The Happy Hermit

After 18 months in South America, I am back in Europe. I have already written extensively about the reasons for my return. Here are the first impressions from the old continent:

1. You cannot imagine how happy I was when I set foot on European soil in Funchal on Madeira.Green, a pleasant climate, wonderful architecture, no more noise, newspapers in English and German for the first time in one and a half years, large parks. 
2. I was seriously impressed by Portugal. In Sintra alone, I saw more different styles of architecture than in all of South America.
3. Traveling through Germany by car or train is idyllic. Green everywhere, neat villages, hilly, forests of trees instead of billboards with advertisement.
4. But Germany also appears too spruced up. Everything is clinically clean, as if treated antiseptically every day. Even the roads are so clean that you could eat from them. Hedges and lawns are trimmed better than my hair. The cars are cleaner than my desk.
5. But life is lacking in all of this. You can walk through villages or residential neighborhoods without seeing a single person in the street, in the gardens or in the park.
6. What I do appreciate however is that you can walk through the forest for hours without being attacked by dogs.
7. Latin Americans who had already been to Germany sometimes asked me: “Why are there no children in your country?” Now I understand the question. There are really not many children in Germany, and the few apparently never leave their rooms.
8. My Couchsurfing host in Portugal put down the shopping bags in front of her house and we had to walk back to the car around the corner to get more bags. “Shall I watch the bags?” I asked. “No,” Joana laughed, “you are in Europe again. Nobody is going to steal anything here.”
9. The greatest joy is to be able to sleep through the night without being interrupted by barking dogs/music/fireworks/religious processions/screaming/shouting/honking cars.
10. On the first day, I had currywurst and spezi, two culinary delights that haven’t conquered the world yet. But I guess I haven’t fully arrived in Germany until I have had a döner kebab again.
11. Why are all dishes in German restaurants sufficient for two people? It’s almost like in Cochabamba.
12. I still have a few Eastern Caribbean dollars from Antigua. If anyone among my reader collects coins and banknotes from far-away countries, please contact me. 
13. What I miss most about South America is that you can go out at almost any time of the night and you will get anything from hamburgers, fruit juices, minced meat, light bulbs, notepads to toilet paper within a radius of 500 meters. In Germany, on the other hand, you need to plan your shopping trip like a military campaign because of the restricted opening hours and the small number of shops.
14. Speaking of military campaigns; my parents have realized that they don’t have much time left and they have belatedly entrusted me with investigating our family history. Although I have been to 55 countries already, it turns out that there are a few places that members of my grandparents’ generation visited which I haven’t seen yet: they attacked Norway, Poland, Russia and Northern Africa and were imprisoned in the USA and in Yugoslavia. Two granduncles emigrated to the United States.Insofar as the research will yield interesting results, I may therefore post something about my family from time to time. Because maybe others have questions on which archives to approach and on how to handle this quest systematically, too.
15. I am also interested in reconstructing my grandfathers’ “travel routes” in World War II and to travel along that route now to discover and portray how much Europe has changed in only two generations.
16. But the coming months I will mainly spend at an undisclosed location in Germany to put the adventures of the past years on paper.
17. It’s nice to live in a house with thousands of books again.
18. But I don’t have any emotional feeling of being “back home”. I am happy to be in Europe, but when I return to Bavaria after years of traveling and I notice that everything is still the same as it was 2, 5 or 7 years ago, it rather reaffirms my opinion that I didn’t miss anything here.
19. Returning to Germany after one and a half years in South America offers a drastic shock regarding the visual attractiveness of our compatriots. And that’s putting it mildly. For that reason alone, Germany should accept more immigrants.
20. But it’s great how long it remains light at night! Closer to the equator, the sun goes to sleep around 6 p.m., whether it’s winter or summer, and there isn’t any long twilight either. In Germany now, it’s light enough until almost 10 p.m.
21. Sometimes, I still dream in Spanish. I hope I won’t lose the language too quickly.
22. And, my dear European friends, what is with that deplorable custom of going out without a hat?In South America, even the children have more style.
23. And now I have to plan my birthday trip to a yet undetermined location.

(Hier geht es zur deutschen Fassung.)