No Way Back

I spent Christmas in Nuremberg. I was born in this city, I spent my first six years here and then again the time from age 15 to 26. Seventeen years all together.It was my first visit since 2001. At this point my grandmother was still alive and I just had lived through 911 in New York City. The top digital SLR had three megapixel and the Euro was just introduced.I have mixed feelings when it comes to Nuremberg mainly negative ones. I worked here in a Bank for many years a job that could not have been more wrong for me. Things did not work out very well in this city for me.There was one thing that always drew me back to this place, my grandparents but today neither of them is alive any moreMy Friend Guenter was so nice to let me stay at his house. He is now married to his beautiful wife Elke and has a gorgeous young daughter. I had a great time staying with them.But walking around in town I could not have felt more misplaced. I felt like an alien who had just landed on planet earth. I don’t mean that in a judgmental way. I’m talking about the feeling that I totally, completely and utterly do not belong to this place any more.It is amazing how small all of it looks after all these years in New York.  What looked impressive and grand in the past looks so small today.I had a good time at the Christmas Market though. Five gluehwein (hot spiced wine) did the trick. But I payed for that by falling on my face and spilling my soy chai latte all over me at Starbucks later on. :-(My experiences reminded me on an interview that I’ve seen many years ago with the famous Austrian biologist Konrad Lorenz. Talking about plants he said that when a plant ventures out to live in a new environment it goes through a very tough adjustment period but will at the end be stronger then it was before.What he forgot to mention is that after the adjustment there is no way of going back.     "No Way Back" Nuremberg/Germany/Famous Nuremberg Christmas Market 12-23-09 at 03:41 PM

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