Past and Future – Seite 2 – bruecken_schlag

Kategorie: Past and Future (Seite 2 von 3)

The American Dream – My US Experience

Rewind 13 years. I am now 15 again.

It is Saturday, August 5th. I am due to fly to the US on the 8th to spend a year living there with a strange family, going to a strange school and, hopefully, making memories that will last forever. But I do not know yet where I will go. I don’t know the family yet that will take me. All I know is that I will probably end up in the South somewhere.

Innocent and young, before my departure to the States

As on every other day for the past 5 months, I am anxious as I look in the mailbox. There is a letter from my exchange organization Youth for Understanding. I tear it open. And there I have it. I am going to El Paso, Texas. My hostparents are both 35 years old (not much older than I am now). I will have two little host sisters aged 4 and 7.

It is now Tuesday, August 8th. I am smiling as I pass through security, waving at my crying mother. I am excited and full of naive anticipation. I have so much to look forward to.

Fast forward one year. I am now 16.

Jesse and I

It is July 10th. On my way to the airport, I am holding hands with my friends Angela and Jesse. I am sadder than I have ever been before. I want to go home to Germany. But this, El Paso, is now my home, too. I have memories here. Friends. A family. I am so confused. I don’t know any longer where I belong.

On July 11th I arrive at Hamburg airport. At baggage claim I feel like my legs are shaking so much that they must give in at any second. What will it be like to see my family? I walk through the doors. There is a blur of laughing faces and bright yellow. I am being picked up by my parents, my sisters and ten friends. Everyone of them holds a sun flower for me. I laugh and cry at the same time.

Fast forward three years. I am now 19.

Turning 20 in El Paso

I am going back to the El Paso for a three week vacation. My littel host sisters are now 8 and 11. They have grown so much. Most of my friends are home from college. I fall in love. I turn 20. I sneak away a drink at a restaurant and get all nervous about it. I drive my host dad’s car on the freeway, windows open on a hot desert night. I cry almost my entire transatlantic flight back.

Fast forward to the present day. I am 28.

Bag on my back, ready to go

I have not been to the US in nine years. I have met up with my host family in Europe, four years ago, and I have seen my host sisters grow on their facebook profiles. I won’t get to see my family this time around. I am not even going back home, home to El Paso. I am going to visit one of my favourite people in the world, my friend Jesse, in Chicago, a city he loves to live in.

There are countless What’sApp messages between Jesse and me in preparation. „What’s the weather like so I can pack properly, Jesse?“ „Mariella, what time do you get in so I can take time off work?“ „Dude, I just saw in my travel guide there were BEACHES in Chicago!!“ „Hey, you wanna do an architecture tour when you’re here?“ „I just learned about the Grant Park Music Festival. Jesse, we have GOT to go!“ „And also, we have got to go sing karaoke in the German neighborhood. Check!“

Germans call this Vorfreude, which literally translateds to pre-happiness. It is something like the English anticipation, although to me that is closer to German Erwartung which also means expectation. Vorfreude is purer, cleaner. Expectations can be disappointed. Vorfreude is just a feeling of great great joy in the face of something happening at all, not necessarily a clear cut idea of what that something is going to look like. Granted, I have some ideas. I think there will be discussions on life and friendship and career and love and music. There will be reminiscing of old times. There will be my 29th birthday. There will be lots of laughter. And there will be the long big bear hug I am planning on giving my friend when I see him again after nine years. All the rest is a big surprise. I am so excited to go to the States again. I am so excited to, in a way, come home.

What’s your home away from home?

Between Travels – Nostalgia and Anticipation

Juli 16, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 6 Kommentare

I am not a full time traveller. I cannot tell you how often I have thought about becoming one. The idea of selling all my possessions and being on the road forever, living for seeing the world, moving from place to place and soaking up all the beauty that this earth has to offer – it is appealing and repelling to me all at once. Having grown up in very conservative circumstances where a stable income and a fixed residence were not ever even questioned, the nomad life that many of my esteemed fellow travel bloggers lead is like a dark temptress, a taboo, the conceptual equivalent to what in a romantic interest we would call a „bit of rough“. It fascinates me – but I’m afraid of it too.

Mark Twain and Henry Miller – I keep these wise quotes above my desk so I don’t forget to be curious ever.

As it is, I know that I could probably do that if I really wanted to, but I don’t think I do. Instead when I am sitting at home wishing that I was travelling instead, I revel in the joy of the next best thing to travel: anticipation.

There seldomly is a moment when I do not have a trip planned. It doesn’t need to be anything huge – a weekend in Hamburg with my parents, or in my favourite Polish city Gdansk, or down in Tübingen where I went to university – all these will do, because they give me something to look forward to, and even though I know all these places well, the fact that I do not live there allows for me to see them with a traveller’s eyes.

This wall in my corridor holds pictures of places I love – Hamburg, Greifswald and Tübingen are in there as my home towns in Germany, but also Turkey, Slovenia, Latvia, Croatia and Poland.

Sometimes sitting at my desk, my eyes wander longingly to the book shelf that holds my guide books. Not that I am big on using them. The only thing I ever really use in guide books are the maps and the information on bus and train times (although I don’t really rely on that either). I then dream of all the places in the books I have not seen yet and of all that awaits me, and I also look back a bit nostalgically to my past endeavours and the peace and the joy they have given me.

