Learning the lay-of-the-land and the language of the Deutsch.
[Monday – 01.13]
Holy crap I’m on a plane. It has officially reached midnight and I can happily say that I have surpassed many of my personal boundaries already and can check some things off of my bucket list (yes, one of these things is using a bathroom on a plane). I have already removed my (sorry) sweaty snow-boots from my feet and transitioned to slippers, but sleep does not seem as though it will be a thing coming easily in the next few hours – what with all the upright sitting. However, the free drinks and mediocre TV selection will do well for me. Extra credit is due to my friend who took my boots into the empty seat next to him, he has now accomplished his good deed for the day...puts a little pressure on me to do one doesn’t it? Damn.
----
Hello there again – I am probably confused by time zones more in this moment than any other time in my life. Landing in Frankfurt at 9am (3am my usual time) and sitting in the airport for another three hours ended up being much more of a challenging task than expected. Truly none of us had slept at that point, and it was nearly noon when the bus came to pick us up and drag our lifeless bodies and plethora of baggage up to Bonn. Simple to say, everyone slept on that 2-hour bus ride. Everyone. It was nearly impossible to keep our eyes open at that point. Add a few more hours of introductory meetings, a surprise 4 FLIGHTS OF STAIRS up to our apartment and a surprisingly good burger from a city-square food truck: and now I am in bed. I won’t bore you with the details of unpacking, but I guess you can know that my shelves are definitely organized from top to bottom the way you would get dressed, with socks all the way on the last shelf. However, my belts are also on that shelf…potentially I’ll re-evaluate when I’m done updating the current 10 people actually reading this update. I’m interested to see how jet-lag will hit me for the first time so I’m off to get as much sleep as I can without sleeping through my alarm tomorrow morning. My 7:30am alarm. Send help.
[Thursday – 01.16]
So here we are, nearly a native by now, right? I have only called my mom and cried once, and I’d call that a shocking record considering how I did when I first moved to college. It seems that every experience gets easier with the more experiences I have…crazy that the phrase ‘practice makes perfect’ is grossly accurate. All those years that I thought Stockholm syndrome was dragging me back up to Cape Cod each summer could have been because I enjoy being put in uncomfortable positions that force me to adapt and grow as an individual. Pretty deep isn’t it? I’m too much for myself sometimes too, you’ll get used to it.
Anyways!
We are being told to do two different projects over the semester that culminate the personal and cultural things that we have learned abroad. One focuses more on our own personal transformation, and the other focuses more on what it is about these spaces that are so different from American spaces, influencing how people live and act (but I won’t get too landscape architecture-y on you just yet). Something fascinating I heard in one of our lectures so far is the concept of being the ‘other’. A concept explaining how the experiences out here in a completely different culture and landscape are supposed to scare us. In fact, I think they scare us so much because we are not scared often enough. America is such a large and different place that you could stay and explore a different state every year to probably just make it to see everything there is to see in this country in one lifetime.
In other words: we are sheltered and comfortable.
What a shocking revelation about Americans, huh? We walk around in Nebraska and Georgia and Arizona where everyone knows the same language and you can buy the same brands and the road signs are the same and the timeline of the day is similar. We live under the same government and the same rules. We have the opportunity to look at foreign people in our country with accents and weird hats and lost eyes confused as to why we don’t take 3-hour lunch breaks here and identify them as something ‘other’ than American. We do not understand the discomfort that comes along with struggling through a new culture the hard way, because in any state in America, there is a Stop & Shop you can walk into and buy a cup of ramen if you don’t like the restaurant options.
It’s humbling to consider myself as the minority for once.
I’m asking for forgiveness more often. Every other word out of my mouth is “sorry!” or – if I’m good enough to remember trying to use the language – “entschuldigung!”. I’m constantly observing things about people who live a life here every day as I would overseas and it’s endlessly curious to me. They jay-walk less, and so I try to also. They separate their trash so specifically that I’m learning to try and avoid a side-eye for dumping my burger itself in the same bin as the tomato on it. I feel such a pressure to look normal, walk normal, use a normal tone of voice and I am more observant of people in my few walks around this city than I feel I ever have been at home.
The moral of today’s extensive journal entry is that we preach so often about self-growth through trials and tribulations, but do we often stop to analyze if those trials are truly the toughest we could endure? Maybe today is the day to put one more apple in your basket and see if it can hold. You’d be surprised what you can tolerate – at least I know I am.
- Jules
