Home is Where…

On my first trip back to Germany in almost two years, I felt like a kid in a toy store, as if I had just found a hidden treasure, had been granted access to the NASA headquarters or the Sex and the City dressing room.

There were hundreds of things to discover: Street signs; bikes with baskets locked up on lamp posts; adverts for cultural events… even curtains and pot plants were strangely exciting. Call me weird, but one of my favourite “discoveries” were the yellow post boxes…

Going into shops was like a trip down memory lane: Nussecken and poppy seed cake, Balea body lotion and Schauma conditioner, Eszet and Milchschnitten… so much to see, so many things I missed!

I loved to watch people cycle around town, sit in sidewalk cafés, throw bottles in recycling containers, play badminton in parks and put shopping in their backpacks.

But even before speaking to anyone German, tasting a single German goody or seeing a single advert in German, I knew I was back home:

Having stepped off the plane, I had to go to a different level for passport control. There was an escalator and a functioning lift, but half the people took the stairs!

I couldn’t believe my eyes! In South Africa no one uses the stairs unless the escalator is broken… and here people voluntarily walk after an exhausting ten hour flight! No one gave me a weird look when I took the stairs, no one thought I was silly, no one was wondering what the hell I was doing!

And then I realised:

Home is where the heart is... home is where people take the stairs!