My guide books – the Eastern Europe one is one of my most prized possessions because it holds so many memories from when I used it on my trip around the Balkans.

Sometimes when it comes to this, I go and open my notebooks from trips past, and I reread what I wrote about those places, wondering if my memory or my noted down immediate impression would make for a more accurate picture of the places I am thinking about. I am grateful for everything that I have written in my notebooks, and I wish I had jotted down even more, because I wish I remembered every detail. But then again it is probably beneficial to my nostalgia that I do not. Nostalgia colours all my memories in a slightly golden tone and transforms the places into something precious. Which in the case of travel I cannot seem to find harmful or dangerous. Because the places are precious and they are special.

The book on the bottom holds my notes from Rome which I never wrote about on here – something I hope to change. The one on top is on a page where I wrote about Hungary.

Of course there is a reason that I am having these musings today. In a little over two weeks I am going to the US on my summer trip. The last time I was in the States is nine years ago. Nine years! I cannot even comprehend that time span. I am caught between different emotions. There is the great excitement to see one of my highschool friends from that year I spent in Texas as a teenager (now that is even 13 years ago!!), to have Taco Bell Seven Layer Burritos, to hear English all around me all the time with thick American accents, and to get to know a new city – Chicago. And at the same time I feel compelled to remember how I saw that country when I was younger, what it did to me, what it gave to me when I lived there. I am between nostalgia and anticipation.

I love being in this place. It makes me feel alive. I try to live in the moment in my daily life, but it is still easier for me to live in the moment when I am away, and that just logically leads up to me being nostalgic and anticipatory in between. As I write this, the excitement is ever growing. I cannot wait to experience Chicago, and, let’s face it, I cannot wait to write about it. I read a great quote by Jorge Luis Borges on twitter today:

A writer – and, I believe, generally all persons – must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us […] is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

When it comes down to it, I always come to the conclusion that I am not cut out for travelling full time and that I am better off as someone who has a defined home, a place I can resort to where things are not ever-changing. A place where there is allowed to be dullness, boredom and insignificance. But only under two conditions: I need to be allowed to reminisce and look back on past beauty. And I need to know that if I wanted to, I could pack up my bags and leave, the anticipation of the next exciting adventure.

I Left My Heart In Greifswald

Juni 4, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 5 Kommentare

There are places I remember all my life, though some have changed
Some forever not for better, some have gone and some remained
All these places have their moments with lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living – in my life I’ve loved them all.

The Beatles have left us with much wisdom to cherish in their lyrics, and I particularly love this song – especially in the Johnny Cash version. I recently got to visit one of the very places that I’ve loved in my life, and that I am sure will remain.

I spent three years as an undergraduate in Greifswald, a small seaside town by the Baltic in Germany’s far North Eastern corner and one of my beloved Hanseatic Cities. It was the first place I lived in on my own after moving out of my parents‘ house, the first place I truly chose for myself and that was not presented to me as a „home“, but that I made my home all by myself. My time there was full of life and opportunity and dreams. When I moved away, I cried bitter tears, and whenever I’ve returned, it has felt like coming home. This time around, my last visit had been two and a half years ago. All the more excited I was at the prospect of taking a day trip to this place I hold so dear to my heart.

This is the view from the Draw Bridge onto the river Ryck’s mouth into the Baltic.

Andrew and I catch an early train from Berlin’s main station that takes us through the misty landscapes of Brandenburg into the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The rape fields in rich yellow blossom under the wide grey sky, and passing by all the stations with names that are familiar to me – it makes me so nostalgic. Is it really ten years ago that I first set foot here? As the train passes into Greifswald, my heart starts beating faster. We get off at the main station, and I feel it right away: I am home once more.

From the train tracks we walk through the old bus station directly to the rampart that is encircling the city center where the city walls used to be, and walk along it towards the waters of the river Ryck. The museum port is mostly unchanged from when I was last here. I love the old sailing ships and the boats they have made into swimming pubs, and I love the small and slightly sleeply port with the more modern motor and sailing boats.

This picture was taken during my first visit of Greifswald in 2003.

We walk along the water. How many times I have made this walk I cannot count. The river Ryck is flowing calmly and quietly beside us, and there’s lots of men and boys fishing – no women or girls, I notice. I’d love to try fishing sometime. One man walks through the high wet grass at the embankment with four humongous fish on his hook. To our right, the cherry trees are in blossom. Many families are out and about on their bikes. Greifswald is a young city due to its high student population, but I didn’t use to notice that there were so many young families. Maybe that is just because that phase of my life was so far away when I studied here.

Finally we make it to Wieck where the beautiful Draw Bridge makes my heart wide. It must be one of my favorite bridges. We cross it and buy Fischbrötchen at a road side stand – smoked salmon in a bread roll, and it tastes like heaven. Then we walk all the way up to the very front of the pier. Greifswald is set by the Bodden, a kind of lagoon, and not right by the wide open sea – but it is still the Baltic that we have a beautiful view of, and Andrew has never seen it so far. I wonder what that does to him. I get very excited about seeing places for the first time that I have heard much about. I want to ask him, but then it seems so much more natural to just keep quiet and look at the eternity that is the grey and mighty pulsating of Baltic Sea waves.

