Mini-OE to Germany–Day 6

The first day of our holidays we need to say good by to the people we stayed with and to move on to the next. After breakfast we packed our suitcases. Everybody was dragging on and nobody really wanted to push forward. But it was unavoidable and will be many more times during these days and weeks that we have to say good bye.

We had such a great time at Joerg’s and Anjas place and I Ioved the children. We have seen Lars when he was not even three when they visited in New Zealand. I was worried they might be shy and scared of those strange people from down under. But they  weren’t. I am very proud to be called “uncle” by them although it still sounds strange to me.

I was a bit worried about the next stay with my parents. We always had some difficult situation to go through and it wasn’t any different this time. To be honest I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I also haven’t heard from my brother about any time he can spend with us and if we can visit his house. After all it is in the middle of the working week and I know they are busy. So all in all it was a bit going into unknown territory.

But I shouldn’t have worried. We were welcomed like any son could wish to be welcomed by his parents after almost 10 years. They put up signage where we can park saying “Kiwi parking only” and a sign was pointing downstairs to the “kiwi nest” our little flat we have in the house where my parents live. Coming back into the apartment where I grew up brought back many memories. So many things remind me of my youth I spent there. Due to difficulties and tensions we had before we left for New Zealand I haven’t been in my parents place for over 15 years now.

We decided to make use of the rest of the day and go to the city. Karlsruhe is a medium sized city for German comparison. I believe they have about 500,000 people living there. I always enjoyed living in this city. There is a lot of green areas, huge parks and nice old buildings. At the moment it is a bit of a mess because they put some of the extensive tram system underground. We visited a huge mall which was built after we left. It was build on the grounds of a school for business and economy. I had a few girlfriends which attended this school and remember to send some time there waiting for them to finish school so that we could go to the public pools or wherever we went those days.

We also visited the park around the castle of Karlsruhe. This is the place where I last worked as a gardener. Great memories. We visited the botanic garden area where we even found a Pohutukawa tree.

I need to come back to the friendliness of the people. So far we were unsuccessful to find the secret tribe of the grumpy German. My dad told me that some years ago most companies trained their staff in customer service. And since then the whole way to serve people and sell in shops seems to have changed. This to me is an amazing thing. As I mentioned before, it was one of the big negative experiences we had when we lived here. But it also shows that the Germans do not waste any time. I know, 13 years is a long time but still, to achieve a change in the mind-set of people which has such an obvious impact to me is amazing. The Germans are still Germans. And there are still situations where I find some differences. For example when driving It seems to go without saying that drivers let other drives pass. Nobody even lifts a hand for a thank you.