Neuwied

Flying Turkish Airlines: Istanbul-Attatürk Airport with the Bosporus in the far background

Smoking Kills - what a nice little coffin nail gallery, as my friend Peter would call it.

Seen at duty free shops in Istanbul Airport.

It was a short visit of just a week in August to Germany with the major purpose of meeting my parents. I took the train from Frankfurt airport through the Rhine Valley with it's castles and vineyards (which I hated as a child but meanwhile regard as beautiful) via Mainz, Koblenz to Neuwied. There was this peculiar tranquility in the train through the valley on this beautiful summer afternoon. With the suspension bridge of Neuwied in view, my thoughts went to my friends, foremost to Richard, who is also having a holiday right now in 'Down Under'. Back in my home town, nothing much has changed. It feels like a trip to the past. This small town deserted of people, where on the only day you make it to the city center you run accidentally into your best friend's father.

A shop in the Markstraße in Neuwied selling special cars

…wonder whether there is a market for such toys in town

I had dinner with my family, father, mother, brother and his girlfriend, at a small beer garden on the river banks in Leutesdorf on Sunday. I lay on the sun bed on the balcony, surrounded by green trees and the neat lawn, in this tranquil neighborhood, of my parents' huge house, which by general Vietnamese standards (to which I compare them now from the perspective of a country I have meanwhile spent almost 5 years in) would already be called a villa, reading a book by Paolo Coelho. I had just the day before red an interview with him, on his life and the book, in the train from the way to Frankfurt airport to my home-town. Having red the interview in which Coelho says that you need to have a big ego to be successful with your ideas has encouraged me further to move on. Even Germany became suddenly a consideration again. One finds abandoned newspapers in trains with quality reading, people are working on their university assignments on laptops, and at least some of the conversations around are so much more thoughtful than the crap you hear everyday in Vietnam. Not only for reasons of career but also for other aspects of life, such as parents and friendships, quality of foods, comfort of life, healthcare, education, ethical issues in daily life. It would be a great place for the kids. I saw immigrant families (probably asylum seekers) in the train, and was a bit jealous while at the same time admiring that they had made their way to a better place. It was the first time after many years that I enjoyed Germany really much. And it was because of my parents, brother, and because of friends. It was because I have seen what I was actually missing. I have realized where my home (the first one) really is. It is a place I belong to, even though I am not living at it. A reason was also the summer, and I wonder whether it would have been differently if it was winter, like earlier this year in Berlin. I have spent most of the time in my parents' place, reading booking, catching up with old private mails in my inbox, using social media freely without TOR browser, jogging in the fields, and just enjoying the food, supermarkets with bio- and vegetarian- options and the environment in my home town.

Leyscher Hof - a Biergarten in Germany with good food and a nice location by the

river opposite the town of Andernach

It doesn't look nice taken with the camera of my mobile, but it was most awesome to have some good toasted bread with nice salami, fresh cheese and home-grown tomato after years

I just wonder if I'd sooner or later become the typical German with this slightly negative attitude that every minute in German everyday life seems to prevail. "Life is so bad here in this luxury county", the people seem to believe. I do not know whether it is caused by over-individualization, over-specialization, the weather throughout two thirds of the year, or the recession or just because people are used to be taken care of by a state of development, and a government and political system that others just can dream of. I grew up in a world of luxury, and that has enabled me to become a person of thought. In the flat business environment that I am now embraced by I feel deprived of these features. As often discussed with my friend who feels similar issues, it seems that am a niece person and need to find the right nice profession. What I am doing now, and where, is probably just for a while, and I need to make sure that I will not be leaving my plans behind and that I am not advancing too slowly, not to realize that I haven't achieved what I really want to once it may be too late.

I have been visiting teachers Dai and Phuong, with whom I had lunch in the canteen (Mensa) and coffee at Café Spitz in the centre of Bonn. Again it felt like time warp. Time is running, and at the same time, the years had given me so much of experiences. Youth in Neuwied with great parents and friends, studies in Bonn with backpacking across Asia, and now expat-life, being single and having family at the same time. I always wanted everything, and here I go, as it seems. Having nothing in a way, and still so much. I have no reason to complain and despite all difficulties, life has been good to me. I should probably be less afraid, and happier as well. There is maybe less to fear than I always think. And isn't life great if one has friends in many places, to share pieces of the way? In Bonn I also met my friends Armin and Tina. We had a small barbeque on the river banks like many years ago when I was a student. We remembered old stories and had a nice evening near the northern bridge. I took the train back home on the next afternoon, remembering my time commuting to my old private school in Bad Honnef where I took the last two years of my high school and to Bonn where I also went by train often. On the day before I had taken the train on the other side of the Rhine, just to get another perspective which I used to have when using the car.

Runners on the northern bridge in Bonn upon a summer evening

Sunset over Solarword

Barbeque in the meadows on the river banks opposite my old dormitory, like in old days as a student

Grafitti and light effects from the cars on the highway at the Nordbrücke in Bonn

Rhine by night with the Nordbrücke in Bonn, seen from the meadows

The university again seemed to me like an Ivory Tower. Everything seems to be done in a very exact way, slow, totally different from the way things in my business and in the country I reside in would work. I had even some negative thoughts of the people I saw in the station or on the train. They seem to live a "subsidized" relaxed life. They can afford to work slowly, short hours, for good money. They are protected by their government. I am not sure whether I even make a connection to them being able to live this standard of life because other people work harder for less benefits in other countries around the world, to which certain production and services are outsourced…for example when they make holidays…an activity I am involved in…and when they ask for lower prices, while to me it seems that the price of their tours is already low, and that guides, drivers and hotel staffs should actually earn more...the developed world as forerunner of corporate business and the new colonization.

This would apply of course also to the academic world, to the people who work as professors, maybe in some softer sciences, they seem relaxed, not stressed out as the people in business. I would love to work in a relaxed way and work with reflection and thought. But I am also afraid of it. Because I wonder how they create value. One of my professors had once answered to my concern that in academics cognition as such is already value. I agree to it, however am still afraid that we have arrived in times in which no sponsor for such activities that are not purely economic can be found. Today, even education becomes more and more commercialized. So I am afraid, that there will be less and less space and funding for such kind of research that actually does not create economic value but rather works on the other end of the chain and seeks to gain knowledge to protect public goods and helps making things not only more sustainable but rather more equitable. I am thus also of this world and of daring to do the things that would interest me.

Some small achievements, publications generated throughout the last two years

Childhood memories in Waldbreitbach…

…revisiting the Scheid'sche Ölmühle, which belonged to the family of a friend I met in Saigon

On the last evening I cooked for my family. On the menu was garlic bread and herb butter bread with pesto as appetizers, noodle ham broccoli gratin as main dish and banana curd as dessert. I got sad that it was just such a short time I took for my parents and family and for Germany in general, friends, people at the university, old books and things I could have caught up with, such as scanning old photos and so on. After all, I still haven't really re-learnt yet how to make time again.

Farewell dinner for my parents and brother

I am looking desperately for excellence in Vietnam and more and more become aware, that here fake smiles and everything that sparkles seem to be gold, and that - over-generalizing - it is more a country for people to work who elsewhere cannot perform rather than one for excellence. It is time for moving on and I am preparing this now. I will do a surf-, book-writing- and studies-preparation-trip soon. I had plans to work part time after that, teaching, looking for a new job and trying to get accepted for a PhD and respective scholarships. The decision had already been made and it should be just a few months to go from now. Some things have changed and I will be postponing the part-time plan for another one to two years, as a new opportunity came up, which I will post later.