Germany: Cold Wind, Clutch Pedals, and the Weight of Walls

Germany: Cold Wind, Clutch Pedals, and the Weight of Walls

by CL Rogerson, world traveler and salty sailor

My first trip to Germany wasn’t really about Germany. I was headed to Poland, a place I’d longed to visit since devouring Michener’s Poland years ago. That book had left fingerprints on my soul. But that’s a story for another time. What I didn’t realize back then was that Germany, in trying to be just a stopover, was about to punch me in the gut.

I landed in Berlin on what I assumed was the tail end of some rogue windstorm. We came in sideways, literally. The plane was crabbing on approach like it was fighting to stay airborne. The wheels hit the tarmac like we owed it money. The flight attendants? Unbothered. “Just another day landing at Brandenburg,” they said, like we hadn’t just defied physics. Welcome to Berlin. Where the wind bites and the sky never apologizes.

And the cold, man. It wasn’t just a chill. It was personal. The kind of cold that calls your bluff. That reminds you of childhood winters you forgot you even had. I’d spent the last decade mostly in the tropics. I’d gone soft. The wool coat I’d pulled from the back of storage did its best, but my bones knew. Winter had come back for me.

I made my way to the rental desk with frozen fingers and tropical arrogance. That’s when Germany decided to show me how the rest of the world sees Americans. The woman at the counter glanced at my license, then looked at me like I’d asked for a camel.

“Nein, nein,” she said, waving her hand, “you’re American. You can’t take that car. I’ll get you an automatic.”

I blinked. “No, I want the manual.”

She stared at me. Real shock. Not irritation, not confusion. Shock. “But Americans don’t drive manuals,” she said. “They want to have a Coke and a phone while they drive.”

“Well, I don’t drink Coke either.”

I wasn’t trying to be clever. Just honest. It took me a minute to realize what she was seeing: the kind of tourist she normally gets. People who want ease. Comfort. Predictability. The convenience generation.

She didn’t know I grew up in the Midwest, where we learned to drive on tractors, in trucks with no power steering and three in the tree, you had to persuade those into gear. Where you drove with your boots on and your sleeves rolled up. Manuals weren’t exotic. They were normal.

I took the keys.

Back on the Autobahn, I hoped to keep it clean this time, no tickets. Still couldn’t make sense of the signs. To this day, I don’t know if a number with a red line through it means “no longer the speed limit” or “this speed is now strictly forbidden.” Either way, I held back, reluctantly. I wasn’t here to relive the Austrian Incident.

Berlin spread out before me, modern steel and glass stitched over old wounds. The city wears its layers like armor. You can see the scars if you look close. And I did.

I spent a few days drifting through memory and brick. I touched the Berlin Wall, not just a piece like I had in a museum in DC, that had weight, but this was different, this had gravity. Still standing. Still solemn. History doesn’t just whisper in the background here. It hums a lamenting song beneath your boots.

Checkpoint Charlie, the Wall Memorial, the gray, oppressive Soviet architecture, it all speaks. Not in anger, but in warning. And humility. It’s one thing to read about division, to study tyranny and freedom on opposite sides of a fence. It’s another thing entirely to stand in that place, to feel the air.

You don’t just learn history in Berlin. You absorb it. The simple crossing of a railroad track makes you wonder if it was used to build or destroy, support life or take it.

And for me, it opened a door in the back of my mind, the one that asks uncomfortable questions.
Am I living in a way that matters?
Am I moving through life, or living it?
Am I on a path of my choosing, or a track someone else chose?

Travel has a way of kicking that door open. And Germany, with its cold wind and colder truths, doesn’t mind giving you a shove.

When I’d had my fill of the city’s edges, I did what I always do when the weight gets heavy: I moved. Southbound, through Brandenburg, across the countryside. I skipped the names and followed the rivers, the fields, the rhythm. I walked the grounds of half-remembered palaces, watched snow settle on their broken balustrades. Stood by a riverbank east of Berlin, don’t ask me which, and for a moment, I could’ve sworn I was back in Ohio.

It was the people, I think. Their rhythm. Their ethic. They were wholesome, not in the bumper sticker sense, but in the way they showed up in the world. They worked hard. They were precise. They took pride in the smallest things and didn’t feel the need to announce it. It reminded me of home. My friends. My family. We weren’t fancy. But we were solid. We did the job.

I didn’t flip the script by working less, I just started playing harder. I chose a different game. One with passports instead time clocks. I figured out how to work from the road long before COVID made it cool. Laptops on marina decks, calls from coffee shops in foreign cities, strategy sessions with mountain views, this wasn’t retirement. It was re-alignment. I never stopped working. I just refused to stay put while I did it.

Eventually, I made my way back to Berlin to catch my flight out. Gave the city one more glance. One more evening. And it hit me, hard: Berlin doesn’t match. Not aesthetically. Not spiritually. You’ve got glass towers reflecting golden cathedrals. Stalinist cement boxes looming beside baroque arches. You’ve got strudel and sorrow on the same block.

But it’s all there because it must be. Because history doesn’t edit for cohesion. It builds in layers. So does a life.

And clarity? That’s the compass.

Berlin gave me some of that. Not all. But enough to keep going.

Poland was calling. And I had miles to make.

Until the winds shift again,
CL Rogerson

About the Author
CL Rogerson is a licensed captain, lifelong wanderer, and unapologetic manual-transmission romantic. He’s run companies, crossed oceans, and made peace with the fact that most signs, traffic or otherwise, are up for interpretation. Now, he writes as he travels, chasing meaning, memory, and the magic that happens just past the edge of the known. Follow the journey at clrogerson.com