Home is not a comparison: Why the Palatinate doesn't have to be "Tuscany"
Sometimes it's a blessing to look at your old homeland from a bit of distance. Even though I've been living in the north for quite some time now, my morning ritual firmly includes checking the digital edition of my old regional newspaper from Rhineland-Palatinate. It's the connection to my roots, to places where I know every stone.
But last weekend, I got caught on a headline that made me pause. There it was again, that unnecessary sentence: This year's wine hike had been like a "short vacation in Tuscany."
Why unnecessary, exactly?
I have to be honest—I find that pretty odd. Why can't we simply enjoy the beauty and wonderful climate of the Palatinate without immediately slapping an Italian label on it? Have we forgotten how to be proud of what lies right on our doorstep?
Is it a one-way street of longing? Let's imagine the whole thing in reverse. Does anyone seriously believe that around Florence or on the Ligurian coast, a vintner would say after a sunny day: "Man, that was lovely today, I almost felt like I was in Rhineland-Palatinate"? Hardly.
That's the paradox of it: We're always searching for something better in what's our own, something foreign, something exotic. But the Palatinate doesn't need that at all. The jagged castles, the sandstone-colored villages, the steep slopes that take our breath away in autumn—that's a wholly unique, primordial quality. When we call it "Tuscany," we turn an original into a copy.
A look to the north: Here up in Scandinavia, I often observe a completely different kind of self-confidence. When the wind lashes across the coast and the landscape is sparse and harsh, that's not lamented as a lack of Mediterranean feeling. Quite the opposite: People are proud of what's rough, real, and unmistakable. They don't call the dunes the "Sahara of the North"—they celebrate them exactly as they are.
Maybe we lack this backbone sometimes in Germany. We have a rich culture and a landscape that is unmatched worldwide.
I didn't emigrate because I don't love my homeland. Quite the contrary. I love this land, the people, this climate. But it's precisely from a distance that I see how unfortunate it is when people hide their own identity behind comparisons.
Back to the Palatinate song... I still remember well how people used to be "Palatinate" with a completely different sense of belonging. They sang the Palatinate song, not because they wanted to pretend to be in Italy, but because they wanted to be exactly where they were.
The Palatinate needs no Italian costume to shine. It's most beautiful when it's simply itself: Palatinate, down-to-earth, and blessed with a climate that many envy—no marketing-speak needed!
Let's just do a wine hike in the Palatinate again in 2027. And not in a copy of Tuscany.