We take a different route back into town, past the housing complex where I used to live, past the university library through the rose garden and past the theatre, across the big street crossing into town, the university cafeteria to our right, and memories keep flashing in front of my eyes. We enter the pedestrian zone, new shops have opened, it is so much more posh than it used to be. As the narrow street opens up onto the wide market square, I slow down a bit, but we keep walking, and only stop in the middle of the square. Instantaneously, tears are running down my cheeks, and I am glad I have Andrew to hold on to. It is only now that I notice how much I miss this place.

This is also an old picture, taken from the cathedral tower. We didn’t go up there this time around, but on a clear day it’s absolutely worth it!

From the market square and past the town hall – the large red building you can see in the picture – we make our way to the cathedral. My beloved red brick stone, but white washed inside, with beautiful painted ornaments in the cupolas, simplistic and without too much pomp. I think about how everything about Greifswald speaks to me. It is unostentatious and simple and honest, it gives me space to think with its width and the fresh breeze that is blowing through the streets.

I take Andrew to see the university and the buildings where I used to have my classes, and I have stories lined up about all these places. They are laden thickly with the force of memory. I keep thinking – and saying – how different it all looks – but while in other places it sometimes irritates and confuses me what time does to a place, in Greifswald all the change cannot take away from the bond I feel with the place. I am sure one day is really enough to *see* it, but of course one day can’t tell the story of the town, the story of three years of lived life here. As we board the train back to Berlin, my heart is cram-full with memories and feelings. But the beautiful thing about a place that has become home is that you can take it with you when you leave it. And Greifswald is most definitely in my heart forever.

Being German and the Issue of Patriotism

März 7, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 80 Kommentare

Last week I wrote a post on cultural identity in this globalized world and in my own travel-filled life. The reactions were immediate and plentiful, and it seems that this is a subject that interests a lot of us. I am sure that this is because in travel, we always try to find ourselves. We confront ourselves with the other, the great unknown, the „cudne manowce“, as I like to call it, which is Polish for „the magical astray“. And we enjoy this because we perceive it as different only by comparison with what we are, and in this process we notice and understand our own inner workings better than before.

Along these lines, I have a few stories to tell about being German when you travel. I never noticed that I was German until I left Germany – that makes a lot of sense, because obviously most people I had known until then were German too, and this trait didn’t serve as a distinguishing attribute that would shape anyone’s individual personality. But then I went to other places. And I noticed that I was ridiculously punctual (by comparison with Mexican Americans). And well organized (by comparison with the French). And much more used to beer than vodka (by comparison with the Polish). And uptight (by comparison with Serbians). Even prude (I am SO looking at Sweden here!!). So there were moments when I felt very German, and I couldn’t believe I had never seen it before.

What I said about vodka goes for rakija as well – man, those Croatians can drink…

In becoming aware of my Germanness, I lost some of it, and that is what I wrote about last week. Other things I will most likely never get rid of, and the one thing that comes to mind fastest and that I have most been confronted with when travelling is the awareness of history and its direct link to patriotism. Let me explain with a little help of German singer-songwriter Reinhard Mey. The quotes below are translations of the lyrics to this song called Mein Land, „My Country“:

My dark country of victims and perpetrators,
I carry part of your guilt.
Country of betrayed ones and of traitors,
With you I practice humility and patience.

It all started when I was 16 and lived in Texas for a year. Kids would come up to me on the school bus and ask me questions such as: „So, are your parents Nazis?“ or „So, is Hitler still alive?“ or „So, have your family killed any Jews back then?“ Being 16 and a foreigner, I found it difficult to deal with this at first.

There was one particularly hard situation: We were talking about Auschwitz in my Sociology class. The guy behind me muttered to his friend: „What’s the big deal, it’s just a couple of people that died.“ I gasped, turned around, and gave him a huge speech after which I left the classroom in tears. Quite the drama queen, eh? But I don’t think he ever forgot it. In time, I learned that these things didn’t happen out of cruelty, but out of ignorance and I resorted to teaching people about the Third Reich instead of starting to cry.

I can’t sing to you hand to heart,
With eyes on the flag, and a word such as „pride“
won’t cross my lips even with an effort –
stupidity and pride are cut from the same cloth!

This is where patriotism comes in. I learned that while I may not identify with what happened in my country throughout history, other people will identify me with it. Whether I want it to be or not, Germany is part of me – and that includes its dark past. But with this dark past being such a dominant association with Germany, being proud of being German is something that doesn’t feel quite right. Add in the very important factor that an extremist form of patriotism is exactly what national socialism was all about, and you may understand why Germans are usually very very careful to express pride in their national identity.

I cling to you and even through your disruptions,
I am your kin in sickness and in health,
I am your child through all your contradictions,
my motherland, my fatherland, my country.

The more I have travelled, the more people I have met who never brought up the topic of collective German guilt. In fact it is often the other way around: People tell me how much they love Germany and I get all flustered and weird because it sounds strange and wonderful to me when someone has such love for the country I am from and no fear of expressing it. And then I have to explain that I am not used to that. Of course there was the soccer World Cup in 2006 that changed things for a lot of us and allowed us to wave Germany’s flag proudly for once. Things have relaxed since then, and I am happy about that. But at the same time I am not entirely sure about it. What if we forget? What if we lose awareness of the responsibility we have? What if things got out of hand?

