The German Has Returned

This was written on September 18, 2013, in Vietnam:

The past few nights I haven’t been able to sleep through the night. I am exhausted in the evening and I often fall asleep, watching TV or reading a book. Then an hour later I wake and stay that way until dawn. Tonight is no different, except I finally understand my insomnia: it’s been exactly one year since I left the United States and returned to Germany.

As I sit here in my hotel room in Danang, Vietnam, I watch the curtains as they blow in the hot South-east Asian wind. I feel very close to the lightning and rumbling of the thunder on the 24^th floor of this high rise that towers over a shit-brown river. On my right I can see a lit-up, white statue of Buddha and on my left is a bridge in rainbow colors. Below on the streets, a Vietnamese man is trying to sell his services by repeating the same phrase, over and over.

The vision that pushed me over the edge tonight and finally transformed my insomnia into a very brief “cry-me-a-river” episode was of my dog Morla and I, walking in the Upper Peninsula fields at the Native American Sun Dance in Rapid River. It was during that time that one of the elders decided that I belong to the Wolf Clan, maa’iingan. Back then, thinking about the traits of a wolf, and my own personality, I found my new clan to be very fitting. I still feel that way, and the vision tonight reminded me that nothing really has changed yet at the same time everything has.

A year ago I was persuaded I am an American. I dreaded leaving my habitual and cozy life in one of the most beautiful spots on Earth with the greatest IPA, my closest friends and best dog ever. My goal was to return to Marquette as fast as I could, buy a house in the woods and live  a life as natural and sustainable as possible.

A year ago I complained about the German way, being suddenly so close to family again, moving back to my provincial home town, having to speak that guttural German language and feeling claustrophobic with 80 million people in a country the size of Michigan (which has only 9.8 million people).

A year ago, I thought 365 days is a long time.

Heavy torrential rain outside my hotel room draws me back into the present moment. I listen to the whistling wind under the door, which – how ironic – sounds like a howling wolf. I better take a look at the emergency exit map and locate the flashlight in case the newly built Novotel skyscraper doesn’t stand this crazy amount of water streaming from the heavens. I wish I could cry as much as it is raining and release all the stored up anxiety, pain and fear over the things that have happened in the past year: My dad’s cancer, my failure to write a book, my disappointing tangle with German men, fights with my mom, grandma’s poor health, almost collapsing under self-imposed workloads, more cancer and death in my extended family, cigarettes, missing my American home, walking without a dog at my side.

Yet during this year also a lot positive happened: I fell in love with Germany. Suddenly I enjoyed German words again, both written and spoken. I realized while mountain-biking the beauty of the German countryside. And look at that: German hip-hop music on my i-tunes. I switched from NPR to Die Zeit, and how did I ever exist without German food and Radler? The best part: I am close to my family again. So close that I can’t imagine leaving them again for another 16 years. It’s bittersweet, of course, since I am still as much of an Upper Peninsula wolf as I am a central German gal, but I think it’s time for me to give Deutschland a second chance.

In Vietnam, the rain has eased a little and the howling sounds more like a ghost now. I am beat and ready to try sleep again. Perhaps I can actually relax now since I finally said it out loud: “The German has returned.”

Vietnam

I had a funny feeling when my guide took me into the wooden house on stilts. We had just biked to a rural town in Northern Vietnam near Sapa and the Chinese border. There were motor bikes parked outside, pigs and cows had their stalls underneath the structure and chickens ran around in the yard scattered with palm trees and other lusciously green plants. Clothing hung over the railings and off the side of the roof. The guide walked up the stairs to a large room where about 5 Thai-Vietnamese men sat in a circle along with one woman, an infant and three toddlers. We waved and walked past them to take a look at their kitchen. I thought it was very strange to just barge into these people’s house, but was dependent on the guide. A visit to a native family’s house was not part of my tour agenda, so I was very surprised when the guide told me to sit down in the circle. Soon the men offered me rice wine and food. I cringed and tried to decline as I had made a promise not to drink alcohol as part of a New Year’s resolution and for as I did not care at all to get drunk in a third world country. I also did not want to eat the food, although it smelled delicious. The traditional food was offered in an electric crock pot: a broth with vegetables, herbs and different types of meat, eaten over sticky rice. I watched as the men periodically put raw meat into the boiling stew as well as scooping from a bowl of pig’s blood. The animal had been slaughtered for a celebration of one of the son-in-law’s recent wedding. So, the guide had walked me right into a party that included a ton of rice wine. In the Vietnamese culture and lots of Asian culture it is very rude to refuse food and drink that is offered to guests. So, I ate some sticky rice, and I drank the rice wine. After about 4 shots, which were very small and the rice wine weak, I began to feel uncomfortable. I told the guide that I would like to go and that I did not want to continue to drink. He ignored me. More rounds of shots were served from an unlabeled green glass bottle, and I simply stopped drinking. Then the men began asking why I was not drinking and eating. I told the guide again that I wanted to go. He acknowledged but nothing happened. More shots went around and I watched the men’s eyes, including my guide’s, to glaze over. The only other woman in the room was also drinking the rice wine and getting drunk, while nursing her baby. I continued to sit still as the men pulled out a bong and began smoking who-knows-what, while the TV in the corner was blasting Western cartoons, mesmerizing the barefoot toddlers.

In the end, we left: my guide probably partially drunk, and I pissed that he had put me into this situation. We got back onto our bikes and continued to cycle through the Vietnamese landscape. Rolling hills, some covered in rice paddies, meadows, rivers snaking in between fields and wooden villages. Wherever I passed children, they ran after me, giggling, then waving and screaming: “Hello!” “Thank You” and “Money.” That’s what I and anyone with white skin resemble in this developing country: “Money.” It is beyond obvious that I am a tourist and when I speak and the people hear my American English, I am always a bit nervous. Do they still hold a grudge against Americans? I asked a few locals, and they told me that the past is the past. Yet for me, although I am only an “adopted” American, I think about the war all the time. I read that there are still old booby traps in rural Vietnam that kill people to this day. I think about Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.” I think about “Good Morning, Vietnam” or “Forrest Gump”. I imagine the soldiers in the blustering heat and the Northern Vietnam humid cold. I wonder how tough it must have been for them to adapt to this very different culture. When I look at the jungle, I see camouflaged soldiers, covered in sweat, waiting, smoking to pass the time, trying not to go crazy with homesickness and doubt of the purpose of the war, perhaps guilt over their own actions or simply being terrified. How their hearts must have stood still every time the wind rustled a palm leaf, always on edge, always ready to fight the enemy who knew the jungle so much better than they did.

I also think about the Vietnamese and how much injustice they have endured over the years. How a very large part of the population still lives in huts or on the street with nothing to call their own. But also how so many have gotten rich and now roam the sparkling malls of Ho Chi Minh City. The rift between rich and poor is always visible as I watch a rooster digging in the dirt in front of a fancy hotel and old ladies cooking on the sidewalk, barely hiding their sleeping mat nearby.

I suddenly feel extremely ridiculous to mountain bike through the poor people’s villages. Should I not instead help them? Should I not have instead donated the money I spent on this short weekend trip? But then again who says that the people are poor or unhappy? Isn’t it ironic that I myself would prefer to live a more simplified life: in a wooden house, heated by wood, growing my own foods, making my own clothes – not much unlike the “poor” Vietnamese people I see right here?

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