Story Twenty-Nine
That time we needed a photo break.
Germany is an odd place, for an American. There is this national norm they call “wegbier” which means “beer along the way,” roughly, and for all the public drunkenness there aren’t many loud people. Coming home to JFK was like a sensory overload, it was loud and jangly and messy in a way I didn’t expect, because it was home.
Not all of Europe is Germany and England but those were the places we went, and they seemed somehow more rational than the states do. It makes sense because they are older countries and also smaller ones, so they have learned to be social in a way we haven’t yet and it seems never will.
I would like to show you some photos by my colleague Dominic Gwinn, who kindly accompanied me on my travels. I’d been to LA and DC since I was shot, but I’d not tried international travel.
It turns out I was mostly fine in London, but once we got to Germany, I was lost. My neurologist says my brain was damaged in the place that stores spoken language, and my fluent German was gone. It was terrifying— I could see the words but not say them. And the whole point of going to Germany in the first place was that I speak fluent German. Or I did, anyway. I can still speak the kind of German that I use semi-regularly; “I can get you 800 words on Friday,” for example. But that doesn’t help much in Berlin when you’re trying to sort out where your train is.
And so, Dominic’s photos. Published with permission but do know the copyright holder is @dominicgwinn and you should definitely hire him because he’s the most hardworking journalist I know.
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