World Cup Public Viewing, Greifswald, Germany

This was me at a public viewing for the World Cup in 2006. Over the top, you think? You should have seen some of the other people…

I have learned not to think of patriotism as an innocent emotion. I have learned that it has led to evil, and I have learned that there are no grounds to be proud of something you have no power over, such as your nationality. You can be grateful for it, happy about it, and identify with it, but as long as it is not your accomplishment, „pride“ is not the appropriate emotion to me. I think that feeling so strongly about this is very German. And it is something that I really want to hang on to.

I love Germany. But being proud to be German is something I don’t even want to feel. I would be scared that it might mean that I had forgotten my country’s past.

[EDIT JULY 2014] I recently closed comments on this post because I felt its time had come. It is important to me to stress once more that all my observations are highly subjective and personal. People in the comments have largely taken offense to the fact that I generalized a German attitude. I do think that I am not an exception in my views, but I am well aware that there are many other perspectives on the issue. In fact, patriotism is not at all problematic for many people anymore, especially for younger generations. I stand by this post and its importance because this one individual perspective I have, my very own approach to the topic, still holds valid and may grant some insights to the whole interplay of nationalism, patriotism, pride and history.

Failures and Successes – History Alive in Berlin

März 5, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 8 Kommentare

Surely you’ve noticed by now that I have a thing for history. I think countries are the same as individual people: It is easier to understand them if you know their personal past; their experiences, their baggage, their most wonderful successes and their greatest failures. Germany has a lot to offer in that department, and not only in the 20th century – although that is usually what everyone focusses on, understandably. And German history of the 20th century can’t be seen better anywhere in the country than in Berlin. Some of the places around allow you to truly understand Germany’s past – if you let them.

Standing freely between Humboldt University’s splendid main building and the German Museum of History, across from the State Opera at Unter den Linden boulevard, there is this fairly small and maybe unspectacular building.

Neue Wache (New Guard House)

In 18th century Prussia, the city castle of the Prussian kings was not at all far from here, and this was the armory. Today it is the „Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Tyranny“ – yes, that is its official name. Very long and technical, very German. Most of us just refer to it as Neue Wache (New Guard House), but the long version should begin to tell you about its function which is much more important.

There are specific memorials that commemorate the Jews killed in the Holocaust, the Roma and Sinti, and the homosexuals. There is a memorial that reminds of the burning of undesired books during the Third Reich, and there are living relics of Nazi architecture such as the Olympic Stadium or the airport in Tempelhof. Neue Wache is much less specific, and instead more inclusive. Here, we commemorate everyone who suffered from National Socialism and any form of tyranny and dictatorship before and after. We try to make amends for what this country has done and for what others have done. We include the victims and the resistance, the well-known heroes and every single footman, all countries, nations and ethnicities in our prayers, whatever that means to every single one of us. Personally I have always found this place to be deeply spiritual.

Käthe Kollwitz‘ „Mutter mit totem Sohn“ („Mother with her dead son“)

When you enter the building, it is but one big and almost empty room. In the middle there is a replica of a work by expressionist artist Käthe Kollwitz whose work I love deeply. She was considered a degenerate artist herself under the Nazis. The sculpture is called „Mother with her dead son“, and the intensity of it drives tears to my eyes whenever I go there and take a few minutes to think about what this place means. Buried here are also the remains of an unknown soldier and of an unknown concentration camp victim. The writing next to the sculpture says: „To the victims of war and tyranny“. The memorial is very plain, but it does invite you to linger and think about what it is there to remind you of. Take that moment. Calm yourself. And find in yourself the urge to make this world a place where cruelties like these will never happen again. You will go out a changed person if you allow it to happen.

And then there is a second dark chapter in recent German history – and while I feel that the history of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), or „Eastern Germany“, is a very complex matter that is quite usually immensely simplified, there is not much to argue about the end of this „other“ German State which began by the fall of the Berlin Wall. This event may be the greatest triumph, the most joyful moment in modern German history, and it means the world to me personally. If you’ve got time, I highly recommend a visit to te former secret police prison in Hohenschönhausen or to Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer (Memorial Berlin Wall) at Bernauer Straße. But if you want the immediate experience, if you want to touch and feel history and find a place where you could imagine what it must have been like, you should go to the East Side Gallery.

East Side Gallery Demonstration, Berlin Germany

There has recently been a fight over the East Side Gallery because investors are threatening to take parts of it down. This is the first part that construction workers moved a few days ago. I took this at the demonstration to save the East Side Gallery on Sunday, March 3, 2013.

The East Side Gallery is the longest preserved piece of the Berlin Wall. It starts between U-Bahn stations Warschauer Straße and Schlesisches Tor, line U1, right on the Friedrichshain side of Oberbaumbrücke. The wall was built in 1961 when more and more people started to leave the GDR. Only two months prior to that, the Secretary of the Socialist Party, Walter Ullbricht, had uttered the famous sentence: „Nobody has the intention of building a wall!“ The utter mockery of it…

The official state boarder at this point was actually on the Kreuzberg side of the river, meaning that the Spree river belonged to the GDR, even though the wall excluded it from Eastern Berlin territory – it was part of the so-called death strip. I read that children would sometimes drown on the Western shore because authorities weren’t allowed to help them once they had fallen into the water.

