Finding Meaning in Germany (part 1)

A polyglot and third-culture kid's reflection on their first trip to Germany

Hello frens,

As I devote more and more time to pouring my heart into my writing, and combatting my shadow of superficiality to bring to you the true nuggets of wisdom I am experiencing day to day out in the world as a global citizen— my writing is becoming longer, and more hearty. As Jamaicans, we cook soup with all sorts of heavy yams, potatoes, other tubers, meats and vegetables. A soup, isn’t really a soup to us without the ‘food’ in it. As my writing style evolves and progresses, I hope you feel nourished by the soup I put forward, and I hope it brings you the joy and love that I feel while preparing it for you. This is part 1 of 2 of my reflection on my first visit to Germany.

It is strange how the threads of fate crawl across borders and time to greet you.

Today I find myself on a completely unplanned trip to Germany— eating lots of bread, cheese, yoghurts and sweet treats. The imagery here is reflective of many other European countries I have visited, but at the same time is distinctly German. Nordic cities have these old buildings that seem to stand a bit taller as you walk by them, so as to show their value, towering over you with performative modesty. There is a lot of white stone and cool-toned pastels that give this clean and clinical look. The streets always look a bit bare there during the summers, a distinct lack of decorative snow and ice. Nordic people feel it too, and leave the buildings and head for the forests and their gran's quaint summer cottage. Germany, on the other hand has a more friendly kind of stone. Still punctual, distinct and kept, but much warmer, and integrated with the vines, the sun and wind that blows through. The parks all seem more open and less curated. All the grass is distinctly wild, adorned with every colour flower. Here, the nature and stone feel very close, old friends.

Despite this being my first time to Germany, it is not my only connection to her.

Just two months ago I went to have coffee and do some language studies with a friend who studied in two out of the three cities I visited on this trip. When I was twenty-one I met a young German studying in Busan who had this glow in her eye, and a yearning for political participation. She was the first person I had ever met casually who was actively a part of a government party, at eighteen, even. Come to think of it, I believe it was last year when I met some far-off cousins who settled down in a town not far from Frankfurt that I did resolve to visit one day (oops, next time, maybe). I quite fancy pretzels too, always have.

But of the many strings of yunfen (fate) I have with Germany, the most profound is Grandma Emmeline.

According to my 23andme test, I have some 10% of German blood. It seems to be a dreadfully arbitrary number, but less so to me because I know exactly who it came from. My great-great grandmother Emmeline Tyson (German) married my great-great grandfather Fung-Kai Chuck (Chinese), and moved to Jamaica to start a family in the 1910s. They are the beginning of my patrilineal link to Jamaica, and the source of a huge family branching out to over 200 known family members alive today. My family continued to marry Chinese, though, and there seems to be very little interest and stories shared about who Grandma Emmeline was before venturing half way across the world to start a new life with a merchant Chinese man in an Afro-caribbean culture ruled by a declining British monarchy. What I did have instead, was a casual "I'm actually part German, you know!" from my grandfather, and a picture of a German man in a Jamaican tourist-photo book that looked eerily like my dad from behind.

This leaves me wandering the streets of Germany feeling remotely familiar, remotely connected, and remotely alien, discovering a new place and what it has to teach me.

6 Days and 4 Cities

My fiancé's company asked us to take a last minute trip to Germany to participate in a battery conference. He works for a recycling solutions provider, and they find most of their clients from these kind of events. This time he would have to go to Hamburg in the North of Germany, where their Europe headquarters is, collect their presenting materials and drive it down to the South of France in Stuttgart. That's a 7 hour drive going 100 mph. No one else was available to help him make the trip and set up the booth, so I agreed to go with him and help out. It was not my ideal, but I also needed to leave China for a short trip to reset my visa soon, and figured this was the universe giving me a paid opportunity to do so, while also getting to travel with my love. This is my first time in Germany, and as firsts go, I am being introduced to an entirely new world. This article is my attempt at processing this very short rendezvous with Germany, and my experiences with her.

Hamburg --> Göttingen --> Rothenburg ob de Tauber --> Stuttgart --> Munich (Airport). This route was co-developed by a helpful neighbourhood redditor and Janine from Slow & Steady, what a joy it is to have friends in our global community!

Hamburg - The Natural City

My first impression of Hamburg right off the bat was lush. I spotted four to five parks on the drive from the airport to the city centre, and each of them I had to stop to appreciate a bit. Their trees were so handsome and alluring. It occurred to me that Hamburger parks didn't look curated the way they do in other cities I had experienced so far. They looked like mini forests just surrounded by concrete, maintaining their ecosystems and life-force, albeit dwarfed by the civilisation surrounding them. The trees that lined the street also felt somehow 'realer' than the trees that I've seen on other streets, but I can't exactly tell you why. These Hamburger trees, they just didn't seem as invested in the trends or in looking young and thin like some of these other metropolitan trees. I respected them for that.

