Returning to Germany After 12 Years Away: Heimadstadt means Hometown

There’s a commemorative rock in the middle of the village – “established 575 years ago.” And it’s 17 years out of date. But that’s nothing. The sign for the next town over welcomes you to a community established in the year 1106 AD. And around the bend in the river, there’s a church built in 1074 AD. Weekly services there continue. 

When my mama first floated the idea of making a return trip to my “other hometown” in southwestern Germany, I got choked up. Not just because I would be seeing loved ones and sacred spaces, but because it would be twelve years – TWELVE! – since I last saw them. Since I left, I’ve made several new hometowns for myself including my college town of Athens, Georgia. I know very well that any time I go “home” to Athens now, I have a handful of talismans of how things used to be back in the day, constants in a current of 30,000 transient students. May there always be that one bar, that one pizza place, that one music venue where we know that things will look and smell like they did when we were younger and poorer. But when your other hometown is older than your entire nation, or the Protestant church, or the Western discovery of your entire continent, it makes it a little harder to be sentimental. 

When planning my homecoming, I was particularly interested to see how the region had changed since the advent of the iPhone, the subsequent onslaught of social media, and the tectonic political shifts of the last few election cycles. I’d not yet traveled in Europe with the benefit of the Google Translate app’s “magic eye” feature or the ability to hashtag anything. But what I experienced during this trip was much less about the technological advances and more in the subtle influences of millennial culture - or lack thereof.

For full context it is important to understand that the heimatstadt that I claim in Germany is in a rural region known more for its ancient wine vineyards than for being on the cutting edge of anything. It is literally a village – 15 buildings nestled at the end of a dead-end county road in the most beautiful valley in the world. We lived there from 2003 to 2006 and were the only Americans for miles and miles. My parents had made several return trips since they moved away, but this would be my first trip back. I worried whether I would recognize the places that meant so much to me. If I have changed so much since then, how much has this place I love changed?

Not much, as it turns out. There were very few new-builds and only a few remodels in our neighborhood in the last decade, and many of the older buildings were simply reinforced or repainted. My mental map was still very reliable, which was a strange feeling somewhere between comforting and unsettling. I’m much more used to having to fight to find the familiar and here was everything I remembered, preserved in amber light. Time still moved at a normal pace here, didn’t it? Of course, and it was the people who have changed most. I knew I had changed as I grew up, but I had narcissistically taken for granted that time passing means our friends changed also - changed in body shape and hair color, overcome cancer, become more like their mothers, grown past puberty, or passed away. The present may be built on old foundations, but the people are what truly ground it.

In places so steadfastly picturesque, it would be easy for them to become overrun with drones and selfie sticks, to be over-hyped and over-priced, but the most adorable corners of my favorite old towns were inhabited by school children and friendly cats. Those supersaturated spots do exist, of course – I’m looking at you, Rothenburg o.d. Tauber and Neuschwanstein Castle – but they have drawn tourists for decades on decades and even so have managed to maintain their grandeur. Germany does have its kitschy, fake-old stuff made for tourists, but it wasn’t overwhelmingly apparent in the places we spent our time. But of course not. Why would you put a fake-rustic façade on a three-hundred-year-old building? Why make up a family crest when you could just use your actual family crest? If you have something old that is still good, why change it? That being said, the world is changing much more quickly now than it did three hundred years ago.

As we sat drinking coffee (everyone has a Nespresso machine now, so that’s one new thing) with our former next-door neighbors, Tomas and Sabina, we counted on our fingers the current village residents. We got up to fifty, which surprised me, but there were also several homes which are now leer, vacant. These were multi-generational family residences where the youngest generation has now moved to a more urban environment for work or lifestyle with no current intention of ever moving back out to the countryside. How will this impact the idea of home, the connection to the land, and the respect for the labor of generations? How will the area have changed in another twelve years? I hesitate to speculate, having been so wrong in my expectations for the last twelve years.

The landscape, resplendent in the last of the fall foliage, was what my heart had needed most on this trip. When we lived there, we spent a lot of our time looking out over the valley, wandering in the fields, and trekking across the high farm paths. Up in the farmlands, the lack of change is most noticeable and most reassuring. The black earth is still as dark and rich as brownie batter as it has been for generations. The little stream continues to cut its way deep into the bank beneath the beech trees. And as we drove out of town on our last afternoon, we passed below the Friedhof, cemetery, where we had laid to rest a dear friend earlier that week. His son-in-law commented to us after the ceremony, “He gets the best view now.” Indeed he does. I can close my eyes at any moment and see a freeze-frame of that little corner of the world. The curve of the road just there at the end of the valley, the way the hills come down to meet the road, the way the trees come up along the stream and the angle of the golden light on their leaves in the late afternoon. I’ve left that valley many times, but every time it drags sobs out of my body. But that is not wistful sentimentality, I don’t think. That is homesickness.

Germany refused to indulge my nostalgia and I don’t blame it. There is simply no room for sentimentality over my high school days in the ruins of a castle whose primary defense system was bows and arrows. There is no time for thinking about “the way things were” because the past is so thoroughly integrated into the present. It is so comforting to me to be surrounded by old landscapes, buildings, and objects that have been around for lifetimes. They remind me of how short a lifetime really is, and holds me accountable for how I am spending mine.