This is the former Death Strip, imagine the Wall behind you as you have this gorgeous view of Oberbaumbrücke and the Spree River.

The East Side Gallery is famous because artists from all over the world have contributed to its design. The side of it that faces Friedrichshain district holds incredible artwork that usually has immense political power, the way only street art can. I have recently noticed that it feels a lot like the Zaspa District in Gdansk, Poland with its famous murals. This is why most people come here, and it’s well worth a good look. However, I also recommend you pass through to the river side of the wall and into the death strip and think about the fact that this was no man’s land only 25 years back, that you would have been shot immediately, had you been found on this side of the wall coming from where you just now actually came from – the other side.

For many more great pictures of the East Side Gallery, I recommend this post by my friend Sarah at Wake Up Mona.

Vukovar – a lesser known take on the Balkan Wars

Februar 26, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 15 Kommentare

I have always tried to see to the fact that my blog will show the beauty of the former Yugoslavia and not purely concentrate on the remnants of war; and I chose to do so because from my experience people will think about war anyway, while the amazing charms of the Balkans have yet to be made known to them. Kami of Kami and the Rest of the World has recently reminded me of my own reaction to the most recent Balkan history when she wrote this moving and accurate post about Mostar. It brought back to mind that it is very important to speak not only of the beauty, but also of the dark past of this region, because people are sadly uninformed. But the war is still part of society in the Balkans – and not only in destroyed buildings, but in people’s heads, in politics, plainly spoken: in life.

It is a difficult, messed-up story that brought about the war, and I can’t say that I’ve fully grasped it. I certainly shall not try to explain it. I will resort for now to speak of a place that is little known, but that made the recent past’s events more visible to me than any other, and that is Vukovar in Croatia.

Downtown Vukovar – only at a second glance did I notice that the pretty but run-down building was still without windows

Vukovar would never have made it to my list, even if I’d had one. It was recommended to me by one of my favorite couchsurfing hosts of all time. Roni said to me: „If you want to feel what the war meant, you must go to Vukovar.“ So after seeing Mostar’s captivating beauty and the miracle that is the restored Old Bridge, after Sarajevo’s tunnel museum, after the whole Bosnian take on the war, I went back through Slavonia, which is Croatia’s most inland region, to stop in Vukovar for a night before I would go to Serbia’s Novi Sad.

It was one of the first places I went to on my trip that didn’t have many tourists. I walked around asking random people if they knew of a place where I could stay for the night, and I found a nice little guest house well outside of the city center – funnily enough I had already seen it from the bus window. It may have been the only place in town. After dropping off my backpack, I made my way right back into town.

While at first, on the way out to find a bed for the night, my priorty hadn’t been on looking around so much, everything struck me with greater force now that I didn’t have a backpack and the fear of sleeping outside on me. The long street into town was lined with buildings that were covered in bullet holes. I had seen houses like these in Bosnia, but in Mostar and Sarajevo they weren’t nearly as plentiful.

As I said: Vukovar doesn’t have tourism. There hasn’t been much need, let alone funds, for restorations. You probably haven’t ever heard of the place. Here’s the deal: Vukovar was under an 87-day siege in 1991 and was the third most destroyed city in the former Yugoslavia in the Balkan Wars – after mentioned cities in Bosnia. There was also an ethnically motivated mass killing of more than 250 Croatians in the year of the siege.

The walk into town was tough for me, because the atmosphere struck me as so bleak and desolate that I felt the weight of recent history with a power that hadn’t come upon me before. I had cried in Bosnia, cried over the countries losses and hardships, cried at fates of people I was told, and cried over the incomprehensible divide between the beauty of the country and the sadness of its history. But there had been beauty. In Vukovar on the road into town, I couldn’t even cry. A feeling of utter hopelessness crept upon me, and I was scared of giving in and allowing myself to feel the terror entirely, because I was afraid of breaking at the immensity of it.

What always gets to me is the intact tapestry on the wall.

This was the first moment that I began to understand that in the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, there is no one good side and no one bad side. It isn’t World War II, where the essential info is that Germany is the villain. The Balkan Wars are much more complex. There is no clear image of a victim and a perpetrator, and I think that comes clearest when looking at Croatia. I can’t place the Croats‘ role in the war on either one side of the scale between evil and good; or rather: I have to place it on both sides equally.

The War Memorial in the city center reads „To Those Who Died For A Free Croatia“

Finally I reached downtown, and there was something I noticed. The houses in the center were in ruins still – mind you, the siege had happened almost 20 years ago. But while the first floors didn’t have windows and were not habitable, the ground floors – well, they were!

They held shops and coffee houses and ice cream parlors. People were working on the restored ground floors to make money in order to rebuild the top floors. They were trying to reanimate their city, to defy the odds, to make a living inspite of previous deaths. This was the amazing attitude I had also found in Bosnia. The desolation was much harsher and more present here in Vukovar, but the readiness to fight it and restore good living conditions, to not give up or bend, was the same.

It is this spirit that kindles and constantly rekindles my deep love and admiration for this region, its people and its culture. I do not think I could have fully understood this, had I not come to Vukovar. It was very important for me to see war remnants outside of the central and well-known places. They showed the tragedy and complexity of it all to me with detail that I didn’t see anywhere else – unabridged, unadorned, unvarnished.

