A typical German town, in a typically German market, where the locals atypically spent a LOT of their time at the cafes. It's a happy kind of morning, and of course, we were more than happy to spend it sipping cappuccinos.
Soccer is not only part of the national culture, it's the entire PREMISE for any sort of nationalistic display. Here (below) you see an interesting, yet perfect epitomy of German multiculturalism. What multiculturalism, you ask? They have one, it's just difficult to admit.
The Turks (those of Turkish descent born in Germany, as well as Turkey-born naturalized Germans and non-citizens) are the biggest immigrant ethnic group in the country. In Berlin they call it "Little Turkey", and Daniel said he was thankful that we were watching the Germany-Turkey semi-final back in Singapore.
Above: a Fachwerkhaus (pronounced Fuck-Veherk-House) or a stud workhouse.
There's a kind of tranquility that you don't ever get even in the quietest, most prettified corner of a large city. Daniel's Mum kept asking me if Aalen was sehr schon, and it is. But it's more than just a pretty picture that shows up nicely on night-shot lens. Perhaps it is the fact that we pass through as visitors, and experience the place as somebody else's heimat (German word that means "home" or "homeland").
Germany, and with that, every other beautiful place that I have passed through, is some one else's heimat, and this heimat is like the cardiovascular timebomb I ate that day (see picture 1): I don't just consume it like some voracious tourist, I taste it, savour it, but I never live it like the natives. I suppose, as Vilem Flusser noted, to live in or to be in your heimat is nothing but "the enshrinement of banality [...] nothing but a home encased in mystification.
It's true, I've never particularly felt the ideological rootedness to my country, even though I take for granted the customs and practices of many of the people there. Heimat, to Flusser, consists of the relationships that he chooses to enter into, and hence, it is to these relationships that he must be responsible to. In that way, everywhere that I willingly choose to establishment relationships can be my heimat.
How deeply does one feel for a place, a community, or a nation? When you pack up (either your bags or your entire life) and move on to the next place, what happens to the heimat you leave behind physically? Whatever I felt then, I am still feeling now, and it's a curious sense on non-feeling. It's kind of like the connaissance in French, that I have for being in this world, while not really belonging to any place within it. You hardly see your own country, your own ways, in more than one or two perspectives until you meet another culture, know another philosophy. Now that I have gotten to know another one, I believe people everywhere are interested by the same things. (See Conrad's perfect meditative lotus pose below):
When we talk about Buddhism, the Chinese language, other people's kids, the weather, and how schon Aalen is, we're really talking about the same things that interest any person in any heimat, it's just we do things differently. But not always, as Conrad's pose will attest to. He's not much nearer to Enlightenment than I am, but it's sure funny to watch people get there.
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