I didn't make my decision just by closing my eyes and pointing to a place on the map - I lived in Breitenstein once upon a time when I was young - from about age three until halfway through first grade. When I first decided to come on this trip, visiting Breitenstein was one of the most exciting things for me - I couldn't wait to see what I remembered, what I remembered incorrectly, and what was completely wrong.
As it turned out, there were things in each category, as well as things that I remembered but didn't realize I remembered, odd as that sounds. I was picked up from the Stuttgart train station (after some train delays which made me about an hour late and prompted a little rant from my host about how the Deutsche Bahn just isn't what it used to be - apparently my train was the third train in a row which had been significantly delayed while he watched) and, after a brief tour of the city on the way to his car, we headed for the village.
I kept waiting for it all to get familiar, for something to suddenly click and a feeling of homecoming and nostalgia to wash over me. It never did. Oh well, I thought - it was night, and he'd told me as we were driving that the village had grown a lot in the fifteen years since I'd been there - maybe I was just disoriented by the darkness and the number of new houses. Surely their house would be familiar, though?
Nope. Not only was this house (where I'd spent a fair amount of time, including the hours between when my mom went to the hospital to give birth to my sister and the time when my dad came to grab the rest of us three kids and bring us to meet Rebecca) not ringing any bells, but it was not the house that I could clearly remember in my head. While I had a clear image in my head of a German house, coupled with memories of time spent in those rooms, it was not this German house. Odd.
I spoke mostly German with my hosts (who were flatteringly amazed at how good my German was) and it continually seemed amazing to me, this weekend and in the week that followed, that I was speaking exclusively German and getting along just fine. I always know I have English to fall back on and I use it if I am at an utter loss (not that it always helps - vegetables caused me and my hostmom in Berlin a lot of trouble for several days, becoming a bit of a joke because of how incapable we were of speaking coherently about them) but I don't usually need it. Every now and then, I'll suddenly realize that I've been having a conversation with someone for an hour or two, all of it in German, and I understand it all.
The next morning, I went on a walk around the village with my host guiding me and things did indeed become more familiar, though the scale was far different than I remembered. It turns out that things look much different to a three year old than to a twenty year old. The fence around my kindergarten which I remember being over my head is now low enough that I could probably step over it if I wanted to - certainly I could climb over with no trouble. The epic walk from my house to our sledding hill (which was, itself, less amazing than I recalled) was really about a block and a half.
There were some things I did remember, though, little random things which apparently stuck in my brain beneath the conscious level. Turning onto the street where I used to live, I recognized a tower. The yellow building in a corn field is actually a transformer to distribute electricity to multiple houses, but it's shown up frequently whenever I think about CSAs or farmers selling directly from the farm: according to my imaginings, a CSA is when someone stands beside a yellow tower and sells corn. There was another little house, out on the path where we used to go for walks, which made me think of bees as I spotted it. It wasn't until I got closer that I saw that it was not actually a shed or mini-house but rather a dozen beehives housed together in a little building. Apparently my brain remembered the connection but didn't give me any clear memories to explain it.
It was fascinating seeing the village, but sad in a way, because it meant going through all my old memories and changing them, discarding the inaccurate things and making new memories. Fun as it was, it was challenging, somehow, for some reason I can't articulate or put my finger on.
On a different note, one which more people may find interesting than just my family, I was also struck by the way that Germans live with the past. I've heard before, of course, that I shouldn't refer to past Americans as "we", because they don't include me - I wasn't alive then. Despite that, I slip up sometimes, which can be a little uncomfortable.
As my host for the weekend drove me back to the train station after our time together, we were walking through Böblingen (which he stated was one of the ugliest cities in Germany) and he was explaining the history of the city - it was bombed extensively by the Allies during the second world war so much of its "ugliness" is the result of it being totally rebuilt after the war. I asked, without thinking, "did it have some strategic significance or did we just bomb everything?" Only once the words were out did I realize that "we" did not do anything. Not only was I not alive then, but even if we were choosing to identify ourselves with our ancestors...well...our ancestors had been on opposite sides of the war. He simply answered the question without commenting on my slip-up or acting strangely, and I wonder if that was simply because he was too young to have been part of the German "we" for that era.
His mother-in-law, an 83 year old woman living in the house next door, really startled me with her friendliness and welcoming nature. When I arrived on the first day, she came out to talk to me right away, and it quickly became clear that communication was going to be an issue. She didn't speak any English and between her dialect and her accent, I couldn't understand much of what she said. Despite the language barrier, she was astoundingly gracious, calling my hosts to ask if I wanted some dessert and then walking over just to drop off some food for me before heading back to her house, giving me chocolate and smiling and attempting to speak to me each time she saw me, even though I was clearly not doing a very good job understanding her German. Unlike her son-in-law, she would have been old enough to live through the war, and it made me wonder how Germans view Americans based on history. The Americans were fighting the Nazis, so maybe we weren't really the enemy, but the Allies were still bombing cities with civilians in them, not just limiting their destruction to Nazis.
I'm not totally sure where I'm going with that thought, and I feel like this blog has become a long and rambly scattered post, but I was just amazed by how welcoming and kind she was even though we couldn't communicate and so much of the history I've spent the last month learning about has conflict between the US and Germany. It was a great break from all the deep, heavy content of the rest of the month just to get away to a tiny peaceful village surrounded by kindness.
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