My Anniversary: Three Years Into The Grey
Three years ago today I arrived on a plane and took a winding car ride to what I now know of as the farming and teenage wasteland called Lagenfeld. I would remain there for the next three months as my husband and I navigated moving to civilization. Here zwischen Leverkusen and Düsseldorf, I would progress around 30% into my full integration into Germany society. Three years later I believe I am at around 72.4% in completion as I still haven't embraced a lot of things. Alas, today I reflect on how I was completely innocent and ignorant about anything and everything that is German. Learning that Berlin was seven hours northeast of us. Realizing I had to speak another language to get bologna at the grocery store. Having our clothes arrive a month past their expected arrival date and believing that was brink of inconvenience. Understanding that my major mode of transportation would involve a subway. All of the above I was naive to and equally disappointed about. Then came the delineation that was the Rhine and knowing that I had been duped into a fairytale, village lifestyle only to be catapulted into the piss and grime of Köln. I was complicit having been intoxicated "going into town" to secure this palace in the sky and pick out all its accoutrements like a kitchen. I remember the weather was just as shitty as it is today. It seemed to rain for a month straight and everything was perpetually grey. All the walking to what seemed like nowhere to places I now consider only a few minutes out by train and foot. I am inconvenienced daily by bureaucracy, delays and whys of ways. I have had a time being here.
Going home for a bit to refresh has given me a new outlook on what it is to be here. The privilege of it all. And it is especially redeeming now that no one else can get in. But I do feel alone as this will be the first year without a visitor to remind me that there is more than this. I am enjoying being back here but I am also realizing the pros and cons of each place I have called home. There is nothing nice about being greeted by smokers outside my door or homeless people sleeping all over the place. But I guess for some back home that too is their reality. I mean I saw it but it was sort of avoidable or escapable. Germany is a funny place with its green spaces and fresh air yet covered in rif raf. Money cannot buy you complete solitude in Europe as even Chanel in Paris has someone hanging their wet laundry above it. Don't believe me? Just look up. In the good ole United States of Pandemia I can buy privacy, solitude, quiet and there is no part of Germany free of honking horns, tobacco or drilling. I expected peace here and have gotten nothing of the sort not even surrounded by cornfields and churches. Even in Lagenfeld there was constant mowing and the sounds of animals. I could sit in my mothers backyard and not hear a peep. America isn't all gunshots, rap music and fireworks. Sometimes there is majesty.
As I love to say I cannot be everywhere. I have yet to have seen it all. But I think the best part about Germany is that I can leave. If I want to see blue skies, purple mountains or amber waves I can. If I want to shop la playa, ski the Alps, eat a croissant or visit a tea room I can. Because sometimes even three years into this thing called living in Germany it gets stagnant. You begin to forget the world is a colorful and vast place. And I think so many people feel that way having come here and finally experiencing whatever it was in their life they were lacking. I was lacking perspective and I think I have got it now.
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