Last Updated on February 23, 2021
I left Berlin for a quick visit home to my loved ones, and most importantly, to photograph the wedding of one of my oldest friends. Usually I dread visiting Erfurt, the town I grew up in, because if there is such a thing as growing apart from your hometown, then I have certainly experienced it. I doubt that I’d ever go back there if my sister and a few friends were still living there, and usually only spend a few days there to catch up with everyone.
This time it was different though. It had been a while that I’d visited Erfurt during the summer, and having a first-time visitor in town for a couple of days also helped me seeing my oh-so-boring town in a new light. I spent hours wandering the cobble stone streets, marveling at the well-maintained and restored half-timbered houses, the imposing cathedral and the picturesque little squares, lined with coffee shops and restaurants. Al fresco dinners on warm summer evenings, picnics by the river, a wine festival and long runs with my favorite running buddy also helped making me appreciate my town again. I might not ooh and aah over the Kraemerbruecke, a bridge covered with houses on both sides (pictured above), like many tourists do, but I can see why people are charmed by it and I even felt some hometown pride when I showed my visitor some of my favorite spots around town. Quaint, small Erfurt sure is different from Berlin, where I am spending the rest of the month, and even more so from New York, but the slower pace was a welcome change after spending so much time in big cities over the past few months.
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It does look pretty. I have also out-grown my home town and although I love going back to visit, I would never live there again. It’s not even because of the size as I would quite like to live somewhere even smaller (the population of my home city Tauranga is about 120,000), it’s that I don’t like bumping into people I used to go to high school with as I am a completely different person than I was then, and the fact that living there again feels like a step backwards.
I so get you, Katie 🙂 One of my old friends asked me ‘Don’t you think it might be time to move back home?’ and I was horrified just at the thought of it. I am so different from everyone there, I would feel totally out of place :O