"Germany Ja!" -- The Scottish Exodus -- Andrewdevenney.com

The Scottish Exodus

An advert image I put on the page and sent to friends and family in email.

A front page button. Don't recall what it linked to, but amusing nonetheless.

Our friend, Matt P. McCabe, who went to Scotland for same graduate program. This was his "stern" picture.

"Germany Ja!"

19 February 2001
Stuttgart, Baden Württemberg, Germany

The atmosphere was nearly perfect. Literally.

The Boeing 737 was soaring high in the sky, drifting above the clouds toward the new. It was like we were on a different plane of existence, some disjointed fragment of a collapsed dimension. The cloud tops stretched forever, sun shining bright in the western sky. It was like some ethereal lunar landscape, incandescent oranges and yellows intermingling with whites and roving shadows of gray. It was one of the more beautiful sights I’ve ever witnessed, next to my wife of course. And then we plummeted down through the cotton plateau. . .

Into brown...into Germany.

Frankfurt Hahn airport is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by brown scrub, autobahn, and trees. If ever there was a bleak Teutonic stereotypical landscape, it was this, which is altogether ironic considering that Hahn is west of the Rhine. The airport terminal is about the size of a McDonalds with playland; Ryan Air couldn’t have found a dinkier backwater if it had hired tour guides from Deliverance. Thankfully my friend Sean was there to pick me up and hold my English-speaking hand. The 2 and ½ hour drive back to Stuttgart was long, scorching (the Mercedes’ heater has only one setting—supernova), and averaged roughly eighty miles per hour on the autobahn.

I’m in Germany.

It’s sometimes hard to believe. I’ve never been to a foreign country where the indigenous lifeforms didn’t speak English as a native language (contrary to popular belief that guttural hacking sound is Scots speaking "English"). I’ve studied Europe intensively these last three years. Vague mnemonic flashes burst in my brain as I read the street signs, remembrances of history long gone in both time and my mind: Mainz (didn’t Gutenberg come from here?); Frankfurt (the "Ford of the Franks"); Heidelberg (how many times did the French crunch this city again?). At one point, we crossed the Rhine, in the night no less (is that what if felt like for the Romans to look out across this river at night, wondering what barbarian horrors laid in wait upon the other bank, or even the Germanic barbarians themselves as they peered through the brush at a Roman colony settlement?). Western European civilization is so ingrained into my identity; it was like making a pilgrimage to Mecca for Muslims I guess. One day when I’m rich and bored, I am going to follow the Rhine to its source, cut over to the Danube, have my car stolen in Bulgaria, and end at the Black Sea. It will be glorious.

When in Stuttgart, or more appropriately that area outside of Stuttgart officially designated as the United States of America (i.e., the military base), we took the S-Bahn to Stuttgart proper for food (the trains were amazingly clean and spacious—Britain truly is a dump). Just to be an obvious symbol of the Twenty-First Century, we had Thai at a restaurant where we had to remove our shoes and sit on pillows. And this had to be the time I had a hole in my sock. Figures.

Tonight I will forget about the insane amount of work I have to do on my honours dissertation. Screw that. Tomorrow I validate my train tickets for April and try to find my lovely wife a tight tee-shirt that says "Germany, Ja!" I will enjoy my three days. Tomorrow I traverse the brown wastes once again.

Because I’m in Germany.

Deutschland über alles.

---drew, I’m sure if I stay here longer I’ll grow to hate it like everywhere else.