WHY WÜRZBURG NOT FOREVER?: A SUMMER LOVE
This article was originally published in German. The English version is an automatic translation and may contain errors. The German original is authoritative.
The bachelor's degree, the master's, the internship – it's coming to an end. Würzburg is being left again. It was nice here, no one complains. Everyone is sad to go, but no one stays. Everyone thought it was good, but not good enough?
By now, a large part of my friend group has finished their studies, dropped out, or decided on a different subject. Most of them want to move on, to a bigger city, because Würzburg feels like a village. Everyone knows everyone and no matter where you go, you meet someone new – there's definitely an overlap in your friend circle. You should think carefully about who you date, because the probability of seeing each other every day in the canteen or library is very high. Now I'm here in the big city and I actually miss the familiar. Here you don't run into anyone. The anonymity and freedom offer you unlimited possibilities for action. Unlimited possibilities that I can't even use because I don't want to do anything unlimited. Würzburg as a small Bavarian (Lower Franconian) idyll, where I can walk home at night without worry, where I can go on online dates without fear, and where I was never alone. I felt very comfortable here. Perhaps too comfortable. Somehow it can't have been everything.
In my early twenties in a comfortable city. A city with few challenges, because you don't necessarily have to decide who you are. You're a community, a bubble, and there are only two clubs that are good and three events at the weekend that you can go to. There's always something going on, but not too much. So you can take part in almost everything without having to decide. The big city forces you to decide. To decide who you are and where you really want to go, and not just to take part.
Würzburg is the perfect beginning. You feel like you belong and are in good hands. Conventional, but alternative enough to take the first steps out of your bourgeois parental home. Perhaps that's what makes Würzburg's dynamic. The constant change of people who change and shape the city. A chapter of life that prepares us for many more. I think I would never say no to a summer in Würzburg, but summers simply don't last forever.