A German school friend says, “Foreigners everywhere!” over beer and sausages

“I feel like I’m the only German on the bus,” a childhood friend tells the author at a summer school reunion in a Berlin garden. He says he takes the bus from Brandenburg to work at 5:10 every weekday, spending 50 minutes commuting to his job as a warehouse worker. The commute itself, he says, is fine. The problem is that there are “foreigners everywhere.”

He says this is one reason he will vote for the AfD in the future. Around 20 former classmates, who attended primary school together in the 1990s, are gathered over beer and sausages when the conversation takes this turn. Only moments earlier, the same friend had been talking about his wife, who is Romanian.

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I feel like I’m the only German on the bus!

The author, whose mother is German and father Iranian, is caught off guard and changes the subject. Later, the author regrets not asking what exactly troubles the friend about the bus, or whether anything has happened to him there. Other questions also remain: could the bus contain many foreigners because fewer Germans now want to do physically demanding early-morning work? And does the friend really believe the AfD can permanently improve his situation?

The encounter becomes a starting point for broader questions about how openly resentment and support for the AfD now appear in everyday life. It also raises the concern that the basis for a shared Germany may be breaking apart.

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Foreigners everywhere!