K. writes about how she ended up in Frankfurt via detours through Canada and Thuringia.

Born in the beautiful city of Bamberg. Grew up in Bamberg, then Frankfurt, then Montreal, with my parents, later in Thuringia with my grandparents.
A new life in a foreign world in Canada, in Montreal.
I started school in the first grade, looking foreign, with blonde hair and blue eyes, speaking a foreign language, not speaking or understanding a word of English.
The first time with so many children in a room in a school with a teacher who led me to a seat... I was full of fear, learning my first English words as the command: ‘Heads down’ when the teacher wrote something on the blackboard.
I learned English very quickly, both written and spoken...
On the right-hand side of the blackboard, there was a ranking list for good performance. Next to the names of the children (the best ones), asterisks were drawn in chalk. My name was near the top... I cautiously made my first contacts.
Then, after a short time (about a year), my parents decided on my next life:
Return to Germany, temporarily (months?).
Living in a garret room on the 5th floor with two others in Offenbach, in my aunt's house.
My next life:
Travelling with my mother to visit my grandparents in Thuringia, whom I did not know. I was dropped off there for a short time and left there to start school in a village school, because although I could already ‘read and write’, I could not do so in German! My parents lived and remained in Frankfurt am Main!
At my grandparents' house, I attended the village school, which had four classes: 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th. With the other children in my class, I learned to play, read and write German.
We played together and enjoyed our freedom. Nevertheless, I never really belonged. I wasn't a local, I had no parents, ‘only grandparents’. At that time, I once again perceived myself as ‘different’. I saw my parents, who were complete strangers to me, once or twice a year at most, when they or my grandmother and I came to visit. My parents then thought that I wanted/should spend all my time (for example, during the summer holidays) with them and conform to their ideas of parenting. That was not the case.
My next life:
My life in the village, at school, with my grandmother, with my familiar existence, ended abruptly and incomprehensibly for me when my mother came to get me and took me to Frankfurt for good. I can still see my class waving and calling goodbye to me from the window of a large half-timbered house, the school, our classroom...
I pushed my bicycle, paid for by my grandfather, cared for and looked after by my grandfather, which I was allowed to take with me to Frankfurt. My life there was irrevocably over.
The train arrived in Frankfurt ‘full’. My father picked us up at the main station. I knew I had to be happy...
My father, who was just as much a stranger to me as my mother, greeted me first, hugged me (presumably) to realise that my coat, a sturdy dark blue with a silver-coloured fur collar, was much too small ... I loved that coat.
I had never noticed that it had become too small for me. It was the ‘good’ coat, the one you didn't wear every day.
So we first drove to ‘Ott und Heinemann’, which was still open ... I was supposed to choose a coat ... Actually, I didn't want another one ... because I hadn't chosen any other clothes either. They were always sent in a parcel ... (my grandmother probably sent a letter every now and then when my clothes had become too small for me) ...
In the end, I got a brown and white patterned (pepita or houndstooth) coat with a dark brown velvet collar. I didn't like it...
Then we drove ‘home’... My parents owned a car!!! (a VW with a small, oval window). We drove through streets with glittering lights, traffic lights, street lamps and illuminated shop windows. I liked that. I took in all the impressions.
At some point, the car stopped and parked in front of a large house with tall windows, of which there were many in the street ...
The front door was unlocked, the stairwell light came on, and we climbed to the 5th floor, each staircase with 21 steps, past large doors with windows, until we reached the top. At a door that reminded me of the door to a ‘junk room’ ... 3 rooms, one for me, with a kitchen, bedroom, living room, with tiny little windows ... The rooms were very low towards the wall...
If you wanted to look out of the window, you had to kneel down. That was my future home.
My next life in the city began. Without any contacts, with strangers who were my parents, without any orientation. Everything had been taken away from me.
I slept on a wide sofa that could be pulled out into a bed and whose sides could be folded down. My new life really did begin as a fresh start in the big city.
In the weeks that followed, I was busy with institutions, exams and kind people assessing my readiness for secondary school and recommending me for it.
This phase was also accompanied by fear; the pressure to perform that I was under seemed natural.
I missed everything: my grandmother, my home, my class, the children, my friends, the garden, the village, my freedom.
Frankfurt only frightened me.
Next life: the new school... everything was huge, the stairwell, large doors, large classrooms, lots of children, lots of teachers, large corridors... and me alone.
I had to take every step with me, explore everything, experience everything. And again I arrived late to class, the social groups had already formed. Once again an outsider in a class with (46?) pupils... once again the pressure to perform, the demand to perform, having to satisfy everyone. Since I had lost my English over the years and had learned ‘Russian’ instead, I started in a class where English was a new subject. Once again I was downgraded...
I quickly learned to take the tram (like today's Äppelbahn) to school on my own, changing trains along the way. My student ID allowed me to explore the city independently, in both senses of the word, and to expand my horizons.
I liked the unfamiliar, the big, the bustling. Year after year, I became more accustomed to the diversity, the many people I didn't know, to whom I didn't have to say ‘good day’ as I had done before... and I began to like the city, to find my way around and to accept the ultimate ‘isolation’, the feeling of being an outsider, which I felt was a given for me.
I also forced myself to view my school, the large classes, the students coming from many different directions, and the diverse requirements in a positive light. As a sign of growing up, the upper school students were allowed to smoke in the ‘small’ schoolyard... So, in order to belong, you had to smoke.
My subsequent studies, also ‘here’, taught me to become even more independent and self-confident.
Contrary to my parents' instructions and guidelines on how to behave, I bravely walked with my boyfriend through the relevant streets in the station district at night, on Allerheiligenstraße, etc., always observing attentively how women and men behaved in a suggestive manner, but always hand in hand, because we were both (presumably) afraid of the unknown.
When we had saved up a little money, we bravely went to a nightclub. With a little courage mixed with fear, we ordered a bottle of sparkling wine!
Our budget was already exhausted, and the performances of the agile ladies were less exciting than we thought ... Looking around the red-light district every now and then, we quickly grew bored with the area.
The nightlife in Mackie Messer, the Tangente, the jazz club... offered a more exciting life... and endless opportunities to experience the many facets of the city, to go anywhere... Then there was the culture, the music, the opera, the concerts, classical, rock, the theatres, the Main with its banks and bridges. Last but not least, travelling, initially by train, then very quickly by plane to the wider world. Or the proximity to the city forest, the Taunus, the Rheingau. It's also wonderful to be able to hop on a train or plane in the morning (at very reasonable prices) and head to Paris, London or Amsterdam, for example, to attend or experience special events and then sleep in your own bed again later that evening. And then there is the cosmopolitan atmosphere in the relatively compact city centre, with its attractive high-rise buildings and the Main River, which invites you to sit on the banks on balmy summer nights, looking out over the illuminated, glittering city, the Eiserner Steg bridge and the sparkling waters of the Main with its leisurely passing ships.
If possible, I will not leave ‘my’ Frankfurt with my experiences, my formative memories, my life opportunities. This city always entices me to actively participate in life and make my existence interesting.
K.G.
(Original text in German)