“I have to tell you this story about my grandma and the World Cup toy, because that will explain a lot. It would probably take me 100 pages to describe my hometown and my family, but if I tell you this one story, you will understand completely.After we won the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, I came back home to Germany to celebrate with my family, and, of course, I had to go visit my grandmother. So my mom and I went to see her at her house in Gladbeck, and we brought along this little Julian Draxler toy. I guess after we won, some toy company made these 3-D printed figurines of all of the national team players, you know?We thought my grandma would think it was funny. So we walk into her house, and it smells exactly the way it’s smelled for the last 20 years, and she’s hugging me, and she’s so happy that I’m back. And then we put the little toy figurine on her kitchen table, and we’re like, “Look, grandma, isn’t that nice? It’s me.”She looks at the toy. She looks back at me. And then she does that thing that all grandmas do when they’re confused. She kind of smiles and she’s like, Oh! Very nice, yes!But you could tell in her eyes that she had absolutely no clue why anyone would make a toy of her grandson. In fact, you could tell she barely had any idea how big of a deal the World Cup was. She was always saying to me, “I don’t understand why you have to go halfway around the world just to play in a football game! Why can’t you just stay here and play in the garden like you did when you were a kid? They have footballs here!”I’d say, “Well, yes, grandma, but we were playing for the World Cup.”And she’d say, “Yes, yes, but we miss you.”It was hilarious. To her, I had gone for a kickabout in Brazil and now I was home. She just wanted to know how I was doing and if I was eating O.K.We took a photo with her and my mum and the little Draxler toy at her kitchen table, and I posted it to my Instagram. Later that night, I was scrolling through the comments and one of them was like, “Hey, you really need to buy your grandma a new kitchen! Come on, man!
And it’s true — her entire kitchen is from the 1960s. I don’t even know if you can still buy ovens like the one she has. But what people don’t understand is that she’s lived in the same house for 50 years, and she refuses to change anything, no matter what. My entire family is from Gladbeck and Gelsenkirchen so I have a special link to both cities. People who live here have a special way of doing things. Let’s just say that my grandma does not care about your Instagram comments! 😉”
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