𝐖𝐞 𝐎𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐌𝐞𝐧 || COUNTRYHUMANS

.07

[𝐆𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐋𝐖𝐀𝐋𝐃 𝟏𝟗𝟐𝟕]

We are all thrown together once more in July of that same year, after school has let for summer break and the melancholy clouds have retreated with the winter winds and spring storms to bring us the clear crisp skies of Summer. Weimar graduates from the Gymnasium in town on a hot dry Monday morning in late July, and the whole time I sit listening to Reich complaining silently about how he is too hot with his necktie and jacket on, before Leonie tells him to just be quiet and good for once.

The ceremony is very boring and very long, and we listen to many old men, school directors and teachers and the such, give speeches about how this class of graduates will go out and change the world some day. I barely listen to any of it, all the words the same uninspired ideas they spewed at every graduation of every class, and I was sure it would be much the same for my own a few years down the line.

Somewhere in the crowd of caps and gowns I finally managed to spot the tall blond glasses wearing figure of Weimar and I nudged Switzerland to point his nephew out to him. I tried waving at him more than a few times but from where we were sitting he never actually did seem to notice, and I gave up on that pursuit extremely quickly, getting bored again as I watched the slow movement of the sun over the cloudless sky and waited impatiently for things to wrap up.

In the end, the ceremony lasted almost two hours and by the time it was over I was equally oppressively bored and hot. The heat stuck to me and made my cotton button up and khaki slacks and blazer seem incredibly uncomfortable. By the looks of it my younger cousin was not doing much better himself and though they tried to hide it I could tell the adults were getting a bit impatient as well.

We met up with Weimar shortly after the ceremony, happy to have refreshments and be out of the sun at the reception. Reich found a tennis ball somewhere on the school grounds and was wanting to go out and make sport with some of the other boys his age, though Leonie and Liechtenstein insisted that he stick around for a few quick photos before running off to go play games.

Unfortunately, a few quick photos turned into nearly twenty minutes in front of the photographer the school had hired, and by the end of that I think nearly everyone was wanting a
much needed break from one another. So, German Empire shooed his younger boy off to go do whatever it was he wanted, while Switzerland,  Weimar, and I talked about graduation and what he was wanting to do with his life now.

Weimar was already committed to attend college at the University in Munich, and he was planning on studying political science and eventually practicing law. He seemed excited then to be going back to his home in Germany, feeling always a sort of childlike nostalgia for the place he formed his earliest memories in.

German Empire too seemed proud to have his boy coming home, especially since Liechtenstein had been pressuring him to attend a Uni in Switzerland or to at least not go back to Munich.

"He needs to get out and see the world," She would insist. "In your twenties that is the age when you should be leaving your hometown, experiencing new things and meeting new people, not going back to it."

Weimar would always roll his eyes, speaking up in a calm voice before German Empire could get mad and start and argument with his cousin.

"I like the city of Munich, and the school is beautiful there. It just feels like the perfect place for me, having my family nearby is just an added bonus. I feel like I've missed so much of my brother's life, I would like for him to have some childhood memories of me, you know?"

Liechtenstein would always frown, but nod hesitantly nonetheless, knowing it was not her decision but Weimar's. It was his life and he was old and mature enough to know where he wanted to go and study at and what he would like to do. She could not control his life decisions, even if she disagreed with them.

I spent the rest of the day chatting with Weimar about college decisions and what he was looking forward to. I had gone with him once to visit the university in the city center and I too had understood why he was so drawn to it. Truth be told I myself thought that in a few years when I graduated from the Gymnasium then perhaps I would study there too, though I decided to wait a bit before I sprung that on Aunt Liechtenstein. I was afraid she may loose it if nearly all her living relatives wound up in bustling town of Munich.

We went out to a nice dinner that evening, and talked all night long about what we should do this Summer to celebrate. Weimar had always wanted to travel in America, but that was far too expensive, so Reich suggested he travel
around Europe a bit- to France or Spain perhaps, somewhere warm and tropical. I suggested that he go on a ski retreat in the Alps with some friends, though Switzerland laughed and said I was only saying that because I was wanting to go skiing and hiking for my graduation.

In the end, Weimar decided that he would probably just save his money for now, perhaps to buy things for an apartment in Munich, or just for a rainy day somewhere down the line.

The rest of the night was very lovely, and for Weimar's sake German Empire and Liechtenstein kept their fighting to a minimum. The family stayed with us for roughly a week, and just as always I had a good time running around the farm with Reich or even just chatting with Switzerland and Weimar.

For his birthday that year German Empire had given Reich a .22 rifle to go out hunting with and to keep for his own. Another thing that I was very jealous of him for, and Liechtenstein was very angry at German Empire for.

We spent most of the days going out and playing with Reich's rifle, either going out into the woods to look for rabbits or birds to hunt or just lining up bottles and shooting them down as target practice. Reich was a better shot than me, and he spent half his time joking and laughing at me for the fact that I was fourteen and didn't know how to shoot a rifle.

He often found a way to make me feel emasculated, a talent I think he must have gotten from his father. I tried to ignore it, the way he teased me for not being enough of a man since I didn't drink, or smoke, or hunt, or play footy, or all the other typical boyish pursuits.

It made me feel rather weak and less than, and all the more eager to prove myself to my cousin as a
man.

Though, the one time I asked Liechtenstein to buy me a rifle for my own like Reich's so I could practice my shot, she refused and asked me where I had gotten the idea of getting from a rifle from, for I had never had any interest in hunting or marksmanship until Reich arrived. I mentioned off handedly that it just made me a bit insecure that my younger cousin was so much more of a man than I was, how he exemplified all the values of traditional masculinity while I was inclined to a mix of both outdoorsy man's things and more delicate and beautiful things like art and music and poetry.

Liechtenstein frowned and told me not to let Reich and German Empire put those ideas into my head. That art and culture was what made a country a county. An appreciation of the arts was something that every man and woman ought to have, and while Reich's interests in shooting guns and kicking the football around may have be appropriate or even cool for a teenage boy, once he was an adult his lack of appreciation for anything fine in life would be his achilles heel.

I tried to take her words to heart, I truly did, but at the time none of it mattered to me. I wanted to be more like Reich, and in a strange way I admired my cousin's carefree attitude and life. I wanted to live in the Bavarian countryside and run around with friends all day, drinking beer and playing football and having fun. It seemed like the ideal life to me, and as I thought back on my childhood memories of playing soldiers and making battle plans, the military suddenly did not seem like such an awful path to me anymore.

Perhaps German Empire had been right, perhaps it really was a waste to be in school and classes all day. There was so many lessons in life that a text book would never be able to teach you, and  for the first time I questioned if the path of making my Abitur and going to Uni was truly the life for me.

>> 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒 <<
- Wow, another chapter where absolutely nothing happens, how surprising!

- Fr though, I'm sorry, I swear these "growing up" chapters are gonna be the most boring, things will pick up once like the 1930s roll around ;)

- Bonus: if you can't tell by how shitting the writing is, over half of this was written while i was hung over! Slay 🤩🤩