https://growwithless.com/tags/germany/ Recent content in Germany on Grow With Less https://growwithless.com/%3Clink%20or%20path%20of%20image%20for%20opengraph,%20twitter-cards%3E https://growwithless.com/%3Clink%20or%20path%20of%20image%20for%20opengraph,%20twitter-cards%3E Hugo -- 0.151.2 en Sat, 04 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://growwithless.com/posts/germany-used-to-know-how-to-change/ Sat, 04 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://growwithless.com/posts/germany-used-to-know-how-to-change/ <p>I grew up in Houilles, a suburb of Paris, and my first real encounter with Germany was a trip to Berlin when I was about sixteen. I was visiting my penpal Juliane. I remember thinking I wanted to be there forever. The city felt like an infinite canvas, raw and open and full of possibility. The remnants of the Wall were everywhere, and what struck me wasn&rsquo;t just the history but how Germany dealt with it. Here was a country that had done the worst things imaginable and then, instead of burying them, built memorials in the centre of its capital. The stumbling stones in the pavement, the Holocaust memorial near the Bundestag, the refusal to let itself forget. I admired that deeply. The ability to reckon with your own past, to stare at it without flinching, felt like the hardest and most important thing a country could do. And Germany had done it.</p>