Cold smoke and chronic desperation
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One thing led to another this morning, and I ended up checking whether the town I grew up in (TTIGUI) was available on Google Street View (GSV). For a long time, Germans had resisted having their streets photographed -- for reasons that in true German fashion made sense and yet were completely laughable.
In fact, may things in Germany make sense and yet are completely laughable. Germans will denies this fact for reasons that make sense and yet are completely laughable.
But now things appear to have changed, and German cities and towns have appeared on GSV. I don't know when or why this happened, and it doesn't really matter.
I haven't been to TTIGUI in 24 years. I have my reasons, and they're neither here nor there. However, when (if?) I find a publisher for my new book, the main reason will become more obvious than I would probably like.
Regardless, occasionally I have been thinking about TTIGUI because I spent the first 21 years of my life there. To a large extent, TTIGUI formed who I am, even if I have been engaged in an effort to re-form what I started out with.
I don't feel nostalgic at all for the time there. I can't say that my childhood was terrible. At times, it was fun. But like all childhoods it was mostly forgettable. Being a teenager, though, was terrible; but almost everybody hated being a teenager so that does not mean anything.
It was mostly curiosity that had me check again whether TTIGUI was on GSV. TTIGUI has been in steady decline for decades now. It lost a solid 30% of its population since I lived there. I simply wanted to see some of the things that I had heard of.
But of course, I was also curious about what TTIGUI looked like, given that at this stage, my memories are probably not that reliable any longer (assuming that they ever were).
Picture my surprise when I found out that GSV had made it to TTIGUI. The coverage of the city is spotty. It excludes some of the areas I had expected to see (for example, the main shopping locales). But the out-of-town driver of the car had somehow made it to the part of town where I grew up. In fact, they had even driven down the rather unspectacular little side street I had lived on.
I somehow had remembered the apartment building looking older. But I don't know what this really means. Not much has changed. The tree in front has grown considerably. There used to be trash receptacles right next to the entrance (now, there is a little bush). The main door has been changed: now there's a buzzer, and they added a big bright number to the building.
I grew up on the first floor, on the right side (if you look at the building the way we do in the picture). The window to the top left of those slightly larger bushes in front -- that's the window I would look out from. I shared the room with my brother, and my table was next to the window. I'd often just look out of the window.
This is what I would see. Well, almost. The view from the window would be more elevated, meaning you would see the city's massive coal-burning power station in the background. Back in the day, the grey wooden structure didn't exist. Back in the day, those curtains in the three windows (that, oddly, I don't remember) would be lower. Or maybe they weren't lower. I don't remember these particular windows, so how or why would I remember how they were covered?
In any case, now there's a Greek restaurant in the building. A bit further down the street there is a Syrian restaurant. This would have been unthinkable in West Germany in the 1970s. GSV tells me that the Greek restaurant developed the little grassy area next to it into an outdoor dining space. This would have been unthinkable in West Germany in the 1970s.
Back then, that place was occupied by a dingy bar, the place that from the outside reeked of the cold smoke and chronic desperation you'd find inside. The side view of that bar has forever been etched into my head (that window I remember!).
In fact, I have always remembered it so vividly that on a trip to a completely different city, I took a picture that reminded me of the bar. I included it in Vaterland:
In many ways, that's just such a West German view. Inside these locales, you'd find an assortment of characters, including the many war veterans who'd drink away their memories. Cold smoke and chronic desperation.
In fact, if you look at the GSV picture of the apartment building I grew up in again, next door -- meaning on the left side of the first floor -- there was a family of three. The father would often glare out of one of the windows for hours on end. At the time, it was a scary sight for me, and I don't know the actual story. My guess is that it was one of the many former veterans. There was a story in my family that the man had a metal plate in his head. The war part was omitted, it was just the metal plate (I have no idea whether this was actually true).
My paternal grandfather would have been one of those was veterans. He drank himself to death around 1970, and he was buried in a pauper's grave far away after his own family had disowned him. "So it goes." (Kurt Vonnegut)
If I ever manage to get the funds together I will go back to TTIGUI. I would enjoy eating some Syrian food in what back then was the building of a small supermarket. I would also enjoy... I think?... walking around with my camera and taking pictures of the many locales that somehow have memories attached to them.
Sometimes, it's good to take pictures just to get something out of your system (even if you don't end up using the pictures for anything).
I looked at a bunch more locations on GSV. A number of places where inaccessible because the driver hadn't gone there. I still don't know what the town library looks like now that had been my refuge when as a teenager I was desperately looking for a way out of that (literal and metaphorical) place.
Maybe it's good that so many locations still are inaccessible. Seeing pictures often can serve as a shortcut that is just too convenient. For many situations, there is no real substitute to placing yourself into it.
Thank you for reading!
-- Jörg