Blogs don't burn

Bold Realizations!: I really like that the trams come on time

So today, whilst Skyping with someone (okay, fine—I was Skyping with my parents), I confessed that, while there is a lot to like about Germany, I don’t know that I love all that much about Germany. I came here not for the country itself, but because the country holds archives from a country that has a culture about which I’m really passionate and which I’ve studied pretty extensively (as far as anyone can as an undergraduate, anyway). Germany’s never been the end for me, is what I’m saying. It’s been the means (the means in which I’ve had to go to the visa procuring office thrice without ever procuring a visa).

But I ended this Skype call and thought about what I’d said. And I realized that, if I don’t change my attitude—if I don’t start looking for things to love here, and seeing German linguistic and cultural appreciation as an ends in and of itself, and trying to meet more German people (not that I don’t love you, Erasmus boos), and realizing, every day, how lucky I am to be here—I will have squandered an opportunity that I am, in all likelihood, never going to come across again. And so that is what I am going to do (change my attitude, I mean; not squander the opportunity). And so, without further ado, here are some things that I already love about Germany:

• I love that the trams come on time. 
• I love that, if I am stubborn enough, random people will assent to speak German with me.
• I love German beer. I love the pride that Germans take in German beer.
• I love how clean my new city is.
• I love the red brick of the Altstadt and the statues of the Bremen Town Musicians and Roland therein.
• I love that döner is drunk food here.
• I love that the norm is to be polite and helpful, if distant, to strangers.
• I love that the German flag flew on Tag der deutschen Einheit without people worrying about what that symbol might say.
• I love that I have nine more months to figure out what it is, exactly, that I will love about Germany. And I love that I know that I won’t waste that time on liking.