What do you think? Would you visit a place like Vukovar – or have you even been? Is this kind of „war tourism“ unethical or weird to you?

If Only…? On Regrets and Making Peace

Februar 19, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 21 Kommentare

Recently I had a chat with a friend – one of those people who miraculously transform from „this guy I met travelling“ to an acquaintance you keep infrequent facebook contact with to someone you see again when revisiting their city to a person you really love having in your life – and all of a sudden they are a friend. So we were sitting over beers, discussing life in general, travel lessons, relationships, dealing with loss and failure. At one point he asked me: „Do you have regrets?“ I looked him straight in the eye and said: „None!“ And I meant it.

Yes, that is me who just landed in the water there

Like so many other bloggers who have written their travel regrets post, I try to live life in a way that won’t make me have to regret anything. Erin of The World Wanderer, who was so kind as to tag me for a post of three travel regrets, put it very beautifully indeed, referencing the indescribable Edith Piaf and summing it up saying: „It’s all about forgetting what happened in the past, the good and the bad, and starting fresh.“ Read her whole post here. And also, follow her on twitter @TheWrldWanderer because she is awesome!

I think all of us who travel try to avoid regrets. It is like Mark Twain has put it in this quote that so many of us have on our blogs:

„Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.“

The fear of being disappointed, of regretting, is what drives many of us out there and has us on the move, keep looking, never shy away from the new, the exciting, the unheard-of. When I am out there travelling, I am very much a gut-person. My intuition is my everything. If I want to do it, I will. If I don’t want to do it, I won’t, and later probably won’t regret not having done it – as long as I was honest with myself in that moment when I made the decision. This philosophy has allowed me to paraglide and cliff-jump, to go on road-trips with strangers, to literally leave the beaten track to discover hidden gems, and to sing in quite unusual places. Like here.

The fortress in Blagaj, Bosnia and Hercegovina. The hoard of construction workers found it pretty great that I knew a Bosnian song. Photo courtesy of the lovely Aasa Marshall.

And inspite all of this, I finally came up with my three regrets too, although honestly, it took me a long time! In tune with Mark Twain’s quote above, my regrets are not really about things I did do, but rather about things I didn’t, couldn’t or can’t do for various reasons.

1. Not having done any busking while travelling. [YET!]

This one I fully intend to change. It is on my Bucket List to go busking in a couple of foreign places. The main thing to keep me from it so far has been that I don’t play an instrument. I have just my voice, and a capella busking is fairly tough, or so I imagine it to be. Also I have been a little cowardish in the past when it came to choosing a place. The German in me thinks: „But what if I need a permit? What if you aren’t allowed to do that here? What if the police come and get really mad at me in a language that I can’t speak well enough to defend myself?“ I really have to get over this and just do it. But before that, I’m learning guitar. At least enough for me to play a few funny chords with my singing.

2. Not having recognized my own strength sooner.

There are several reasons for this regret. For one, I wish I would have started backpacking while I was in college and had so much more time for it. I thought, back then, that I’d have to be braver than I felt. In fact I was plenty brave and could have easily managed it all. Closely related is the fact that for a long time I thought I would need a travel companion. I wish I had understood sooner that travelling alone would be more rewarding than anything else I have experienced until this day. I also wish that in some situations I would have been more confident to go for something I wanted. Rent that car. Climb that mountain. Kiss that guy. Then again, I know today that I needed time to gain the strength and confidence I have today. I couldn’t have done it sooner or faster. Absolutely no use in fretting. It is all good.

3. Not being able to have it all.

It is one of my deepest conflicts when planning travels: Do I discover a new country, a new city, a new culture – or do I go back to a place that I loved truly? I really hate having to choose, because I want it all. I want to visit the friends I made throughout the world. I want to go back and see more of some countries and cities, or I want to go back and see the exact same things again, because they were so heartbreakingly beautiful the first time around, or because they might have changed and show me a new, different side now. But then again there is so much out there that I haven’t got the faintest understanding of yet. There is so much to see and learn. I really wish I never had to choose. I deal with it by not choosing just yet. I plan by that other great travel quote:

„I haven’t seen everything. But it’s on my list.“

These are my three regrets. I have to say though that really cannot even feel bitter about any of them. It all came this way so that today I would have this exact drive, this ambition, this curiosity and these exact dreams that keep me going. I feel very, very fortunate to be at peace to this degree. And I blame it on travelling.

I would love to hear thoughts on this from these three talented and inspiring bloggers:

Maria of Blue Snail Travels
Suzanne of The Travelbunny
Ulrike of anischtswechsel

Back to Wrocław

Januar 5, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 9 Kommentare

Diesen Post gibt es auch auf Deutsch!

The train from Berlin to Wrocław goes through, I don’t need to change. As we are approaching the Polish boarder, we are entering Slavic lands while still in Germany: In a small train station a sign reads „Lübbenau (Spreewald)“, and another one: „Lubnjow (Błota)“ – the first is German, the second is Sorbian. The Sorbians are a Slavic minority in the Lusatia area in the easternmost corner of Germany. The letter ł on the Sorbian sign – it exists in Polish too, and it puts a smile on my face. I note down some of my thoughts in my journal. As soon as we have crossed into Poland, the train tracks are bumpier, I can tell from my own handwriting. It jolts and judders across the paper, not looking like a chain of soft, round little living creatures as it usually does, but edgy like staples or tiny wires.

