The Cooling

You remember the moment it felt possible. Germany would handle this. The whole country rallied around the idea, and then it just didn’t hold. The optimism curdled into something else—resentment, resistance, the kind of political backlash that made everyone involved feel stupid for believing in the first place.

I notice it walking around Berlin. The tension’s there if you’re paying attention. People from Syria, Afghanistan, elsewhere, trying to work and study and figure out how to live. But somewhere along the way the country decided they were the problem. Some of the refugees themselves have started saying maybe the borders should be shut. Hard to blame them for being bitter about it.

The real story about integration is the one everyone avoids telling. It’s not tragic or inspiring. It’s just people coexisting badly, slowly, with no clear ending. Friction. Indifference on both sides now. That’s the actual texture of it.