Where are you really from?

Although Linh was born in Berlin and raised in the south of Germany her entire life, she still gets compliments on how good her German is by her compatriots. She grew up feeling that her Asian ethnicity did not seem to match her German nationality, so most of the time when confronted with the question “where are you from?” Linh would automatically answer, “I was born in Germany from Vietnamese parents.”

And so far, this answer is the most suitable one because it didn’t result in a follow-up question or a quizzical look that seemed to beg her for a follow up question: “but where are you really from?”

Ironically, Linh, too, often asked herself the exact same question. 

Growing up as a German born Vietnamese kid, Linh identified herself as part of a group that she named the “in-betweens”. She was from the in-between world— concretely somewhere between the German and the Vietnamese realms — but never really from either one of them. Oftentimes, she found herself too blunt and straightforward for her Vietnamese peers, while being too expressive and overly-caring for her German ones.

And yet, she wouldn’t fully and wholly be herself without either side of her seemingly opposite character.

As a result, most of the people which Linh naturally gravitated towards were also people like herself: people who did not identify fully with any set of culture or nation-state. In this group of friends, she truly felt like she belonged. In this specific group of people, Linh got to cherry-pick whenever she wanted to be German and whenever she wanted to be Vietnamese. 

She got to be critical of a culture, while simultaneously feeling very proud of it. 

She got to explore her internal conflicts, unleash her most repressed thoughts, and question the often unquestionable.

Linh remembers, as she was growing up, how desperately she wanted to look like the typical German kid. And more importantly, how desperately she wanted to live the life of one. In fact, up until her teenage years, every single summer holiday for Linh equalled travelling to Vietnam with the entire family, whether she wanted to or not. At the beginning it was extremely fun because Linh got to discover another piece of land that, supposedly, also belonged to her. 

But as time passed and as this activity became not only mandatory but also extremely repetitive, Linh grew annoyed at the situation and by projection at Vietnam itself. She slowly grew to reject this nation that she didn’t necessarily want to claim as her own. 

 “Why are we not going to Italy or Spain like all the other kids in my school?” Linh once asked her parents when summer time rolled around. Little did her parents know, it was never because Linh disliked Vietnam as a country - she never did, not even for a split second. (today she is very grateful that she was able to travel that much and got to know her other home country so well). It was more about the aftermath of the trip and the fact that at school, she couldn’t fully share her stories with her predominantly white German classmates, as they couldn’t relate at all to her stories about this far and foreign country. 

She desperately wanted to blend in because she was tired of being the rare Asian kid in her class. Not because she was trying to deny her Vietnamese roots, but more because she wanted to truly feel more part of her German ones. Her growing up was filled with conscious efforts to prove to her surroundings that she was just as German as the rest of them. She proved herself by speaking perfect German. She did so by living according to the quintessential German values such as order, diligence and efficiency. She did so by cherishing other people’s time, just as much as she did her own.

But of course those conscious efforts never seemed enough because Linh’s physical appearance seemed to introduce her to the world even before she could verbally do so. Because her physical appearance seemed to speak louder than any ultra complicated German word that she knew. Because her physical appearance seemed to say it all.

And its main message was that although Linh was from Germany, she was actually really from somewhere else.

Linh shared with me many different anecdotes. Some funny ones, some heartbreaking ones. Some were very unique to her experiences, while others seemed almost universal. And after an hour of doing just that — sharing stories — Linh concluded that the older she got, the closer she felt towards her Vietnamese roots.

“As if, this entire time, the German society had pushed me towards the Vietnamese one, both consciously and unconsciously,” Linh confessed.

We discussed for a while the reasons why she might have felt closer to the Vietnamese society that was thousands of miles away from her geographically and concluded that they were twofold. Firstly, while growing up in the Western world as an Asian child, Linh felt like people around her, from a very young age, saw more of her differences than her similarities compared to them. 

Or at least that was the way that she felt others perceived her. 

The second reason was that the Vietnamese society seemed to be more accepting of who she was. Or perhaps more forgiving of who she wasn’t. And that made all the difference. Because even though Linh was neither an “original Vietnamese” by birth, nor a kid who grew up there, she always felt close and fully welcomed by the Vietnamese people. That created an even stronger connection, as she knew, that she did not have to question her belonging in the Vietnamese society because they embraced her exactly as she was. 

And life wouldn’t be so interesting without its ironic twist: today, Linh travels to Vietnam every chance that she has and- best of all- she does so voluntarily. Linh added that most of the time, she also brought some of her German friends with her and they always seemed to enjoy her other country just as much as she did. 

Linh recently moved to London and confessed to never have felt more like home. She was convinced that it was because everyone in London was from somewhere else and they, as a collective, treated London like a transit place— a stepping stone — towards someplace different. 

Someplace more permanent.

I wasn’t surprised when Linh told me about her love for London because, for the little I know of this city, it seemed to be the hub and the perfect living environment for in-betweeners like her very self.

While living there, she met a lot of German people with whom she had grown quite close to. And Linh also commented about the specific differences between the Germans in London and the Germans at home. She noticed how these Germans that she found living abroad were much more accepting of her German identity. They didn’t seem to question where she was “really” from. And when that question was finally asked, what they actually meant was literally which part of Germany did she come from or did she grow up in. 

And— although it shouldn’t have— this simple question warmed her little heart.

Maybe these German people were just missing the motherland while living abroad and so they were more eager to find connections and reference points from their home country to latch onto?

Or maybe these are just more open-minded Germans who have imbibed themselves with the in-betweenness of London?

She noticed that many “maybes” jumped around her head ever since her arrival to London.

One day, as she was just having a casual conversation with her German friend in London, he told Linh that her way of being was “extremely typical of a South German person”.

And just like that, unexpectedly, right then and there, Linh felt the most accepted she had ever felt. 

He perceived her as a South German.