I have lived in Germany for 39 years. My parents brought me here when I was eight years old. I went straight to the second grade, although I did not speak even one word of German! I didn’t understand a lot of things, everything was confusing and different. Everything! I didn’t even understand how come the TV set at my German friends showed colors and ours just showed grey tones – as a child I didn’t understand how this was possible. I came out of a village in Anatolia to a big city – I wasn’t able to grasp what was going on. And we lived in very poor conditions for years.
A different question for you: do your children feel themselves more German or Turkish?
My children are definitely multiculti! Me myself… I don’t know exactly how to describe myself. I mean I am Turkish of course. However, after having stayed in Turkey on holidays for one or two weeks I start feeling that I want to go home! But somehow it is my home there… I don’t know… It’s just that over here I have settled down, my children live here, my parents also. I feel at home in Cologne. Furthermore, as a single woman I feel free in Germany. I take my car, drive anywhere I want and can visit my friends in the evenings without anybody spreading nonsense rumours about me. That would not be possible in Turkey: what would a woman do out that late all by herself?
However if I don’t go to Turkey, for example this summer I didn’t go, then I miss it a lot. The air and the sun is different there. It’s a totally different feeling. We have a big house there, but whenever I start thinking about the possibility of living in Anatolia then I come to the conclusion that I have no use for an empty house! I still keep thinking that someday I will go back to Turkey. But probably it is not possible. It feels more like a back and forth situation where you can neither find peace in Turkey nor in Germany.
Eve 
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