Happy one year anniversary, Germany!
My dearest Deutschland, it was one year ago today that I boarded a plane in the sandy, sunny comfort of Florida and landed in your mysterious, grey embrace. It would appear that one year later, our serendipitous fling has gotten pretty serious.
One rotation around the sun with you has taught me many things - about me, about you, and about the funny ways we humans have chosen to organize ourselves into communities, societies, and nations.
To say we have a love-hate relationship would not do our story justice, because in truth, the fondness vastly outweighs any of the friction we were bound to encounter. After all, we were born of a different history, geography, language, and worldview.
I love the way complete strangers say “hello” and “goodbye” to each other in the waiting room of the doctor’s office. I love the ridiculous, identical color red that elderly German women dye their hair. I love that dogs are allowed on the trains, in the stores, at the cafes, and everywhere in between (and that they magically always look like their owners). I love that a glimmer of sunshine is an occasion meriting altbier or wine by the Rhine. I love that the bitter cold is an occasion meriting altbier or wine in a cozy bar. I love the clean, calm, and well-maintained transportation system. I love the kaleidoscopic patterns of green that emerge after the dreary rain. I love the measured, thoughtful, and unexpectedly gentle nature of the German people.
I also love the bread.
But what is a relationship without a bit of struggle?
I struggle with the unrelenting speed at which I’m expected to pay and pack my groceries at the supermarket. I struggle trying to give directions to those aforementioned red-haired old ladies at the train station. I struggle with the generally apathetic approach to customer service. I struggle with the cloudy skies and biting wind. I struggle with feeling like a transient outsider, floating somewhere between inconvenience and irrelevance in the German narrative.
There have been moments of pain (feeling a lonely weariness in my first true winter), moments of joy (witnessing the bloom of both the people and the foliage in my first true spring), moments of pleasure (adopting Sunday’s simple tradition of kaffee und kuchen), moments of panic (not speaking enough German to communicate in the emergency room), moments of disillusion (watching the widening ideological rupture in America) and moments of revelation (discovering that human happiness is rooted in the same foundations no matter where you are in the world).
And as I sit here in the immigration office waiting for the lumbering beast of German bureaucracy to process my visa extension, I ponder our future together. And I see the varied faces of those pondering their future with Germany as well. I realize that for many of them, their union with Germany is less of a tale of romance and more a tale of survival.
So, will it be a lasting love story or temporary entanglement? This, I can't be certain.
But for now, let’s celebrate.
Ich liebe dich, Deutschland.