Having such a high percentage of friends on holiday in Germany, a Dad booking a flight to Frankfurt (for a business trip to ‘Paper World’) and my Deutsche Austauch-Schwester to talk to, whilst I am stuck at home, is potentially the toughest summer obstacle I’ve ever had to face. And I’ve faced plenty of tough summer obstacles, including a crippling case of sunburn that left me looking like a dried tomato.
I miss the little German towns with their funny German architecture, I miss the frische luft of Gundelfingen, I miss the German trains speeding through the snow, I miss the Mezzo Mix and the weird Capri-Sonne things you could buy in train station vending machines along with crazy things like ‘Swiss Cannabis Iced Tea’ and ‘Wunderbars’, I miss feeling like ‘Damn, this place has history!’, I miss the cheap milka, I miss the funny old men in Berlin who walk around in floor-length trench coats and real fur hats like caricatures out of a cartoon Russian winter, I miss feeling like a winner whenever I was able to hold a small conversation with a shopkeeper (and that time I managed to order 7 copies of Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen from the local bookshop), I miss the Weihnachts/Christkindlmarkt even though it was mostly rubbish and Gluhwein doesn’t actually taste that good, I miss the Party machen and the hilarity of German teenage boys walking around like gangsters.
And I miss being surrounded by my favourite language.
At the bank today (I went to report my lost bank card and ended up being talked into starting some whizzbang savings account complete with a bonus blue dragon piggy-bank) a German guy was being served at the window next to me and it was the most exciting part of my day.
What a whiny post - for this I do apologise. I’m not one to post so much text at once, eugh.
To Isabelle and Sarah: Have a blast, and please come back to Germany with me at the end of this year, and lets have magical Deutsche Zeit zusammen.
