Small Moments of Triumph

As an Auslaenderin (foreigner), my time abroad was colored by little victories and embarrassing mistakes.

Some everyday stuff was hard for me. I could never get through the lines at Aldi as quickly and efficiently as the real Germans. It sounds funny, but the checkout at that place was actually kind of intimidating. It took me awhile to fully understand recycling and deposits. I once spent entirely too long unsuccessfully putting beer bottles into the recycling machine at REWE (my neighborhood grocery store) and having them shoot back out at me, while lots of Germans walked by me and looked amused but did not stop to comment or advise me that I was trying to put glass into the plastic machine. I lugged my huge bag of clanking glass bottles back to my apartment, truly tempted to just chuck them all into the recycling bin and forget about the Pfand (deposit) money, but they were too valuable so I carried them back to my third-floor apartment. I swallowed my pride and asked my German roommates, who told me "The glass machine is at the back of the store, silly!"

Cooking and baking with the metric system was strange. Our measuring equipment was in grams and milliliters, with different measurements used for flour, sugar, etc. I was lucky that our cupboards also contained American measuring cups, and I mostly stuck to those. It took me almost two months to brave using the oven, because it had really unintelligible settings without words, which were combinations of lines, squiggles, and triangles.

Honestly, words would have been much easier to translate than cryptic symbols. Where's "Bake" and "Broil"?

Getting on public transportation, I always struggled with whether or not to show the driver/conductor my ticket. Germany works on the honor system, where you just get on and only show your ticket if the conductor comes around. It's much faster and more efficient that way. But whenever I went to other countries, I never knew what I was supposed to do when I got on the bus. Whip out my ticket like a tourist, or risk being reprimanded. 

This is neither here nor there, but the local transit authority in Freiburg was abbreviated VAG. Us Americans loved it, and enjoyed posing by the bus stops that said "VAG" in huge letters, and joked about getting our hands on some VAG apparel. You can probably guess how we pronounced it. The Germans pronounced it by its letters, "V-A-G," "fowh-ah-gay." The VAG was one of the best things about Freiburg, truly. They were so cutting edge with green technology and ease of access and city planning. I wish everybody had a VAG.

On to the triumphs:

I never appreciated Germany so much as when I went to Italy. I don't speak a word of Italian, and of the places I visited, the Italians seemed to be the least likely to speak English. I spent several days in Rome, which honestly, I found to be dirty, poorly organized, and really overwhelming. Within 5 seconds of being in Rome, the economic status of the country became pretty clear to me. It just felt really clearly different from Germany. Their subways stopped running at 11:30pm, and did not have convenient stops near the major tourist destinations in the city, and I found their bus system to be poorly labeled. I just felt so helpless there, and getting lost was a lot scarier than it was in Germany. I flew from Rome to Berlin, and even though I had never been to Berlin before, it felt like I was coming home. Berlin opened its arms to me like an old friend, and even though the city itself is a giant, sprawling metropolis, it is held together by a complex, yet incredibly organized system of public transportation. After being in a place where I did not know the language, when I went to Berlin I suddenly had a lot more faith in my German skills. Anything was better than Italy, where I could barely even say "thank you." Nothing like being a fish completely out of water to make you appreciate what skills you do have. 

People.

I encountered several types of people in Germany.

The first were American tourists. Technically I was one of those, but I was a university student living with other German university students and had a mission to blend in and act "German." I also spoke German. Some of the other Americans in my program could be a little obnoxious at times, but nothing like some of the situations I witnessed. One of the main stereotype Germans have about Americans is that Americans are LOUD. And actually, loud we are. I can't tell you how many times I was on a train somewhere or out at night and encountered a really, really loud group of (usually drunk) Americans bragging about stupid things or just being generally embarrassing. Sometimes they seemed just really uninterested in local culture--I think probably because lots of young people travel/study abroad to drink and party, and really take advantage of the super young drinking age in Germany.

And then, there were the Erasmus students. Prior to moving to Germany, I had never heard of Erasmus before, but it's basically EU study abroad. It stands for European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students, and is an exchange program to encourage university students to travel and study in other countries in the European Union. I met a bunch of them in my German classes at the Uni, and they all lived together in one of the student housing areas called the StuSie. They quickly banned together and formed a pretty formidable group: students from England, Scotland, Belgium, Italy, and France mostly. The UK kids dominated. Erasmus seems like a crazy party semester, and when the Erasmus kids took over bars, they took over bars. They came to Vaubar, the small bar next door to me, and drank them out of alcohol on more than one occasion. I thought Americans were obnoxious partiers, but Erasmus students are on a pretty equal level. My Erasmus friends also went on several crazy party trips, to Prague and also to Greece...regrettably I couldn't go on either of those trips for one reason or another, but something tells me I might not have survived at the pace at which they partied. Seriously intense.

Freiburg also had a pretty decent population of students from Spain. Germany is pretty much single-handedly holding up the EU economy right now, and my interpretation of the situation is that lots of people from Spain are funneling into Germany to get a better education and a good job. They don't necessarily speak German, either. Most speak more English than German.

