Well, it's my last Sunday in Hamburg, Die Schönste Stadt der Welt. For about two months I've been trying to come to terms with the fact that I'm leaving, and I'm slowly making peace with it. I've cried twice, sold the majority of the possessions I acquired while here, and am slowly saying goodbye to my friends in the city.
A couple of weeks ago I went to a cafe on one of the canals, something I've wanted to do basically the whole time I've been here, and took two hours by myself to journal about how I'm feeling. I'm normally horrible at keeping a journal, except for during exciting trips and important changes. This somehow counts as both.
Here's what I wrote:
More than anything, this is the city where I feel like I grew into myself.I could never say that about LA. This is where I took on the challenge of building my own life with little-to-no-help from anyone, and I succeeded. From setting up a bank account to finding an apartment, from making new friends to establishing hobbies, here I successfully built a life that I can be proud of. I imagine everyone must feel a sort of connection to the first place where they did that, whatever sort of city it may be.
Because of what Hamburg has offered me, it is so beautiful to me. I love the Altbauwohnungen and the canals, I love the countless green parks and the industrial feel of the harbor. I love that I can hop on a train at just about any hour and be anywhere in the city in under 45 minutes. And I love that, no matter the season, there's always something to explore:
Weihnachtsmärkte in Winter...
Canoeing the canals
and Straßenfesten in Spring;
Park events and
Drinks on the Alster in Summer;
And vibrant sunsets,
and incredible foliage in Fall.
To mentally and emotionally prepare myself for leaving, I've been compiling mental lists of what I will and won't miss, and what I'm looking forward to about the U.S.
What I'll miss about Hamburg:
1. The ability to travel. My life feels so big here, the way I can easily hop on a train or plane and be in a new country in a matter of hours.
2. Public transit. I have rarely felt limited by not having a car.
3. Church bells
4. Bike riding culture and city bikes.
5. Summer evenings that seem to last forever.
6. The friends I've made here, and how they challenge me to be smarter, harder working, and more conscientious and critical of the world around me.
7. Hearing a variety of languages around me (not just German! Turkish and Arabic and Dutch...)
8. Outdoor cafes. I love enjoying a drink and conversation with friends while watching the world go by.
9. No open bottle liquor laws. It's nice to not have to worry about enjoying a drink at a picnic in a park.
10. The challenge of working in two languages on a daily basis. I'm still so proud of myself when I effortlessly switch between languages, or when I correctly form a particularly difficult sentence, or a German can't tell where my accent is from. It's challenging and stimulating.
11. Easy Health care.
12. No sales tax.
13. The clean, fresh air in Hamburg, the brilliantly blue sky, and my favorite cotton candy clouds
14. City parks
15. Summer runs along the Alster, when twilight lasts until 11:30 PM
What I won't miss about Hamburg (or Germany):
1. Cigarette smoke (although I have gotten rather used to it)
2. German standards of customer service
3. Short business hours. So inconvenient.
4. Short winter days. The worst.
5. The people who don't understand that I can't understand fast, slurred German, and who seeem to make no effort to speak clearly.
6. The struggle to find food that isn't either (a) heavy meat or (b) cooked with dairy.
7. Poor cell phone service
8. GEMA blocking all of my shows and even half of YouTube.
9. Week-long streaks of rainy, cloudy, cold weather (in Summer!!)
What I'm looking forward to about the U.S.
1. Being near friends and family, and being able to easily call, rather than schedule a Skype appointment (Although I am leaving my exit buddy behind here in DE)
2. Trader Joe's
3. Mexican food
4. Good customer service.
5. The smell of the Pacific Ocean
6. Making new friends in my grad school program
7. Not being the token American, and not feeling like I have to apologize for my American-ness
8. Not having to think about what I'm going to say and exactly how I'll say it before walking into a store or making a phone call (Although this is probably a worthwhile habit to have developed)
9. Being able to make culturally-specific jokes and reference without having to explain them.
10. Complimentary water the minute you sit down at a restaurant.
11. Free public restrooms
In short, I'm going to miss all of the things about Hamburg that make the standard of living so great in Germany (public transit, city parks, health care), and I'm looking forward to the aspects of the U.S. that make it home (family, friends, culturalisms, familiar food). I keep telling people that, if I had grown up in Germany or my family were here, I'd have little reason to leave. It's a wonderful place to live.
Once I sat down and wrote this list, I decided to STOP thinking this way, because I realized I wasn't living in the present. And I knew that I would come to regret that in two months, when I realized that my last two weeks in Hamburg had been spent comparing it to the U.S. Each place is unique and incomparable, and I am always working to be happy where I am right now, rather than comparing it to where I could be. It's been my motto this past year and a half, and it has served me well.
In the past year I have visited 21 cities in 8 countries (with 5 more countries coming up soon).
And of these cities...
Venice is vivacious,
Copenhagen is colorful,
Amsterdam is amazing,
Berlin is never boring,
and Dresden is dynamic,
but Hamburg is home.
Suzanna, you are all grown-up, for sure. Thanks for including us in your Ex-pat in Hamburg experience. Love, Grandma
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