Heimweh Letters & Coloring In Your Roots

I showed my eldest one of the coloring pages from my Coloring in Germany pack. Each one has a small QR code that links to the photograph it was drawn from. After I scanned it, he looked at the photograph and asked, “What’s Germany?”

He had been hearing about the place for as long as he could understand words. Apparently, none of it had landed in any meaningful way. The crayons did what years of dropped hints could not, which is more or less why this whole site exists.

Signing up adds you to Heimweh Letters, the weekly note I write for people raising kids one generation further from Germany than they grew up. Some weeks it’s about food, some weeks about going back, some weeks about whatever I think is worth your time that week. One email a week, never daily, unsubscribe whenever.

The three coloring pages come along free with the sign-up. Print them, hand them to your kids at the kitchen table, and you have a half hour of focused activity and a small conversation starter that does some of the heritage work for you.

What and Why Heimweh?

Heimweh is a German word that translates roughly as homesickness, but that undersells it. It implies a longing for somewhere you may never have been, or may never be able to return to.

It feels like the right name for a newsletter written for people whose relationship with Germany runs through their family rather than their passport.

About Eran

I’m a first-generation Canadian with German parents. I grew up bi-culturally with Germany in the house. There may have been maple syrup and ice hockey, but there was also the German food, the traditions, and the specific way my parents did things (especially, if you're not early, you're late).

I assumed it was how everyone did things until I left home and discovered it was not.

I now live in Wales, raising my own kids in an even more multi-cultural home than I had, working out how much of that gets passed down and how much disappears before noticing it's gone. As it happens, passing down heritage depends almost entirely on whether you pay attention to the little moments.

German at Heart is where I pay attention. Heimweh Letters is where I write about it, once a week.

Eran Fulson

Traveler • Writer • Explorer of Historic Streets & Hidden Gems

Eran Fulson is Canadian-born, Welsh by choice, and German at heart. He runs German at Heart for families who want to keep German heritage alive outside Germany, without the dusty textbook aesthetic. He also co-founded Tour My Germany with his mom (Just Like Oma) and his niece Lydia, drawing on 15+ years of travel and time spent exploring Germany from Hamburg and the North Sea coast to Bavaria. His weekly newsletter reaches thousands, and every guide leans on real sources and helpful context.

did you know?

Over 800 million currywursts are eaten each year in Germany, and 70 million in Berlin alone.

Words to live by

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy!

 - Anne Frank