Irene’s Random Rants

This is a difficult one. Not least because every program I see on it I switch off half way through. I am never quite satisfied with the way the events of Gallipoli are treated. There are ample accounts of personal history and emotional stories of people who visited the place where they assume their beloved ones have died. There is no problem with this; the quest for personal identity naturally involves knowing about - and empathising with - the fate of your ancestors.

But I never get what I am really looking for - people leaving their personal grief behind to ask bigger and even more painful questions. See, I was educated in West Germany, and for once, I think this is a jolly good thing. I was among the second generation born after the war, and the war hadn’t been forgotten. It took me years to realise how superbly our education dealt with the Hitler era. It did not stop at the shallow end, as in war is bad, the holocaust was an atrocity, etc. This is where it only started. It didn’t dodge the more precarious questions, like how come completely “normal” people did horrible things like gassing innocents and conducting experiments in concentration camps. We were made to read the accounts of the people who did it as well as of those who suffered it. And it revealed an uneasy truth: Take away the restrictions of ethics, add some pressure (as in, you may get killed any minute), and take away the responsibility (your sergeant or your god ordered you) plus add some group allegiance, and there is no guarantee how completely ordinary people will behave.

There is one program about Gallipoli I watched to the end. Must have been a year ago, on SBS. It was a chronology of what happened. I remember a British (yes, he wasn’t Australian, if it comforts you) soldier, 19 years old, writing into his diary about how boring it was to be in Egypt and how fortunate he was to be sailing up the Bosporus soon to conquer and loot what is now Istanbul. And I have to say I am rather glad someone stopped him. Not only because I hope to visit the city, which might well have lost some of its charm and historic heritage in the skirmish. But also because of the unease I feel about what 19-year-old lads with the disposition described above might have done to the civil population. The interested reader may want to consult an account of the fall of Berlin at the end of World War II for reference.

On Anzac day(s), I do not hear speculations about what might have happened if the unfortunate young soldiers hadn’t been unfortunate enough to be stopped and killed on Gallipoli. I’m not surprised: You are not supposed to besmudge the memory of the dead. Unfortunately, shrinking away from the uncomfortable images of war-time atrocities stops us from learning our lesson. Which is obvious: There was no option of a positive outcome. It was your ancestors killing or getting killed. Now, which would you rather?

War is tantamount to the failure of civilisation. One atrocity justifies another, and soon we’re back on the eye-for-an-eye level, with two thousand years of civilisation - all right, it was fits and starts - down the drain. Luckily, we do not have any personal experience of this. But as we grapple to understand Gallipoli, we might as well be courageous enough to think all the way. I am amazed that, given their vivid interest in Gallipoli, people are not seizing the occasion to demonstrate for peace on Anzac Day - to commemorate all the soldiers and civilians who died and suffered in wars; on Gallipoli, among other places.

Thanks for the encouragement, Clinto - I couldn’t post, I was in the sauna. One of the final PC frontiers. You can’t possibly post from a sauna, except if you are desperate for an excuse to replace your laptop.

Friday night sauna is a tradition - in Finland that is. It does warm your heart on cold Victorian nights as well, but not much else. Wherever the sauna is taken, it is misunderstood.

At least it is creatively and diversely misunderstood. Every culture has its own misunderstanding. Like the Germans, who like mixing stark naked with the opposite sex. What a nuisance. Who wants to worry about looks while having a relaxing bath?

Australians have the answer. Keep your swimsuits on. I wonder whether the shower I take before going to the pool will actually rinse the suit properly, but why worry, it’s someone else’s pool. The problem with the locals is, they are softies. No polite words will convince the personnel to turn the thing up beyond 70 degrees. Could have guessed that. My local dentist had a start when I told him all my fillings had been done without any anaesthetics.

But a real sauna is one you can’t possibly be in for longer than 12 minutes, after which you emerge a steaming red lobster with nothing but a dip into cold water on your mind.
At least you are allowed to throw water onto their stove (no, only tap water from a bucket). That helps, as steam makes the deal feel hotter. Can’t stand the German way of institutionalising the water-throwing business to a steam ceremony performed by specially trained personnel coming in every hour on the dot. Of course their saunas are empty for the first 50 minutes of the hour and crammed for the remaining 10.

There is only one thing everyone outside Finland is unanimous about; they all say that you should never have a sauna without proper supervision. It’s the ultimate proof they don’t get the first thing. It’s finally Friday, I get home at long last, close the door behind myself, switch on the sauna to pop in just before the evening news, and now I’m meant to find someone to watch over me in case I have a heart attack? You bet.

I suppose they don’t give me my own sauna in my flat over here because they know I’m a reckless foreigner who’d obstinately refuse to call a lifeguard to assist with the sauna bathing. They’d rather I come to the local pool where they can turn down the temperature on me.