite before the signal changed and I had to resume my burden. I was so fixated on suppressing a groan that I was unaware that my bags were committing a sin. As I straightened up my bags touched those of another woman also waiting at the crossing. This accidental trespass was to prompt one of the more unpleasant encounters I have had in Munich.

As a Brit the automatic response to any social faux pas is to apologise. You bump into someone, you say sorry. Someone bumps into you, you say sorry. Living in the UK can often seem like a Monty Python skit of people constantly apologising for minute wrongs regardless of whether they were the perpetrator or the victim. So naturally my first response when the woman at the crossing in Munich started scowling and cursing at me, was to apologise.

She, however, did not stop.

As we both crossed the road (no longer next to each other, I had learnt from my mistake and was giving her a wide berth), the woman continued to rail against me. Even though my German skills are still in their infancy the content of her speech was perfectly clear, even if I did not understand the words. This woman did not like me.

And this was not the first time this had happened. I now call it “Attack of the 70-year-old German woman,” as it invariably turns out to be a person from that demographic involved in the altercation. On the first two occasions these verbal tirades against me were entirely unprovoked as I was carrying no delinquent shopping at the time. Each time an older woman had seen me on the street and suddenly started raging, one time even with what at best was a Tourette-like tic, at worst a swipe with her handbag.

Shopping bags aside, the relatively unprovoked nature of these spats has made me question the reason for the hostility and maybe rightly, maybe wrongly, I wonder whether it is to do with my outward appearance, namely my skin colour.

In the predominantly white West, I am other. Not only do I have to tick this box on diversity monitoring forms, but my brown skin signals that my “origins” probably don’t date back to 10th century Croydon. That said, I was born and raised in the U.K. and have the same cultural exposure as any other child in my primary school class. My roots are steeped in those particularly British traditions of royalty, the BBC and tea but a honeying tint of melanin is enough for people to put me into the “other” category and in some cases possibly class me as foe.

I may be misinterpreting the situation entirely. It could be that the three older women simply hated my pink autumn coat (it is looking a bit shabby these days) and were being uncommonly vocal in their disapproval. However, looking at the current trend in Bavaria, I have my suspicions that the women’s reactions were more related to race than couture. With an influx of refugees to Germany over the past few years, Bavaria, the southern-most Bundesland, has received greater numbers of people who could be classed as “other” and as a result has seen an unfortunate rise in far-right sentiment. Anti-immigrant policies have been a major political talking point in the run-up to next week’s Bavarian state election and most worryingly, the far-right group, AfD, has seen an up-swing in popularity. With my brown skin and faded coat, I wonder whether these women took me for being a refugee and thus a target for their hostility.

Safe to say these three encounters coloured my experience of Munich somewhat. I was already feeling the outsider given the language barrier, however, with this new possibly racially-related phenomenon, I felt ever more alien. I became hyper-vigilant and developed a Pavlovian flinch, tucking my elbows and shopping in, whenever I saw a older woman. For all my years of waiting at pedestrian crossings and walking down streets, I had never behaved like this.

Despite the Brexit vote and its isolationist associations, I found myself longing for Britain. I particularly missed my previous home of Brighton, which is the English town least likely to care about a person’s skin or coat colour. I doubted that I would find such an all-embracing attitude amongst the right-wing populists of Germany.

But yet again, Munich proved me wrong.

On the public holiday of October 3rd, German Reunification Day, I found myself swept up into a 20 000-strong crowd of Münchners protesting the anti-immigrant policies lately touted by Bavarian politicians. In the same place that SS recruits would swear oaths to Hitler during the Second World War, Munich residents now flew rainbow flags and hoisted signs saying “Racism is not an Alternative!”

This last week before the Bavarian elections is a crucial time for Munich but regardless of the outcome, I can wait at the traffic lights a little easier knowing that not everyone in Munich is turning a blind eye to the rise of the right.