After 12 hours’ flight, the airplane finally landed at Frankfurt international airport. I got up from my seat, on which I spent most of the 12 hours sleeping (too bad that there was no mini TV on the back of each seat), took my carry-on luggage and got off the plane with the flow of the crowd.
Finally I’m in Germany, yes, after who-knows-how-many years of being a huge fan of her (or his, if you consider Germany masculine, as “ der Vaterland”). Perhaps I shall not call myself a “huge fan”, for a fan is supposed to know a lot about his or her admirer while I know almost nothing about this country----I might be a little bit exaggerating here, but I mean it. Before I learnt German, all I knew about German culture were based on some eye-catching pictures on travel magazines, a little basic stuff about world modern history, fairy tales from Brother Green, and a handful of anecdotes about an Austrian Empress (you may argue that she’s not even Deutsche, but she’s from Bavaria, I guess that counts.) Since I started my German lesson, I haven been introduced to a great world of literature, history, philosophy, art…ect. And the more I learn, the more strongly I feel that I know little about everything…
Right now I’m on this “dream-land”, everything in front of my eyes are new, and I want to know and understand them well. I passed the Customs security check quite quickly, surprised that the Custom official (Zollbeamten the first German word I learnt) let me pass without bringing up any inquiry. I got all my luggage, purchased a new cell phone SIM card, hanged out a little bit in the airport, before I set off to the train station.
I could have taken a flight directly from Frankfurt am Main to Berlin, but I decided to take the longer trip on the train, and to take the chance to have a look at it.
As the ICE left Frankfurt main station and started running on the green plain, I was surprised by the scene outside of my window: not those “beautiful little houses with pretty flowers on the windowsill” I have expected, nor the forest where little wood cottages locate, but graffiti on the walls along the train track: patterns or letters in exaggerating shapes and noisy colors—I would expect such graffiti in New York City, or on the top floor of my high school teaching building, but not here!
“ When we think of Germany, what often comes into our mind is really only the landscape in Bavaria.” My friend reminded me of this common stereotype toward Germany held by many Chinese.
What shall I expect? What is real Germany? What in the following months will change my perspective? Questions crowded my mind, yet I had no energy to think them through. I fell asleep on the coach. When I woke up, I was welcomed by even more grand and sophisticated graffiti on every wall facing the train track. I arrived in Berlin.
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