The city centre was luxurious and gave old-money, grand fountains and a lit harbour lined with green that took my breath away. It looked like an amazing place to walk your dog if only I had adopted one before hand. The people buzzing about there dressed how I expected them too— many in a minimalist meets future-core? Or is this EDM core? vibe, with a few others in more grungy outfits. Speaking of EDM, there were clubs everywhere!! I cannot tell you the last time I actively walked by a club without specifically looking for one, but in Hamburg, it was impossible not to. I was reminded of my Swedish supervisor at my last job who flew to Germany with his dom girlfriend once a month to drop acid at an EDM rave. A vibe, I'm sure. Admittedly though, as pretty as it was, Hamburg didn't give me the impression that it was my place. Perhaps if I brought some skinny sun-glasses and that dog I didn't adopt, I would fit right in.

Though not my city, it was comforting to see it was for many others. The diversity in Hamburg stood out to me, people of all walks of life not only passing through, but seemingly quite settled and integrated. Out of the immediate city centre you saw lines and lines of short shops with uniform ugly signage—rectangles with plain print—hung very low off the ground. They looked small and humble from the outside but the contents of the stores were diverse beyond label. From my North-American, Jamaican perspective, this made Hamburg feel like a real place— familiar, natural. People setting up something and creating life in a big city. Something like Queens on the outer-rim, and The Upper West Side in the centre, but you know, European.

A stranger, a foreigner, a legal alien has arrived,

Do they have what it takes now, to survive?

Many have done it,

Surely I can too,

Call this land home,

A tale tried and true.

The AUTOBAHN vroom vroom

Leaving Hamburg, my partner was most excited about jumping onto the German Autobahn (highway). It is notorious for its open speed limits and our rental car had excellent cruise control up to 200km/h. You should have seen him 'a hol a tune', belting Taurus Riley while we speeded towards the South.

And Kai wasn't the only one who loved the Autobahn. Let me tell you that I am just as surprised as you are when I say, it was a lovely highway. Generally, I am anti-car infrastructure and feel a lot of disdain for the open road in first-world countries (do we have a better word for this??), but the Autobahn felt to me something the Germans should be proud of.

Reason 1: The traffic

the traffic, even when back to back never lasted long. The stand-still felt very controlled.

Reason 2: People drove respectfully.

Not a soul was riding up into the people dem back. In fact, we sat at the top of a hill in fifteen minutes of crawling traffic and when I looked ahead, I could see cars with equal distance apart for miles. I have NEVER seen that before in my life, the discipline!

Reason 3: (and my biggest reason) the wild flowers.

I suppose many European intercity highways have the beautiful plains, wind turbines and farms, but the way the entire highway was lined with the most naturally organised wild flowers from Hamburg to Stuttgart warmed my heart and kept me attentive the whole drive.

One Hour in Göttingen

On our way to Stuttgart, we planned two stops. One for a short lunch, and another for a night's rest and a slow morning. I got help to choose the stops from a Dutch friend who came to visit us in China the week before, and a very detailed and friendly local Redditor— you honestly can't go wrong with that. Exiting the highway, Göttingen showed me what I imagine to be a real German suburban town. It was quiet and sparse, peppered with what looked like single family homes next to asphalt roads. When you followed the main road long enough, it led to a cobble stoned city centre that didn't let cars in. Even in the heart of the city, the town was so empty. The few people we did see on that Sunday afternoon were by the very very centre gathered to watch the Euro 2024 Football Cup outside a few restaurants. It had me wondering if everyone in town was at home watching, or even better, on a trip to Hamburg or Stuttgart for the live show. Regardless, we got what we came for when we found the quaintest little restaurant that served an extensive menu of hand-made pastas in an inner garden setting.

I was charmed. In the centre of the little garden was a tree that went up so high with layers and layers of foliage covering the sky. I spent most of the lunch with my neck bent back to look up and feel the depth of this tree in a way that just wasn't well captured in the photos. It was so special to eat among locals and their families, mums and their daughters, all being relaxed, nourished and soothed by the nature of the space and by the expertise and love of the cooks. One older German couple came over to us at some point, and asked something we didn't understand. They quickly realised we were a pair of uncommon tourists, and switched to English

"Sorry, which pasta is that you are eating?".

"Pumpkin on the specialties menu!" we replied.

"Pumpkin??" they didn't know that word.

"Kürbis...?" I offered meekly after an exchange with Google Translate.

"Aaaaah... oh yeah Kürbis!! It's Pumpkin" they said to each other, barely glancing back at us again, walking out the door.

Just like that, I learnt a new word in German and in some way left a tiny mark on Germany. In this way we co-create life, adding small anecdotes to each other’s stories, shaping experiences that may or may not butterfly-effect into something unimaginable to us. For that reason, seeing a suburban town, one that reflects non-city life in Germany was just as important to me as seeing the busier cities that attract tourists and immigrants.

Another day, another caste of the face of God uncovered.

Thank you for reading! This publication is the home for my intersectional musings on philosophy, the world, spirituality, love and social justice. It is a reflection space from the perspective of a polyglot, third-culture, neurodivergent, chronically-ill, mixed kid from Jamaica with love-filled dreams for a warmer world.

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