So I thought what other headline to give my blog...; something a little more informative, a little more specific. Something with meaning - ideally more than one meaning. Something that might say something without really saying anything. And TADAA!!! I present the new title to my blog: I WILL SURVIVE - in Trenton.
I tend to say mostly negative things about Trenton - unfortunately. And one might say: "Move somewhere else!" But I have also learned to like this place; especially the home we made here. A little oasis in the middle of chaos. The reason why I say a lot of the bad stuff (besides being sarcastic and sometimes border line bitter)is that I am still hoping for this neighborhood to come around. Things can change if people just make a little effort.
It is not much more difficult to throw trash in a trash can than it is to drop it on the side walk. It is not much more time consuming to say "Good morning, how are you", than it is to say "what the f*** are you looking at". It is not impossible to have a good time in the back yard, without blasting music at the highest volume, and it shouldn't be impossible for the city to pay a little more attention to the stuff that is really going on around here. I have the feeling that a lot of people have basically given up hope for this area, and that it has almost come to the point where we have to "police" ourselves.
Our friend, Christine (who lives across the street) and we have come up with the thought that we should just make our street uninviting for "the bad guys" to hang out on. How do we do it? By keeping the street clean, by putting planters out in front of the house, by encouraging people on the block to put Christmas lights out when the season comes, and by simply making our block "disgustingly nice". I am not attempting for the three of us to take full credit for things, but the truth is that our block happens to be the cleanest, friendliest (well... aside from the woman in the window - see previous post) and nicest part in the area. We watch out for each other, we greet each other, we help each other out. Bad people just don't feel comfortable with all that politeness and garbage- free environment.
I guess what I am trying to say is that there are ways for the individual to make a difference, and all it takes is a couple of us on every block.
This is a picture of the village I grew up in, and where my family still lives. I sometimes think that people don't believe it when I talk about the tiny place with not even 1000 residents. A place without a grocery store, bakery or corner deli. A place where trains don't stop anymore, and the train station was converted into the mayor's office. A place where the street lights automatically turn off at midnight. The river is the beautiful Danube, and Strauss must have been sitting in my village when he wrote his famous waltz.
It is quite the culture shock for me to go from Trenton to Untermarchtal, as you can imagine. The village actually competes with the surrounding towns in something called "Schoenes Dorf" - (beautiful village). It encourages people to keep their house fronts nice and clean, their planters well taken care off, the sidewalks sweeped and their gardens in top- shape. And at some point, a committee goes through all the competing villages to vote for the winner. It is a place where people have privately organized street party's with barbecue, a fire in a field, everybody brings stuff to eat (and drink... it is Germany, after all) and talk about the latest gossip. I think the reason for bringing up this place is that things work by example. There is no police station or security guard... the street-cleaning truck only covers the (one) main road, and it is up to the residents to keep the rest clean. People just know that if everyone carries a part of the load, things won't get out of hand.
I understand that life in a big city can never be compared to the idyllic ways of a small community, but it can't hurt to look at it and see what we might learn from them.
Now I am all into writing about my home!
Just looking at the picture, I remember the stuff I did as a kid growing up. It was amazing. Sadly - as a kid it was really nothing special to me. It was "normal" to play in the woods, to build "hide- outs" by the river, to drink milk directly from the cow (no kidding), to get on a little boat one village north and arrive on the sand bank in front of my grandparents house just in time for the barbecue. But finding it all "normal" was not the bad part. The bad part was that once I moved away to boarding school in Stuttgart, I turned into a teenage snob, who started looking down on the woods, the hide- outs, the cows and the Danube. In my hope to aspire a different future, I ridiculed my past. I started looking at the people there, thinking that "I want to go places... I don't want to be stuck here... I don't want the same routines day in and out". I would go there to visit in my designer clothes, feeling sorry for the "poor villagers" who might not even know how to spell GUCCI, when in reality the time it took me selecting my wardrobe, they spent just being happy! And now I turn around, draw a line and summarize to find that at the end, we all just live our lives the way we know how. I went away, followed my strange dreams and did crazy stuff all around the world. But now I am back to being a "routine person", and I sometimes wonder why I wasn't happy being just that to begin with. A stabile life, a steady relationship, a little back yard, two little dogs, cooking at home, making a living, dealing with the every day stuff. The same stuff that the people I used to look down on have been dealing with all along. It almost feels like all I did was avoid reality for a while; an extra loop before getting back on the road of life that we all travel on. It sometimes is hard to find a distinction between what's real and what's not. Things that we never think possible turn into reality, and once they end it is like they were never real at all. We all make choices, and I know that a part of me will always have the need to aspire new things, take on new challenges and learn about whatever comes my way or grabs my interest. But I now also know that where I come from and what I have done in my past will always be part of who I am today, tomorrow, next year or in three decades from now. I therefor want to say "I'M SORRY" to my little village - for not appreciating it enough when I was still there, and for not giving it the credit it deserved once I left.
How exactly did I end up talking about all this in a post that was supposed to be about me "surviving in Trenton"???
Oh well... got side tracked.
Have a great Sunday, keep your streets clean and please... next time you see me, don't make fun of me for drinking milk directly from the cow!!!
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