Üttingen - Day One

I made it to Üttingen (via Würzburg through Frankfurt Hbf) without any difficulties. Ingrid and Julia were at the train station to pick me up and I can’t even tell you how great it is to see them again. I found it incredible that I recognized almost every bit of the short drive from Würzburg to Üttingen even after all these years. Frieder got home around 11 PM and the four of us sat in the kitchen and looked through photo-albums from when I used to live here. I can’t believe how blond Nathan’s hair was!

I got up this morning and went for a run around the village to re-familiarize myself with the area, but it turns out that it really wasn’t necessary. As soon as I started running, I found that I remembered almost every street corner and building. It’s ancient little places like Üttingen (over 1250 years old) that do very little changing, even over decades. It’s bigger than it used to be, but not by much. I find that it still doesn’t take very long at all to run the entire perimeter of the town.

My German has also come back at an incredible rate since I have arrived. I’m sure that my grammar is terrible and my vocabulary is certainly limited, but I feel like I can converse without much hindrance. Everyone keeps telling me that they are impressed with how much better my German is this time than when the last time I was here. It’s funny how my mind is able to remember so much German just by hearing a dialect that is familiar to it. I find that the dialect of German spoken by the Karlsruhe natives is rather heavily influenced by French (due to its close proximity to the border) and sounds very different than the German spoken in Bavaria. There was, however, some confusion with the difference between “Hauptpunkt” and “Hochzeit”, the former meaning “High-point” and the latter meaning “Wedding”.

So with that said, "It's good to be back.".