Fernweh

Regarding my previous blog entry, some of you have asked me if I placed those ballerina slippers under the tree.  I did not.  Turns out I’m quite German in my taste in shoes, since I have a predilection for width and comfort, for “Bequemlichkeit.” While I agree that, when it comes to German shoe design, “Bequemlichkeit” goes before elegance, I am beginning to think that this has as much to do with a sore heart as it does with sore feet.  In the United States day-to-day contact with people is mostly relaxed and friendly, a fact all the more puzzling considering the current hostile political climate. In Germany that easy-going friendliness is mostly a foreign concept.  It’s the small indignities that grind down one’s emotional core: a welcoming smile is frequently met with a cold stare, a minor grammatical error corrected in a sharp tone, the polite request to repeat a statement not understood too often answered with curt impatience.  
Small wonder many people here have "Fernweh", the untranslatable term to describe longing for someplace far away. Every single time I tell people I moved back to Germany from the US, I get asked why, why would I do something like that? It seems many Germans don’t want to live in their own country.  One needs comfortable shoes here both to walk through an uncomfortable life, and also to run away from it.  German for "to run away": “Das Weite suchen.”  To seek a distant place.