I still have a suitcase in...

Today the flamboyant owner of a fabric store asked me, "What is your accent?" The funny thing is: I am in the US. If things continue the way they are going, I will soon be more likely to be taken for a foreigner on my native turf.

Luckily, it turned out the guy has a German-born mother, so I guess he was highly attuned to the sound of a light German inflection. We got to talking about the things I miss when I am here or there and what I look forward to, and he told me his mother's take on switching back and forth between the cultures. He said she is always complaining. When she arrives in the US, she says, "It is impossible to get anywhere here using public transportation," and when she arrives in Germany, she says, "People here are so rude!"

People pose the question on what I miss about the US/Germany (depending on where I currently am) to me all the time. One of my stock answers, handy for surprising my audience and keeping the conversation from getting too heavy, is drinking fountains. In Germany you rarely see a drinking fountain, whereas in the US, you can expect to find them indoors and out in almost every public place.

I think when you live between two cultures and have seen the best and worst sides that both have to offer, you will always see room for improvement where ever you are. Furthermore you will always be missing something, pining after something, feeling incomplete. The German way of expressing this is to say, "I still have a suitcase in Bonn," (or, in German, Ich habe noch einen Koffer in Bonn). That means, "I still have one foot in Bonn" or "I left my heart in Bonn."

But the more I travel back and forth, the more I will be leaving suitcases in Virginia and forgetting mein Herz in Heidelberg, because the idioms (after prepositions) are the first to go - or at least get spliced and blended.