(no subject)
Hey folks,
I got another blogpost up at http://noncetravel.blogspot.com about our trip up the Münster in Freiburg.
I also promised some thoughts about family, but I don't think that'll be posted on the blog.
This trip to Germany was rather cathartic for me in a number of ways. Germany, to me, has always been where my heritage is but not where I'm from. I'm an American, front to back and center to crust. There has always been something awkward about Germany to me- like a place where I was perpetually trapped in being a child who loved to play in the woods across from my grandmother's house and asked awkward questions about adult conversations. I was there once since I was a kid, ten years ago when I was 19, but even then I didn't have a lot of agency- I pretty much got dragged along with by my family, and when they released me I hightailed it to the UK.
This time was different. This time, I was an adult, and could take Germany on my own terms, and that extended to my family as well. I loved Germany. I always have, but now I love it as an adult, not just from childhood memories of chocolate and playing in the Baggersee (gravel pit lake where local kids and young adults go on hot days). I love the history and the food (and the healthy approach to food), the friendly, no-nonsense people, the sensible approaches to public transit, all of it. For the first time ever, I could see myself living there.
Also, this was the first time I interacted with my family as an adult, and got to meet my cousins as adults or nearly-adults. I got to experience my uncles teasing each other and cracking jokes like my brothers and I do, saw how one of my uncles looks and acts exactly like his father (my grandfather), saw the whole family through my eyes, rather than what I'd heard about them from my parents. I think I have a very different read on them than my parents do.
Mostly, it was great to see my grandmother. I remember her as a strong and vibrant woman, but not someone I ever really knew that much. I'd heard she was getting quite old and increasingly cut off from the world, so I was prepared to sit with her, pat her hand, but essentially focus on remembering her in her prime. Instead, I had a chance to get to know an old woman who has trouble walking, is hard of hearing and hard of sight, but also very wise and very loving. She is isolated from the world and dependent on others, but not nearly as bitter as I had expected or as I would be. She was clearly elated to be surrounded by her family- three children, and 7 of her 9 grandchildren- and overwhelmed and in love with all the faces in the room.
I was surprised how much I loved my family, and how much they loved me. I haven't seen any of them in a decade, and well over half a decade before then, but we- all of us- were enthusiastic to catch up, hear about lives and plans, my cousins in college or going to college or having finished college and living in Switzerland, all that. I never realized it was possible for there to be so much familial love with so little acquaintance.
It was a chance to reconcile my past with my present and, to a degree, my future. From talking to my dad (the best source for accurate, dispassionate information about my mother's family history), I got some new insights on the family tree going back a hundred years or so, and some of the background informing the politics of the older generation that are often pointedly ignored by the younger one. From talking to my uncles, I got a sense of how things are now, and the increasingly dispersed and diverse clan (well, as diverse as a clan of upper middle class Germans can be- this is, after all, a family where my uncle was almost disowned for marrying a woman from Cyprus who was Greek Orthodox to boot!) From talking to my grandmother, I got a sense of how much time has passed and how much she really knows about all of us- her children and grandchildren, my mother, uncles, cousins, brothers and myself. It was humbling.
I got another blogpost up at http://noncetravel.blogspot.com about our trip up the Münster in Freiburg.
I also promised some thoughts about family, but I don't think that'll be posted on the blog.
This trip to Germany was rather cathartic for me in a number of ways. Germany, to me, has always been where my heritage is but not where I'm from. I'm an American, front to back and center to crust. There has always been something awkward about Germany to me- like a place where I was perpetually trapped in being a child who loved to play in the woods across from my grandmother's house and asked awkward questions about adult conversations. I was there once since I was a kid, ten years ago when I was 19, but even then I didn't have a lot of agency- I pretty much got dragged along with by my family, and when they released me I hightailed it to the UK.
This time was different. This time, I was an adult, and could take Germany on my own terms, and that extended to my family as well. I loved Germany. I always have, but now I love it as an adult, not just from childhood memories of chocolate and playing in the Baggersee (gravel pit lake where local kids and young adults go on hot days). I love the history and the food (and the healthy approach to food), the friendly, no-nonsense people, the sensible approaches to public transit, all of it. For the first time ever, I could see myself living there.
Also, this was the first time I interacted with my family as an adult, and got to meet my cousins as adults or nearly-adults. I got to experience my uncles teasing each other and cracking jokes like my brothers and I do, saw how one of my uncles looks and acts exactly like his father (my grandfather), saw the whole family through my eyes, rather than what I'd heard about them from my parents. I think I have a very different read on them than my parents do.
Mostly, it was great to see my grandmother. I remember her as a strong and vibrant woman, but not someone I ever really knew that much. I'd heard she was getting quite old and increasingly cut off from the world, so I was prepared to sit with her, pat her hand, but essentially focus on remembering her in her prime. Instead, I had a chance to get to know an old woman who has trouble walking, is hard of hearing and hard of sight, but also very wise and very loving. She is isolated from the world and dependent on others, but not nearly as bitter as I had expected or as I would be. She was clearly elated to be surrounded by her family- three children, and 7 of her 9 grandchildren- and overwhelmed and in love with all the faces in the room.
I was surprised how much I loved my family, and how much they loved me. I haven't seen any of them in a decade, and well over half a decade before then, but we- all of us- were enthusiastic to catch up, hear about lives and plans, my cousins in college or going to college or having finished college and living in Switzerland, all that. I never realized it was possible for there to be so much familial love with so little acquaintance.
It was a chance to reconcile my past with my present and, to a degree, my future. From talking to my dad (the best source for accurate, dispassionate information about my mother's family history), I got some new insights on the family tree going back a hundred years or so, and some of the background informing the politics of the older generation that are often pointedly ignored by the younger one. From talking to my uncles, I got a sense of how things are now, and the increasingly dispersed and diverse clan (well, as diverse as a clan of upper middle class Germans can be- this is, after all, a family where my uncle was almost disowned for marrying a woman from Cyprus who was Greek Orthodox to boot!) From talking to my grandmother, I got a sense of how much time has passed and how much she really knows about all of us- her children and grandchildren, my mother, uncles, cousins, brothers and myself. It was humbling.