Allemagne

When I was thirteen, my mother planned a vacation to Germany to visit my Aunt Ruth, but I refused to go because I thought I hated Germany after getting in a big fight with a German boy when our family friends visited us in the States. Now, 8ish years later, I finally made my first trip to Germany, and my Aunt Ruth took me to all the same sites that the rest of my family has already seen and visited. And of course I fell in love with it. Not just because it was so much fun to see my Aunt (who’s not technically my Aunt, but a really old family friend to lived with my grandparents when she studied in the states in highschool – yay exchange students!), but also because Germany is AMAZING. It’s kind of funny, because it makes me wonder how different my life might have been if I had just gone on that one family vacation back in middle school – what if I had chosen to study German, and had never gone to Italy or all the subsequent decisions that all stemmed from that year? It’s kind of a head trip.

The funniest thing about Germany was the food. (Really, food seems to be the only thing American’s abroad ever talk about!) As I was leaving for the weekend, my French host family made a comment about I was going to eat such “strong” German food – you know, the ideas of sauerkraut and mustard and sausages and all that. The first thing we did when I got off the train in Mainz was go out to eat…. At an Italian place. Except for some amazing Reisling wine and some white asparagus, I hardly ate any traditionally German food in Germany. Luckily, the Germans have embraced (what I consider) “normal food” – they even had salsa at the grocery store! It’s funny, because there is a lot of “German” food in Lorraine and Alsace because we have such a long history with Germany – here we put mustard on our white asparagus, and serve sauerkraut with our meat.

Oh yeah, the French /German history. Lorraine and Alsace have both been part of Germany; I think they’ve changed hands something like five times in the last 200 years. And Mainz, where my Aunt lives, has also been occupied by France at various points in history. There’s even this statue we saw by the Rhine, that’s up on a hill shaking her fist in defiance in the direction of France. (Apparently, this was the German version of the Statue of Liberty, but it is of course considered very politically incorrect now. But still cool to see).

With such a long history of animosity, I have been really surprised to discover how strong relations are between the two countries are currently. Nancy has the Franco-Allemande campus of one of France’s prestigious universities – ie all the classes at this school are taught in French and German, and all students are fluent in both languages, as well as half of the students are from Germany, and the French students are required to study abroad in Germany in their 3rd year. We don’t even have that good of a rapport with Canada, and we’ve never been to war against them! (wait, have we?). My Aunt (who knows EVERYTHING), explained that this was a conscious effort after by the powers that be after WWII, and that the Marshall plan was also integral in all of this because it forced all of the states to cooperate if they wanted aide. Plus, it helped that they had communism to all unite against.

Aunt Ruth and I in Heidelberg