The Almost Two Year Retrospective

I've realized two things. Thing the first: I haven't posted in awhile. Sorry, masses of readers, to disappoint you. Thing the second: my recent posts haven't had much to do with being in Germany. I started this blogging (ugh, I still hate that word) business as a way to let my dear and far-away family and friends know what life was like in my new country. However, I've taken to writing about lots of other things, that really don't have much to do with being a foreigner. Time to rectify the situation!

Due to the impending two years in Dresden mark, I've been thinking a lot about how certain things in my life which have become routine are so different to how I lived my life in Oregon. Small things really, but they add up to a slightly altered lifestyle.For the first few months I lived here, I despised these small things. Every time I had to take my own bags to the grocery store, or walk twenty minutes in the rain to get somewhere because I don't have a car, I would rage silently to myself. Often this raging involved me cursing Germany, it's people, it's language, and it's penchant for treacherous cobblestone streets.

I sometimes still rage. Occasionally, I reach the boiling point and just wish I could transport myself back the the US for an hour or two. But I've gotten used to these differences. I usually don't even register them as differences anymore- it's just my life. I wake up in the morning and shower with my hand-held shower, enjoying the fact that I can aim the hot water any old way I please, instead of cursing the fact that I don't have a normal hands-free-stand-underneath-it shower. I race out of my apartment to catch the tram on time, or I wrestle my bike into the elevator to get it down ten flights of stairs and out onto the street for the bumpy, cobblestone-y ride to work. I spend the day at school with a classroom full of mostly German kids, trying not to actually go nuts while attempting to explain American phrases such as "You're driving me nuts!" After school, I stop at the grocery store and whip out my handy dandy cloth bags that I keep folded up in my purse when I get to the check out. Then I hoof it home lugging the groceries along with me. When I get home, I stuff the groceries into my mini, smaller than a dorm fridge fridge and put some laundry into the washing machine. That's in the kitchen. Have to make sure the output hose is in the sink, otherwise the dirty laundry water will spray around the kitchen like a geyser. This may or may not have happened before. When it's done, I only grumble a little bit about not having a dryer, and hang aaaaall my laundry (including socks and underwear) up on my little drying rack.

All these things are small, daily rituals that I've always performed. Showering, getting to work, going to the grocery store, doing laundry. When I moved here two years ago I was constantly frustrated by how different these little rituals had to be. Each time I had to lug my groceries home from the store I dreamed of the roomy trunk of my little Honda Civic, which could hold bags and bags and baaaaags of groceries. When I tripped on the ridiculously uneven cobblestones that pave the streets around my apartment, I thought so fondly of the ugly but BEAUTIFULLY SMOOTH asphalt streets I grew up surrounded by. These things all seem so tiny, and unimportant if you're in a familiar setting. But once you've been transported to a new place, with a new job, new culture, and new language to deal with, these things become monumentally important.

I make these angry, frustrated comparisons less and less these days. Part of living in a foreign country is accepting the differences and unfamiliar situations you encounter. At least, I think so. I'm probably never going to rejoice at the fact that I can't fit more than three days worth of groceries into my impossibly small refrigerator. I can honestly say I'll never wish for someone to speak to me in ultra-fast, heavily accented German. The longer I live here though, the less upsetting these things are. They've become a part of my new life, and I like to think I've become better at adapting to new situations because of it.

Now, myself and the German language- that's a whole different story. One for another post. Perhaps several.

This week, I've been reading a book loaned to me by a fellow teacher. It's called "Almost French: A New Life in Paris." You've probably never heard of it- I hadn't before she gave it to me. It's written by Sarah Turnbull, and Australian journalist who has lived in Paris for the past ten years. It's the story of her decision to move to France, and the subsequent acclimating and fitting in she's been doing ever since. So many of the things she writes about have made me laugh out loud while reading, because I feel like I've been in the exact same situation myself. I'm going to end this long and slightly disjointed post with an excerpt from the book. Honestly, substitute Germany for France, Dresden for Paris and America for Australia, and she could have been reading my mind while writing it. Her version might be slightly more eloquent than mine.



The old Greek on Samos island had warned me. "It's a bitter-sweet thing, knowing two cultures," he'd said. "It's a curse to love two countries." Well I certainly don't think of living abroad as a curse- I don't think the Greek believed it either. He was just dramatising his dilemma, the feeling of being torn between two places. And this is something I now understand. For an expatriate, the whole matter of "home" is an emotional conundrum riddled with ambiguities and caprice. Paris is my actual home: its' where I live. It can pull at heartstrings with a mere walk down our market street in the morning. But Australia is the home of my homesickness and my history- a powerful whirlpool of family and friends, memories and daily trivia that I used to take for granted but now seem somehow remarkable.
Although I understand the French better now, the reality is in France I'm still an outsider. There seem to be so many contradictions, so many social codes for different situations that make life interesting but also leave you feeling a bit vulnerable. Living in Paris requires constant effort: effort to make myself understood, effort to understand and to be alert for those cultural intricacies that can turn even going to the post office into a social adventure.

(Turnbull pg. 166) Lamest citation ever, but I don't want to be a plagiarist.

I really couldn't have said it better myself. And as it's way past even my weekend bedtime, goodnight from Dresden.