Outside of the windown I see Lower Silesia pass me by. I entered this part of the world for the first time almost exactly six years ago. I’m trying to remember that day, but I can’t unearth too much from the depths of my memory. Back then I felt homesick for the first, maybe the only time in my life, and that feeling cast a shadow on so many things. It envelopped me in a large black veil that kept excitement and anticipation from coming to me like they usually do when I start a trip to the great unknown. The notion of „cudne manowce“ comes to my mind, an expression from a song by the iconic Polish poet and songwriter Edward Stachura. It means something like „the enchanting astray“. My co-worker Renata says that it can’t really be translated to German, because for the efficient and pragmatic people that we are, the astray can never be enchanting. If that is true, I’m afraid I’m not very German after all.

Now I’m looking at little villages with their Prussian architecture train station buildings and their white town hall towers reaching toward the skies with square-cut pinnacles in Tudor styled architecture. They look just like they do in Ziemia Kłodzka, which is the area I was on my way to back then, and I cannot believe that it is only – or already – six years lying between the person I am today and the person I was then.

When the train arrives at the main station in Wrocław, I can’t at first glance piece together where I am and what I am seeing. Everything is new, everything is different. The station building has been painted bright orange.

Ther concourse is light and spatious. Everything has been renovated for the football Euro Cup last June. My memory paints such a different picture – a dark, manky hellhole with rude and unfriendly elderly ladies in the ticket boxes, and myself feeling panickstricken when one night I almost didn’t get a ticket for the night train to Szczecin and thought I’d have to spend the night on the cold and smelly platform.

In the crossing underneath the platforms there used to be many kiosks and food stands – they are all gone, instead there are high tech lockers and everything is smooth and evenly tiled. I wonder what might have happened to the people who used to work in those little shops?

This is not the same place. Everything is signposted – and what’s more, bilingually so! I wish I had some of the people with me who think of Poland as backwards, grey, ugly and cheap. They would not believe their own eyes.

Two days later my train is leaving the main station in Wrocław. My seat is rear-facing and so I look straight ahead as the large orange building is moving away from me. In this moment I have the paradoxical feeling of looking aback and ahead at the same time – back to the place I am leaving right now, and that I’m missing already in a feeling of reverse homesickness. And ahead to my future that may just be so kind as to gift me with a new Polish adventure, one without feeling homesick for Germany; to a future that may grant me to understand this country better, to explore it, and with any luck even to participate in shaping it in some way.

Why do I love Poland? I have no idea. Isn’t it the purest love that doesn’t require any explanation?

Zurück nach Wrocław

Januar 3, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 5 Kommentare

This post can also be read in English!

Der Zug von Berlin nach Wrocław fährt direkt, ich brauche nicht umzusteigen. Schon im Spreewald beginnt das Land der Slawen – Lübbenau (Spreewald), steht auf dem einen Schild am Bahnhof, und auf dem anderen steht Lubnjow (Błota) – das ł im Sorbischen zaubert mir ein Lächeln aufs Gesicht. Ich notiere mir Gedanken in mein Notizbuch. Kaum sind wir hinter Grenze, schon ist die Strecke unebener, man sieht den Unterschied an meiner Schrift, sie ruckelt und krakelt sich über das Papier nicht wie sonst als weiche runde Tierchen, sondern eckig wie Heftklammern oder kleine Drähte.

Vor dem Fenster zieht die niederschlesische Landschaft vorbei. Vor fast genau sechs Jahren bin ich zum ersten Mal in diesem Winkel der Welt gewesen. Ich versuche mich daran zu erinnern, aber viel kann ich nicht aus den Untiefen meines Gedächtnisses hervorkramen. Ich habe damals das erste, vielleicht das einzige Mal in meinem Leben Heimweh empfunden, und das hat vieles überschattet. Es hat einen schwarzen Schleier um mich gelegt, der die Aufregung und die Vorfreude verhindert hat, die ich sonst auf dem Weg in das große Unbekannte stets empfunden habe. Die „cudne manowce“ kommen mir in den Sinn, aus einem Lied des polnischen Kultdichters Edward Stachura. Das bedeutet so etwas wie „zauberhafte Abwege“. Meine Kollegin Renata sagt, man kann das kaum übersetzen, weil Abwege für die effizienten und pragmatischen Deutschen niemals zauberhaft sind. Wenn das so ist, bin ich wohl wirklich nicht besonders deutsch.
Nun blicke ich auf kleine Dörfer, deren Bahnhofsgebąude so häufig preußisch aussehen und aus denen weiße Rathaustürme hervorragen, die von eckigen Zinnen geziert sind, im Tudor-Stil. Sie sehen genauso aus wie im Glatzer Land, in der Ziemia Kłodzka, wohin ich damals unterwegs war, und ich kann nicht fassen, dass mich nur oder schon sechs Jahre davon trennen sollen, wer ich zu jener Zeit gewesen bin.

Als ich nun zum ersten Mal nach vielen Jahren wieder in den Hauptbahnhof in Wrocław einfahre, bringe ich zuerst gar nicht zusammen, wo ich mich befinde und was ich vor mir sehe. Alles ist neu, alles ist anders. Das Bahnhofsgebäude ist in leuchtendem Orange gestrichen.

