Saying Goodbye to the Homeland

The German weekly newspaper Die Zeit published an essay on September 10, which I found fascinating. It started with the student recruiting materials of a piano school in Berlin.

Do you know that a professional pianist hits the piano keys some 250,000 times a day on average? The essay asked. It then moved on to say that if writers were to make 250,000 keystrokes a day, the result might amount to a small book. Of course a writer cannot write so many words in one day. A pianist can hit so many keys in a day because they make mistakes so often that they have to practice a tune hundreds of times. A writer, on the other hand, has to make every word count. The limit the newspaper imposed on the essay, the author noted, is 2,643 words, spaces included. As the essay was drawing close to an end, oops, he seemed to realize, "How could I have neglected to mention the refugees at all?" Apparently every German knows they have an obligation to give regards to the refugees, the author said. But by then, he hit the word limit.