Connections? A Day in Szczecin/Stettin

My family was good enough to spend four hours on the train with me yesterday. Two hours each way to travel to Szczecin, Poland, north east of Berlin, over the German-Polish border.

My father was born in Szczecin in January 1931 when this was still part of Germany and known as Stettin. He always spoke fondly of his birth town even though he only lived there until the age of 12 or 14 years old. The details and dates are sketchy. It appears as if he came and went, between being sent away (with no choice) to an elite Nazi boarding school as a young boy, and then returning to fetch and flee with his mother and younger brother when the Soviets entered Germany. I have always believed that this town represented family and happiness to him and I wanted somehow to share this with him, to have a connection to his childhood, which I cannot now ask him about. There were also the painful moments. His little sister died in 1942 as a toddler and then his father was killed in the German army, three weeks after being sent away. Perhaps this is why he never returned to Stettin. It represented joy and good times but then ended in bad memories. He also never did have the opportunity to return. He died three years before the fall of Berlin Wall.

I know I was searching for something in Stettin. A link to my father, something he spoke about, something familiar, from pictures he rarely showed us but that are forever marked in my memory. There was no familiarity for me, nor the connection I had been yearning for. Stettin seemed like a busy, slightly depressing, former eastern block city. My father would not have known it like this. Yes he would have remembered the trams, some of the striking medieval and neo-gothic buildings, but not the communist era apartment buildings, the new high rises and the graffiti covering much of the city. But I’m glad I went, even for a few hours. I saw where he came from, the streets he wandered as a child, the place where he was happy as a young boy and this somehow makes me feel closer to him. He would be happy we went.

Stettin was an interesting day trip from Berlin, a bustling city of 400,000 inhabitants, but not what I would call a tourist destination. Thanks for accompanying me my adorable family and giving up a day in Berlin. It would not have been the same without you. As my father always believed, family is everything, I am glad you were with me.

Tomorrow, a day cycling through Potsdam, discovering its superb and infamous castles and gardens. Our Deutsch adventure continues.