One of my expat acquaintances pointed out how abject these slum areas looked along the S-Bahn line going into Frankfurt. She saw little huts perched right up to the tracks, with laundry fluttering in the wind, and people sitting outside in their makeshift lounge-chairs. She felt so sorry for them and asked me why the state of Germany could not provide better housing. Little did she know that Germans do this for fun on the weekends!

Coming from the Far East, my acquaintance expected Germany to be full of well-to-do people, such as Benz drivers and comfortable city apartment dwellers. These garden slums, sitting right next to a metropolitan city, would have been torn down in Asia long time ago. Tearing down the past is done rather quickly in Asia. Everything new going up appears mostly in white, gray, or chrome structures.

One of my good friends has a little hut on a rented garden plot outside our small city. Her plot looks very nice and well-cared for. It is called a Schrebergarten and in its early stage was only meant to supply food for all (especially after the war). I had heard that it was mostly used by the local train company employees and for them special stops were made along the tracks. Employees and their families could get off and did not have far to walk to get to their plot.

Nowadays people use it to get away from the apartment in the city, raise their own vegetables, plant flowers, throw little parties, and all that for as little as € 100 a year plus utilities. The new tenant has to buy the previous tenant’s hut, though.

There are other stipulations: 1/3 of the plot must be used for planting vegetables, 1/3 for flowers, and 1/3 can be used for leisure such as BBQ parties. There are meetings to attend, letters of admonishment to be written to non-abiding plot tenants, monthly cleaning schedules to be distributed to all tenants, etc. This is Germany in its fullest bureaucratic glory of telling people how to use the land. But nobody complains. This is the way it has always been and changes in Germany are slow.

To learn more about this German passion for gardening, read this Spiegel article German Garden Ghettos