Speaking of the Hohenzollern family, it is famous indeed, but the Ernst family is somewhat different from the renowned Hohenzollerns of Prussian Brandenburg. Our family belongs to a junior branch of Hohenzollerns, located in what was formerly southwestern Germany. There is another junior branch of the Hohenzollern family nearby—Sigmaringen, which, together with our Heixinggen, belongs to the Swabian branch. This Sigmaringen happens to be somewhat familiar to me from Ernst’s shallow knowledge.
Historically, they have coveted the Spanish throne and produced a Romanian emperor in the future. To that extent, aside from our own family, the others are notable families recorded in history books.
If you ask why Heixinggen Hohenzollern wasn’t in the picture, well... it’s because historically, the Heixinggen lineage became extinct. However, the arrival of Ernst changed history.
While Ernst was still organizing his thoughts and memories, Constantine had already come to his senses and started asking, "Are you feeling better now, Ernst?"
"Yes, father. I think I’ll be full of energy again after a good sleep," Ernst replied, feigning lightheartedness.
"As long as you’re fine. You are to inherit the title in the future, so don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Even if you muddle through life, it’s okay. I don’t expect you to strive hard, but you must grow up healthy. Pay more attention to rest, eat healthy food, don’t indulge like those wastrels and idle young men..."
After a long lecture, Constantine finally stopped, tucked Ernst in, advised him to rest well, and told him to call for the servants if he needed anything, then got up and left the room.
The candlelight flickered weakly, illuminating the dim walls, while the room plunged into silence.
Ernst curled up under the blanket to keep warm and began to organize his thoughts.
Speaking of which, in his past life, Ernst had a promising job, being sent by a company to Africa as an engineering consultant. Life in Africa was dull, with frequent relocations following construction sites.
The places where he worked in his past life were mostly isolated wilderness, often facing power and internet outages, and sometimes supply shortages. Fortunately, the salary was reasonable.
The days in Africa greatly changed Ernst’s perception. Ernst’s past workplace was Tanzania, a distant country in Africa.
Working in Tanzania, Ernst came to a new understanding of Africa. Before personally visiting Africa, influenced by media and news, Ernst’s impression was that Africa symbolized backwardness, poverty, harsh natural conditions, and turmoil.
However, by truly working and living there, Ernst overturned his previous thoughts; most of the information online was quite biased.
Just from an environmental perspective, the whole of Tanzania had better temperature and precipitation conditions than his hometown, North China Plain.
Originally, he thought of Africa as unbearably hot, with vast tropical rainforests, endless savannahs, and vast deserts like the Sahara deeply imprinted in his mind. But when he arrived in Tanzania, he found the temperatures ranged between ten to thirty degrees, neither too cold nor too hot. The rainy season each year was also rich in precipitation, providing excellent conditions of rain and warmth.
Tanzania was a little-known country, but due to his work, Ernst started to familiarize himself with it. Through research on the internet and practical comparison, he found the country surprisingly different.
Although located in the tropics, its highland terrain made it a livable place, similar to the Brazilian Highlands.
The land was flat, with dense vegetation, mostly savannah. This also altered his perception because the African savannah conflicted with his traditional understanding of grasslands.
Before seeing the savannah personally, Ernst naturally imagined all the world’s grasslands to be like the Mongolian grasslands.
But upon arriving in Africa, Ernst saw a different landscape. The savannah, a unique combination of trees and prairie, looked utterly pleasing, with conditions of water and heat far surpassing the Mongolian grasslands, which, throughout his history, had been described as the cold, desolate region of the north, while the African savannah was a true natural paradise.
The farmers here generally had good harvests, even with their rough farming methods. The local farmers’ biggest challenge might be the difficulty of fetching water for irrigation, due to the lack of water projects and basic farmland irrigation systems.
The living standards of the local people were not too bad either, and a relatively rough lifestyle could still allow impoverished Africans to find peace and joy.
Because of its location in the tropical savannah, fruits and meats could be somewhat supplemented. Combined with the primitive smallholder economy, the living standards were a bit higher than those of the peasants at the end of ancient East Asian dynasties.
Of course, attitude toward life was also an important factor. In nearly a century of colonial history, Africans were abruptly pulled from a primitive hunting lifestyle into modern society by Westerners.
Africans’ perceptions did not change in time, and in Africa, East Asians’ complex, meticulous, and seemingly rightful survival model was difficult to manifest.
The industrial conditions in Africa also had a major characteristic. The mineral resources here were not as superior as mentioned online, taking Tanzania as an example.
This is a mining-exporting country, yet many major mineral resources are not as abundant as imagined—coal, iron, copper, and oil exist, but compared to the true resource-rich countries, they’re not plentiful at all.
Many resources don’t rank highly globally, but due to extremely low levels of industrialization, the mining resources seem abundant.