My daughter, now aged 8 months, still won't eat anything that doesn't come attached to Mom - apart from fruit. She loves munching on slices of apple and washing her hands in ripe banana. This shouldn't have come as a surprise, as I spent the first half of my pregnancy practically living in one of Weiterstadt's numerous strawberry fields. So, as a native born Weiterstadter, the last of just 18 in all of 2009, she should at least love strawberries. And asparagus. Because this might be the one and only redeeming feature of this boringest of boring small German town: having the freshest, tastiest strawberries and asparagus growing in your backyard.
But apart from those months in spring and early summer, living in Weiterstadt is about the same as being German: you wake up one morning and think, what the fuck...???? What is it I am doing here? How the fuck did I end up here? In a town miles from a river, a lake, not to mention an ocean, in fact no body of water bigger than little Darmbach, a small stream with the rather unfortunate name of "bowels brook" or "intestine stream", that runs through parts of it.
I remember driving through small towns in rural France, on our way to one coast or the other, and thinking, who the hell would choose to live here when they could live in, say, Provence, Brittany, or near the Atlantic Ocean? I should have known the answer: people like me, who one day wake up and discover that these past six years they've been spending most of their qualitiy time in, of all places, Weiterstadt.
And anyway, my daughter has yet to tast her first strawberry.
But apart from those months in spring and early summer, living in Weiterstadt is about the same as being German: you wake up one morning and think, what the fuck...???? What is it I am doing here? How the fuck did I end up here? In a town miles from a river, a lake, not to mention an ocean, in fact no body of water bigger than little Darmbach, a small stream with the rather unfortunate name of "bowels brook" or "intestine stream", that runs through parts of it.
I remember driving through small towns in rural France, on our way to one coast or the other, and thinking, who the hell would choose to live here when they could live in, say, Provence, Brittany, or near the Atlantic Ocean? I should have known the answer: people like me, who one day wake up and discover that these past six years they've been spending most of their qualitiy time in, of all places, Weiterstadt.
And anyway, my daughter has yet to tast her first strawberry.
