HOW TO AVOID AN ENTIRE COUNTRY*

I am in Germany for work, half an hour from where I spent most of my childhood. A place I haven’t visited in more than ten years.

Driving here from the airport yesterday, I rolled down the windows, and in flooded a wave of mixed emotions. The summer air tasted like childhood: cut grass, strawberries, and despair.

I had thought I’d never set foot on these soils again. I last visited a decade ago in search of my grandmother’s grave. After my own mother and my stepdad forced her into a home only to never visit her as she declined to pay them their inheritance early, her health deteriorated quickly. Their last act of cruelty included burying her in a spot that’s 15 miles away from where her husband was buried a few years earlier. The grave my grandparents had chosen as a couple a long time ago now lies half empty.

I left Germany more than 20 years ago. I sometimes wondered why I would feel such disdain for a country that, overall, has treated me well. An entirely free university education, almost free healthcare, somewhat affordable housing, healthy food, paid vacation time. I would have never managed to have the kind of education I had in countries like the UK or the USA. Some of my best friends are German, and the friendships have survived my moving ever further away from where I came from. I am extremely grateful to Germany for a lot of things.

Yet, the thought of moving back (not going to happen) or even spending a few days here for work fills me with dread.

There is irony in all of this – running away from Germany to Switzerland, a short stint in my birth country, Austria, then the UK, Sweden, finally to California. Starting a company that has close to nothing to do with anything I have done before in Europe. Only to be bought by a multinational corporation with strong roots in Germany, whose headquarters are a stone throw away from the place where I grew up.

I am not sure where I am going with any of this. It’s weird to realise how much running I have done and how difficult I have made my own life in the process, only to arrive where I started.

*this post was written in the summer of 2023. And no, I did not move to Germany 🙂