I saw a skinhead the other day. Skinheads - real skinheads, the evil neo-Nazi kind - are a rare sight here in Freiburg. Freiburg is somewhat of a haven of tolerance and acceptance, at least compared to some of the bleak towns in the east of Germany where even I, tall and blonde as I am, would not want to be walking around by myself at night. I know there are things being said behind closed doors by otherwise respectable people here in Freiburg that would compete with the nastiest of right-wing slogans that I have heard from real skinheads, but generally you can walk down the street here without seeing a neo-Nazi that is recognizable as such.

I know that the guy I saw was a real skinhead and not just somebody going bald because, in addition to the shaved head and the big black combat boots with white laces, he had the word SKINHEAD tattooed across the back of his shiny pate. He had other tattoos on his head too - there was a crucifixion scene of some kind on his very thick neck - but after reading the word “skinhead" I decided that it would be better if I didn’t stare at the guy too much, even if it was just staring at the back of his head (I was walking behind him). And anyway, I wasn’t quite sure that I wanted to see what those other tattoos were about.

The skinhead was a good head shorter than me, and almost as wide as he was tall. Between his round face and his cue-ball head, he bore a striking resemblance to Fester from the Addams Family. It was 9 o’clock in the morning, and as he was swaggering along in his acid-washed jeans, he was blasting some sort of death metal from his Walkman and he was swilling beer from a can. As I watched his retreating figure, my first thought was just “why?". Why be like that? Why believe what you believe? Why succumb to the stupidity and hatred?

My second thought was something like, “Master race my ass.”

I was relieved when Fester turned left and went into a nearby park. I went on further and then crossed the street to wait at the tram stop. I stood there for a while pondering the skinhead phenomenon when, to my dismay, I saw Fester come out of the park and cross the street to wait at my tram stop. It had been bad enough just seeing the guy earlier; I really didn’t want to be riding the same tram as him. I didn’t think he was going to do anything, but just being in the proximity of so much hate made me very, very uncomfortable.

There were a lot of people waiting at the tram stop, almost exclusively women. There were teenagers and young mothers and well-dressed women with shopping bags. The skinhead looked quite out of place, really, like he had popped out of some parallel universe, some anti-Freiburg. I looked at Fester surreptitiously, and I looked at all the other women standing around waiting for the tram, and then I looked back at Fester and thought, “We could take him down.” Really, if we had all gotten together, there was no doubt in my mind that we could have taken the guy out - not that there was any immediate reason (besides principle) to do so.

But nobody did or said anything. No one went up to the skinhead and confronted him on his beliefs or asked him to justify himself. Instead, we all stared resolutely ahead, not making eye contact with the skinhead or each other, pretending not to see what was in our midst. That is something of an accusation, but it’s an accusation of myself as well. I didn’t do or say anything either. I wasn’t about do to or say anything. If I or anyone else there had done or said something, we would most assuredly have gotten our heads kicked in.

We would have gotten our heads kicked in because the thing is, of course, if one of us got into a confrontation with the skinhead, the rest of us probably wouldn’t have all gotten together to do anything about it. Most people would have continued to stare straight ahead, willing themselves not to see what was going on. I’m quite sure of this. It’s happened before - and I’m not just talking about the Third Reich, when people managed to conveniently not notice when all the Jews were rounded up and shipped away. I’m talking about now, about Freiburg in the year 2000. I’m talking about things I’ve seen with my own eyes.

So we all stood quietly waiting for the tram, and when the tram came we all got on and I just made sure that I wasn’t sitting anywhere near Fester. I looked around the tram and saw an old Turkish man, and a young Turkish girl, and a Japanese student, and I silently willed them all to stay where they were and not go to the back of the tram where I knew Fester was sitting - as if I could somehow protect them from…from I don’t know what. Perhaps just from having to see skinhead and feel the anger and fear that I felt when I saw the skinhead. To prevent a cloud of unease from darkening their day as it had darkened mine.

Fester got off of the tram one stop before I did, but that was only a minor relief. Though he was out of my sight, he was most definitely not out of my mind. The thought of him walking around the streets of my town, infecting everything with his poisonous hate, made me nervous and uncomfortable.

I know that every place has its own particular problems. America has the Ku Klux Klan, England has the National Front, every place has racists and bigots and idiots. Every place has groups of people ready and willing to use verbal or physical violence against other people. Germany is perhaps not really any worse than anywhere else. It’s just that Germany has the burden of its past to deal with, so neo-Nazis skinheads in Germany seem much more ominous than skinheads in the rest of the world. But a skinhead is a skinhead is a skinhead.

Having said that, however, I must also add that Germany does indeed have a problem with skinheads, and it’s a much bigger problem than anyone here has admitted to - either to themselves or to the rest of the world. It has only been in the course of the past few weeks that people have really started to address the skinhead problem and admit that this problem is not “just" in the east and it’s not “just" being caused by a minority of youngsters who have gone astray and it’s certainly not just going to disappear on its own.

It’s only really been in the past few weeks that I myself have become fully aware of the extent of the violence that has been taking place but is never talked about. And after having become aware of it, after having seen way too many news reports on racially motivated beatings and murders and after having seen Fester walking around in safe little Freiburg, there is a tired, disgusted part of me that is just a tiny bit happy to be getting away from all of this.