After a childhood spent moving around in my father´s footsteps I decided staying in one place sounded a very good idea, however a lifetime spent living and working in different European countries, much of it as a journalist in the different mediums and the mother of two well travelled and very ´European´ sons, proves that this particular train of thought seems to have become lost somewhere in the mists of time.
My first effort at writing, an introspective few words on the trials and tribulations of regularly changing homes and having to make new friends, was published in a local newspaper when I was six years old, and one way or another the scribbling away at any opportunity has never really stopped since.
Even in the relatively small land mass of Europe the differences in culture and tradition between the various European countries are fascinating, but after finding herself in Germany, for what should have been three years but ended up as fourteen and still counting, it was to discover a country of sixteen states which were until comparatively recently (1871) independent monarchies, principalities or dukedoms, and where all have retained many of their original, and different, traditions, history, food etc.
A truly unified country, nevertheless with distinct characteristics from the long ago former nation states still in evidence.
Present day Germany remains an unknown quantity for many, and even within Europe, where it is a central player in many organisations not only the European Union, there remain images and beliefs of the country and its people often influenced more by the past than the present.
Although few countries can offer as much, culturally, historically and in natural beauty, every type of sporting activity and countless ways of passing time, for those without some type of German ancestry, or a spell spent there on military service, Germany is nevertheless not a country that pops first into the mind when vacations are being planned.
There is so much about it that simply is not known, and as a country it is not only somewhere that is interesting, although sometimes complex, to live in, it is enjoyable, and I really hope you will join me on my journey of discovery through some of the many real, fascinating, and often surprising sides of Germany, German life and the German way of living.
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My Thanks, Francine.
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