Sometimes, you see things only from a distance. Birthdays, for example (whoever had their birthday lately knows that I need a little longer). When the Wall fell, I was eight. At that time it seemed nothing special. I only remember that everyone was very excited and watched a lot of TV. This was rare (the watching television), and therefore had to mark something special. I was told that there had been a border in Germany, which was now gone. That did not impress me much. When we went on holiday in France, there was a border, too, and that was always a lot of fun. Also the fact that they spoke German on the other side of the border I found little remarkable. I had an aunt in Austria, and there was a frontier, too, and on the other side they spoke German. With eight, geopolitics is still rather simple…
Only when I look back now, things seem more remarkable. And more complex. Germany and Europe are what they are, last but not least because of those days in the fall, when my family watched a lot of TV, and everything that ensued. And not, as some here would have you believe, because a senile ex-actor proclaimed “Tear down that wall” (even less because of a third rank star with fake chest hair humming silly little song about freedom. But then, nobody but him believes that anyways). And it is good the way it is. At least, from a distance, it does not look half as bad as one would have it at home.
Sometimes you only miss things from a distance. Things that you have not previously noticed, or found ridiculous. Many little things: long train rides through wooded hills, deli-meat-specialist saleswomen, autumn fires, bakeries, Feierabend beer, shop talk about football, the deep rooted belief that everything in this world can be solved efficiently in a very specific way.
But of course, mainly the loved ones you left behind, in that reunified country on the other side of the globe.
And before you know it, you find youself sentimentally murmuring what Hoffmann von Fallersleben wrote down nearly 170 years, Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit… Happy Birthday, Germany! Be well, and stay as you are. You are ok the way you are.
Like I said, I always need a little longer for birthdays…