I left my home and my hometown of Braunschweig at the tender age of seventeen, first to work "auf Montage" as book-keeper for a large construction company that built autobahns all over Germany, and then, only twenty-one months later, to emigrate to Australia.
Two years later, I was back in Germany and hoping for a new career in South America with the German-South American Bank headquartered in Hamburg. Things didn't go to plan and so, like a bad penny and slightly tail-between-my-legs-like, I turned up on my parents' doorstep again.
They had never heard of Robert Frost's "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in". Instead, they must've remembered the equivalent German saying of "you have to be cruel to be kind", because they refused to take me in long enough to again get used to homecooked meals and having my bed made and laundry done.
Three months later, I was back on the road, but it took me a lot longer to realise that they had actually done me a favour by not taking me in again, because in hindsight I doubt that, without their "encouragement", I would have mustered the courage to once again set out on my own.
I've been "home" twice since then, both times on an Australian passport, which pretty well sums up where my home is now, and while I have no particular attachment to the (c)old country, I still occasionally visit it from the comfort of my Australian home via the internet and YouTube.
So much has changed, and yet, so much has stayed the same, such as the giant red MONTBLANC "Füllfederhalter" on the facade of the old Störig-Haus at the "Kohlmarkt". As a young boy, I used to look at it and dream of one day owning such an expensive - although more 'handy'-sized - MONTBLANC fountain pen. By the time I could afford one, it had already been replaced by the ubiquitous ballpoint pen, but while the stationery shop below it has since made way for a furniture store, the giant red fountain pen has been heritage-listed and will always be there to remind me of the time when, as an articled clerk, I was sent there by my boss to buy a "Buchhalternase" - but that's a story for another day.
In addition to several YouTube clips of my hometown, there is this amazingly detailed www.braunschweig-bilder.de website, on which an Erik Kugland uploaded hundreds and hundreds of photographs of streets where I used to walk and work and live more than sixty years ago.
Click here for a full GOOGLE Map view; then move cursor to the top floor.
For more in German, click here.
There is the Cyriaksring where we used to live across from the "Arbeitsamt", and the "Volksschule" I attended in the Sophienstrße, before moving to the Altewiekring and the "Volksschule" in the Heinrichstraße, after which I served my articled years in in the Münzstraße. Of course, I sent Erik an email thanking him for the great job he's done and for this wonderful walk down memory lane.
