The Soul of Kiel (1)

OK, also... fangen wir an...
Ahemmm (keuchs)... dann... sollte ich mich zuerst mal entschuldigen weil mein Deutsch nicht so gut ist... Bitte... Merkwürdigerweise ist es immer dasselbe womit ich anfange vor ein deutschsprachiges Publikum. Das mich wahrscheinlich schon längst als Ausländer identifiziert hat, und meiner Beherrschung der Sprache nicht so ernst nimmt wie ich selber...
Scheisse, ist das anstrengend!
Besser mach ich das in Englisch...

Where I also need to apologise to the native speakers. This is my second language (my first is Dutch, German my third) and I'm not very good at it. Still I hope to be loud and clear here.

This is a strange project to undertake. Coming September I'll spend a whole month in Kiel with the assignment to make a journalistic comic about the city and surroundings (a CUNE initiative).
I have never been there before and wanted to use this fact as an advantage. Go in there completely blank and record everything with ultimate curiosity.
But ofcourse preparing myself I inevitably soak in information. Like for instance about my hosts, the Pure Fruit comic collective and their representative Gregor Hinz with whom I communicate.
Of these primal things I'll write about the next two weeks. Starting September the First I'll switch into alien comic journalist mode and dedicate all posts to the stuff I encounter IRL in Kiel.
But before all that, let me explain the beginning of current post: I am German myself so the language is supposed to come natural. Only: I wasn't born there, never lived there, and I was raised in my Dutch mother's tongue. My Germanship is merely a token. I inherited the nationality from my father's side and never felt the need to change it for another.
It's a bit complicated. There's a older comic I dedicated to all this, which I'll post one of these days.
German is my third language because I spend some years in primary school in Switzerland, near Zürich, obliging me to speak it all day. Kept the language alive by reading, and German lessons later in high school. I guess the combination of this ability and owning a German passport always provokes the need in me to apologise to nativespeaking Germans.
Plus ofcourse I'm a polite guy.
Anyway, part of preparing for September is embedding myself into the language a bit more than usual. Watching German tv, listening to German rock, reading German texts etc.
Like about the weapon shield of Kiel, which was something I thought could be used as a symbol in 'The Soul of Kiel', working title of this comic assignment.

Still in doubt. So to be continued for sure...

PS
Messing with national symbolism one should never limit to those foreign. Below two variations on the weapon shield of my home town Utrecht, made for De Inktpot booklet 'Utrecht Te Wapen' (2007):