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Liv Hambrett. Heimat
Heimat: Notes from an Australian in Germany
How It All Began
Hard. Münster: Bicycles & Beginnings
Arriving
Anchors
(Small Talk … Das macht keinen Sinn.)
'But I am asking.'
'It's too abrupt, it's too demanding.' 'If you want the salt, just ask for the salt.'
'It isn't a favour.' 'I can't just say, 'give me the salt, please'.' 'Why not?' 'Because it's rude.'
Bist du Blind?
Why Aren't Germans Fat?
Wurst
Brot
Bakeries, in Germany, are life. Käse
Schweinefleisch
Kartoffel
Milchprodukte
Kuchen
Beer. Let's leave it at that
Cautionary Tales. Let’s talk about German children’s stories
Through the Looking Glass
Forever
For how long? I don’t know. Can I see myself staying forever? I don’t know
Good Things Always Come of Change
Weiden in der Oberpfalz: They Don’t Speak German Down There. Why?
– The dialect
Yes, yes, no and no
The Thing about Homesickness
April
Nothing Ever Goes to Plan!
Choices, Change & Setting Things in Motion
Wehmütig
A place I would be leaving soon
Sydney: Home. Handful of Charms
Getting My Lust Back
Beneath the Australian Sky
The Four Stages of Waiting
The Beach House
Kiel: Snow & Seagulls. Changing Expectations
Kicking it Up & Letting it Fall
Language Battle
Making Dates
February
Never Really Still
A Click, A Morph, A Something
The Wind Up
Weiden: Let’s Try This Again. Hold the Button
‘Hold the button!’
‘Quick, hold the button!’ ‘Which button? There are two on the back.’
‘Do you mean bottom?’
What’s in a Home?
To the Sea
Wie die Zeit vergeht
Kiel Again: Home. Fresh
Begin
The Art of the Stroll
In the Nature
An Encouraged Habit
Rows and Rows
Falsch my friends. Falsch
Moin
Jo!
Mmmm
Of Kale & Pinkelwurst
From 2 to 3
To Every Season
Used To
Content
Getting Gemütlich
Frightful & Delightful
A Tale of Two Santas
There is No Such Thing as Bad Weather …
There’s a Tea for Everything
Growing Up
Set Change
Home & Hosed
A Peculiar Beauty
On Necessary Stretching
A Behavioural Guideline to the First Day of Spring
April, April
On Frigophobia and Barefeet
Frühjahrsmüdigkeit
A Theory as Inspired by Turnip Mousse
‘Go on,’ he said, ‘what do you want to say.’
Pickled Herring
Grünkohl & Wurst // Stewed Kale & Sausages
Rübenmus // Turnip Mousse. Self explanatory. Nordseekrabben
Labskaus
On Intestines & Ids
You Again
An Awful Lot of Light
Watch Your Fucking Words
We Are Always Moving
Zu Tanken
The Boy on the Beach
The Passport Decade
On Dressing for Colder Climes
Germany. Why Can’t You Queue?
On the Topic of Chocolate
The In-Between Days
Finding Colour
On Driving
An Ending of Sorts
Thank You
About the Author
Отрывок из книги
How it all began …
What drove an Australian without a lick of German, who had never owned a 'proper winter coat' in her life, into the rainy, snowy, rule-loving, meaty arms of Deutschland? Good question. Excellent question. I still, to this day, can’t really answer it because I don’t know if we ever really know what we’re doing in our early 20s, no matter how convinced we are that we do. But I can try and explain. For one thing, Germany isn't London. For another, as a – very young and very inexperienced – writer, I was looking for stories. I needed a big, unexpected, unusual plot twist in an otherwise very lovely, rather uninteresting life. I wanted things to write about and I thought that by digging out my roots and dragging them, coiled and dirty, into a soil entirely different to that which had nourished them for 25 years, I would find precisely that. Tales and morals and lessons learnt, characters and tragedies I could put onto paper, weave into a narrative. And I had two added benefits; I didn't really know precisely what I was doing - oh what we can do when we don't know what we're doing - and I had a warm, solid, unconditional home to return to, should my little body grow aweary of the great world.
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And that's what this book is. This book is a collection of stories, of ideas and meditations on all of the dust you kick up when you move countries, when plans and expectations go out the window, and you dive so thoroughly, into something – into a people, into a way of life, a language, a place – so utterly unknown. It is about relationships, with countries, with people, with myself. It is about the Germans, their beautiful country and being quite foreign within it. It is about searching for, finding, and making a Heimat in an endless, gloriously huge, world.
*You will find him referred to, often throughout the following pages, as SG. It stands for Significant German.
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