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.

Memory Lanes

In my travels so far, I’ve sought to strike a satisfying balance between visiting new places and rediscovering old favourites. Until now, however, there has been a tendency to favour novelty over familiarity, with even return trips prioritising new sites and sights in an attempt to expand my worldview and grow my photographic record. If I can tick off a new country in the process, all the better.

This year, I’ve decided to make an effort to address this imbalance and dedicate more time to naked nostalgia and shameless sentimentality. Early rumblings of a school reunion—currently earmarked for December–got me thinking about the places I’d once known and the lives I’d once lived. After all, we hadn’t just gone to school together; we’d boarded together. And yet, it already feels like a lifetime ago—maybe more.

If my year was to culminate in a school reunion, I wanted to build up to it by carrying that theme through the rest of 2024 as well. I lived in Ashby-de-La-Zouch between the ages of 15 and 18, but before that I’d called other places home, too: Elgin, Canberra, Brüggen. What if I could revisit them all? I hadn’t been back to School House in over a decade, but I hadn’t returned to my German and Australian stomping grounds for much longer than that.

This dislocation had in many ways defined my early years and yet it was something I’d never really reckoned with. Regularly uprooted and replanted elsewhere, I’d lost touch not just formative with places and people but parts of myself. Over time, my connections to these past lives began to wither and the associated memories started to fade. I could always reminisce with family, obviously, but that meant reliving only the experiences they’d been party to. It wasn’t the whole story.

Worried I might one day lose the plot entirely, I wanted to re-find my place in the narrative and tie up some loose ends; to jog memories by revisiting old haunts, reconcile past lives by reconnecting with estranged acquaintances and perhaps even lay some ghosts to rest or revive lapsed dreams along the way. Not time travel per se, but still a rolling back of the clock. A walk down memory lanes.

At first, I thought about working through these chapters chronologically, but, prevaricating, I’d left myself insufficient time to plan a spring excursion to Australia. I’d wanted to see Canberra in the autumn, to photograph Lake Burley Griffin and Black Mountain in their fall, but would have to leave it until the seasons had reversed. That’s if I could afford to go at all, or secure enough time off work to make it worth my while.

Instead, I decided to prioritise Germany, and thus booked five days in North Rhine-Westphalia. I wouldn’t be doorstopping anyone and asking to see my old room, however. Elmpt isn’t exactly a transport hub and I’d sooner base myself somewhere better connected. Rather, I planned to visit Aachen, Düsseldorf and Köln, peripheral cities that I’d once shopped in, rollerbladed around and largely taken for granted; to orbit and observe my old world rather than attempt to inhabit it.

Nevertheless, I longed to make some kind of contact. I reached out to a childhood friend still living locally and arranged to reunite across the border in Roermond, another town that had served as a backdrop to my boyhood and which, unlike Elmpt or Brüggen, helpfully had a train station. Our friendship had meant a lot to me, but my memories of our adventures were limited and lacking in detail, so I was excited to compare notes and swap stories—to be reminded of in-jokes and deep-cuts.

Will it work? Might exploring the past help to reframe the present and inform the future, leaving me feeling more rounded and content as a person? Or could the experience backfire, serving only to alienate me further from a life that cannot be relived and make me question whether people, places and experiences were ever really as I remembered them? I guess only time will tell.