Returning to My Roots: Family Days in Baden-Württemberg and a Solo Night in Zurich

There is a particular kind of homecoming that does not involve the place where you were born. It involves the place where part of you was made. For me, that place is Baden-Württemberg, the southwestern corner of Germany that hugs the borders of France and Switzerland and feels, every time I arrive, like something in me exhales. My family is from here. I speak the language fluently. I have cousins and aunts and uncles scattered across this beautiful state who I love deeply and do not see nearly enough. Every trip back is equal parts adventure and reunion, and this one, nine days in late April and early May, was one of the best yet.

Exploring Baden-Württemberg

This state rewards slow exploration in a way that few places do. We wound our way through castles, university towns, lakeshores, and island gardens, and every single stop delivered something worth stopping for. Hohenzollern Castle appeared through the morning mist on a grey spring day like something out of a fairy tale, rising from its hilltop in the Swabian Alps with the kind of quiet drama that makes you forget to speak. Tübingen, one of Germany's great university towns, had its usual effect on me, narrow cobblestone lanes climbing steeply from the Neckar River, half timbered houses leaning toward each other overhead, and an intellectual energy that has been humming through that city since the fifteenth century. It is the kind of place that makes you want to think more carefully about things. Konstanz and the Bodensee brought a different kind of beauty entirely, that vast lake shared between Germany, Austria, and Switzerland glittering under a clear sky with the Alps visible on the far shore. And then there was Insel Mainau. We arrived at peak bloom, late April when the tulips and rhododendrons and wisteria were all doing their absolute most, and walking through those gardens felt like moving through a painting. I took hundreds of photographs knowing none of them would do it justice. Some things you simply have to stand inside of.

Kaffee und Kuchen

Woven through all of it was family. Long afternoons around kitchen tables with coffee and cake, the particular rhythm of German conversation that feels different in my mouth than English does, warmer somehow and more rooted. There is something about speaking your family's language in your family's place that connects you to something you did not even know you had been missing. I left every visit feeling full in a way that had nothing to do with the Kuchen, though the Kuchen was always excellent.

One Solo Night in Zurich

I tacked a solo night in Zurich onto the end of the trip before heading home, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions I made. There is something quietly liberating about a night entirely your own at the end of a trip that has been beautifully full of other people. I walked along the Limmat as the evening light faded over the old town, ate a long slow dinner alone with a book, and let the whole trip settle around me. Zurich is elegant and unhurried and exactly the right place for that kind of reflection.

What Comes Home With You

I have made this trip many times now, and it never stops giving me something new. I think that is what roots actually do. They do not keep you in one place. They give you something solid to leave from and return to, again and again, with fresh eyes each time. That idea lives at the center of how I think about learning too. The students who build the deepest foundations are the ones with the most freedom to explore. You have to know where you come from before you can really go anywhere.

Bis zum nächsten Mal, Baden-Württemberg! Until next time.