Die Bahnhofshalle ist hell und hoch und verglast. Zur Europameisterschaft 2012 ist alles renoviert worden. Ich erinnere mich an eine dunkle, siffige Hölle, an unfreundliche ältere Damen hinter den Schaltern, an meine leichte Panik, als ich einmal beinahe kein Ticket für den Nachtzug nach Stettin mehr bekommen hätte und mich schon eine Nacht allein auf dem zugigen, muffigen Bahnsteig verbringen sah.

In der Unterführung zu den Gleisen hin waren früher zahlreiche kleine Kiosks und Imbissbuden – sie sind alle verschwunden, stattdessen sind Schließfächer angebracht und alles ist glatt und edel gefliest. Was wohl aus den Betreibern der kleinen Lädchen und Büdchen geworden ist?

Es ist nicht mehr der gleiche Ort. Alles ist ausgeschildert, alles ist mehrsprachig. Ich wünschte, ich hätte jetzt einige von den Menschen an meiner Seite, die sich Polen als rückständig, grau, hässlich und billig vorstellen. Ihnen würden die Augen aus dem Kopf fallen.

Ich fahre zwei Tage später rückwärts aus dem Hauptbahnhof in Wrocław hinaus und schaue geradeaus aus dem Fenster dabei zu, wie das große orangefarbene Gebäude sich von mir entfernt. In diesem Moment habe ich das paradoxe Gefühl, gleichzeitig zurück und nach vorn zu schauen – zurück auf den Ort, den ich jetzt gerade verlasse und nach dem ich mich jetzt schon wieder sehne in einem umgekehrten Heimweh. Aber doch auch nach vorn in meine Zukunft, die mir hoffentlich ein neues polnisches Abenteuer schenken wird, eines ohne Heimweh nach Deutschland; die Zukunft, die mir vielleicht erlauben wird, dieses Land weiter zu begreifen, zu erkunden, und mit sehr viel Glück sogar gestattet, es mitzugestalten.

Woher meine Liebe zu Polen rührt? Ich weiß es nicht. Und ist nicht die reinste Liebe die, die keiner Erklärung bedarf?

2012 in pictures

Dezember 29, 2012 / bruecken_schlag / 30 Kommentare

2012 has blessed me with beautiful travel experiences. As I look back on them, I feel very lucky. I haven’t left Europe much for travelling – but going through my pictures I don’t regret that. There is so much to discover in close proximity to my home. Join me on a quick recap of the beauty I have experienced in 2012:

This was Chemnitz in Saxony in March. While everyone always claims it to be rather ugly, I was surprised at how much beauty could be found there. It is much more than just its socialist past.

Istanbul – my Place of Desire, my Sehnsucht, my love. The first words I ever wrote about it were: „Istanbul und ich, das ist die ganz große Liebe“ – Istanbul and I, that is love for life. My trip in March, the second one I took there, will be followed by many more.

Wittenberg – the city of Luther and reformation. The church tower holds writing that says: „Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott“, a famous Luther quote translating to „A mighty fortress is our God„. I went there in April on a volunteer gathering.

At the Elbe river in Hamburg on the Saturday before Easter Sunday, there’s Easter bonfires every year. An old tradition, pagan, driving out the evil spirits of winter. Something I grew up with and that always makes me feel like home. Also I love fire. And I love water. And when the flames are reflected in the river, it is divine beauty.

In Szczytno, Poland, my father was born when it was still called Ortelsburg. This is one of the famous Mazurian lakes in early August summer sun. It had a touch of eternity to it.

This is Olsztyn in Poland. I just adore red brick stone…

… and because I love it, I loved this church in Vilnius, Lithuania!!

But the Baltics had more to offer than city life. This is a castle park in Cesis in Gauja national park in Latvia, named after…

… the river Gauja!!

The Latvian capital Riga was possibly my favorite city in the Baltics. It reminds me a lot of my mother’s home town, Bremen – no wonder, since Riga was founded by monks who came from exactly that German city in the middle ages.

Riga was followed by Estonia’s Tallinn in all its medieval beauty. This is a modern site though – the Song Festival Grounds where music festivals are held and just recently before we got there the Red Hot Chili Peppers had a gig too. Imagine all of this filled with a huge choir singing folk songs… one day I will go to the Tallinn Song Festival. High on my bucket list!

On my birthday we went to see the Estonian National Park Lahemaa. Bogs, swamps, forests and relics of Soviet times, a lovely tour guide who explained to us about cultural and social whatabouts in Estonia as well – it was a lovely start into the new year of my life!!

The trip to the Baltics finished in late August with a three day stay on the Curonian Spit in Lithuania. Endless beaches, deep dark forests and the lovely sounds of the Baltic Sea – my heart grows wide even at the thought of it!

In September I discovered a small part of the deep West of Germany – this is a shot of Hambach castle, an important place for the German national movement in the 19th century and one of the birthplaces of our modern democracy.

My finish is my discovery of the year – Gdańsk! I fell for it long and hard. There is much more to discover about Tricity and the whole Kashubian area in the North of Poland. I am nothing but grateful for the fact that 2012 has given me a place that I could love so deeply. I hope you will follow me as I explore it further!

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