Double Deutsch

It was 1998, Geri had just left the Spice Girls, and worse, after finally settling in at school I was to be leaving Scotland after eighteen months and moving to either Germany or Cyprus. The decision made for me, I arrived in North Rhine-Westphalia mere weeks before the end of term, surrounded by kids that seemed maturer and more worldly than those I’d known in Elgin, and facing the prospect of high school after the summer holidays.

Now, in 2024, circumstances couldn’t be more different. The days of adolescent heartbreak and upheaval seem as distant and alien as Spice World, replaced with a calm and continuity that I couldn’t have imagined as a child. Rather, I was in my mid-thirties, I’d lived in Dundee for over a decade and I was more likely to fret over politics than pop music. What’s more, whenever I return to Germany, it’s on my own terms.

I hadn’t moved back—after Brexit, that’s not really an option—but rather I’d come as a tourist, a traveller in both space and time, albeit with only as much baggage as Ryanair would allow in the cabin free of charge. I’d come to see Aachen, where we used to explore the maze; Düsseldorf, where we’d rollerblade the promenade; and Köln, where we’d visit the Christmas markets. My first stop, however, was Eindhoven, where we’d, well, occasionally go swimming. Every journey has to start somewhere.

Naively, I expected it to still seem relatively familiar. I’d lived in close proximity to the Dutch-Germany border for four years and thought I knew the Netherlands reasonably well, if not the language. But as the airport bus wound its way to Eindhoven Centraal I felt like a first-time visitor. I tapped in but not out with my debit card, incurring some unknown fee. I couldn’t work out how to transit the train station without a ticket so found myself circumventing it at unnecessary length. And finally arriving at the cathedral, I found it to be closed without explanation. Before I could find my feet, never mind Tongelreep swimming centre, it was already time to move on.

It suddenly occurred to me that I was—and would continue to be—approaching this all wrong. I was used to exploring the area by car, dependent on parents and endlessly distracted by whatever book, game or song was the obsession of the day. I wouldn’t know the bus and train stations, the suburbs and districts, the details and directions. I also hadn’t fully accounted for the decades that had passed. As I travelled first to Heerlen, and then across the border into the outskirts of Aachen, I was brought soberingly up to date. I wasn’t the only one looking a bit tired and out of shape.

This wasn’t my first trip back to Germany since returning to Britain in 2002. I’d been back to Berlin a number of times, but just as London is a world unto itself it seems Berlin’s singularity had masked changes to the wider country. Like the capital’s Europa-Center, the once impressive ICE trains crisscrossing the country felt out of time and place, as though they’d been built for an alternate future that had never come to pass—one where the hope and optimism of the ‘90s had carried over into the new century rather than being curtailed by 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis and a global pandemic.

I reminded myself that nowhere looked its best in February, and noted that the weather wasn’t doing it any favours either, but as the train approached Aachen Hauptbahnhof I was reminded of similar scenes of neglect in countries traditionally considered far less wealthy. Maybe I’d just spent too much time in Switzerland, or perhaps I simply hadn’t noticed before, but Germany (at least West Rhine-Westphalia and neighbouring Limburg) didn’t feel as prosperous, proud or presentable as I remembered, nor did it seem as resilient in the face of contemporary pressures as I’d anticipated. In many ways, it looked as battered and bruised as Britain.

Still, despite the signs of deprivation, the depressing weather and my own disappointment at not recognising everything I passed, I felt immediately at ease in Aachen—I always did where the German language was spoken—and I was eager to explore. I wouldn’t be visiting the labyrinth at Three Country Point on this occasion, where Germany borders the Netherlands and Belgium—I was much too old and, besides, the maze was currently closed—but I looked forward to reacquainting myself with the city, the region and the country at large.

I arrived in the early evening, and by the time I’d checked into my hotel the winter sun had set and rain had started to fall. I found a cafe on the ground floor of a bookshop, Mayersche, took a seat next to the window and ordered a slice of cheesecake and a beer. Outside, streetlights didn’t just keep the darkness at bay but transformed what had been a rather dull and dispiriting day into a warm and welcoming night, the drizzle soon subsiding. If I craned my neck, the gilded spire of Aachener Dom was just visible over the glistening rooftops of the Altstadt. The day was done but the night was still young—as indeed, I decided, was I.