And then, there are the Japanese exchange students. They throw up peace signs next to their faces in every picture, and they take a lot of pictures. There were more students from Japan than any other country in my month-long Sprachkurs (language course) that I took at the university before the semester began. A lot of them were very shy, much moreso than the Europeans. They liked to travel in packs.

Only Americans

Sometimes weird stuff happened to me because I was American. People treated me differently, or asked me really pointed questions, one of which was:

"But why Germany? Why would you want to come here?"

I could never tell if they were just really self conscious about what people thought about Germans, or if they thought their country was really boring, or if it was some kind of test.

Second to that was:

"Do you have a gun?"

No comment.

And a small thought on geography:
And they say Americans are the worst at geography, but the average European I met thought that New York automatically meant the city, or that I was near it. Nope. Also, Connecticut? Forget about it. My German roommates only knew about Connecticut because they watched Gilmore Girls.

Learning from the Language Barrier

When I studied in Freiburg, I was required to take a three week long, pre-semester German intensive class at SLI (SprachLehrInstitut) to immerse me in the language. I had to take a very official, scary online placement exam prior to leaving the US, which put me in the intermediate-advanced level, in some grand, official spectrum of language knowledge.

When I showed up to my first German class, I had no idea what to expect. There were about 20 of us, and I was with a couple of other American students in an IES program, an American exchange student, a British girl, a Scottish girl, a girl from Bolivia, a guy from Brazil, a handful of Japanese girls, a French guy, a Swiss (French-speaking) girl. A lot of people knew English but some didn't, and that's where things got really interesting. German was our only universal common language, so we had to do the best we could. The teacher, Uta, was a really kind, nurturing, kindergarten-teacher type, who was always very patient and understanding. We had a textbook, but Uta asked us all to weigh in on what we wanted to learn and what we needed the most help with (grammar, speaking, etc.) so we got to direct the class. The biggest assignment was a Referat on a topic of our choice, a 10-15 minute oral presentation with a question and answer period after. 

In my German courses at home in the US, it's easy to use your native language as a crutch and just say the English word when you can't think of the German one and the other person will instantly understand what you're trying to say. But when you're working on an assignment with a French guy who does not speak English and you don't know the German word and are struggling to describe it using other German words...then what happens? You reach this weird sort of impasse and it's one of the most awkward experiences I've ever had. Giving up mid-conversation is a really strange experience. Sometimes you both laugh and acknowledge how difficult it is to converse in each other's second language. It makes you feel closer to the other person, and also farther apart. You realize you are structurally limited from being able to understand this person completely. There are charades and smiles and descriptive attempts, but at some point you realize you may just never be able to properly explain something to them, or them to you. It's a really humbling and humanizing experience, and one I took with me all throughout my travels. 

You realize what you take for granted. I was having a conversation with the Brazilian guy about what we did in our spare time, and was amazed that we both read Game of Thrones but also amazed that he had no idea about a lot of classical British literature...I was struggling to explain Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte to him. And then I thought, well, duh, these books aren't in his native language and don't play any role in his culture really, so why should he know about them? 

The Referats were one of the most interesting and informative projects I've ever done. Uta suggested that we each do a Referat on an interesting topic on our own countries or experiences, so we could better understand each other. I learned some incredible stuff. I learned about the food in different regions of France, about how to play rugby, someone's experience working for a suicide hotline, someone's experience living in Russia for a year and traveling on the Trans-Siberian Railway, the higher education system in Bolivia, the education system of Germany versus Japan...and I myself presented on CSA programs and the local food movement in the US. The SLI class was my first time really learning about the educational systems in other countries, and because we had such a wide range of countries (and continents: 4!) represented, we talked about it a lot. I was absolutely floored at how different the US is to everywhere else, and how it costs astronomically higher here than anywhere else that I've learned about. In some places, it doesn't even cost anything.

Education became one of my favorite topics to talk to people about throughout my five months of travel. My Spanish friend complained that 800 Euro a year was too expensive, the Japanese people complained that $10,000 was expensive, the Germans protested when their university costs jumped from 400 to 500 Euros, and my Danish friend told me that Denmark pays him to go to college. Nobody believed me when I told them my university (before financial aid) costs $50,000 a year. WHAT?  

Talking to people from different other countries has been the single most educational experience of my life. Through my conversations with people, either in their native countries or places were we were both foreigners, I learned so much more about life and the world than I have in my more than 17 years in a classroom. I learned about some amazing differences in government and educational systems, culture and food traditions, parts of histories that were definitely absent from my textbooks, and most importantly, how despite all of that, we are so remarkably similar in our thoughts and hopes and fears. 

Klasse 7 at the closing reception for our class. Free champagne and pretzels!

Before I studied abroad, I'm not sure I knew what happiness actually was.

The Alps Changed Me.

It was impossible not to fall head over heels for the landscape. The sights speak for themselves.

These are the best days of my life.

Hands down.
Going to Germany is the best decision I have ever made. I feel free, I feel independent, and for the first time in a long time, I am happy. College has really beaten me down and depressed me and made me lose my way, but coming here, and being in Europe, I know everything is going to be okay. If I can make it through weird and awkward situations in foreign country, I can do anything. Nobody is here to hold my hand.

I'm not shy about admitting that I deserve this. I have earned my happiness and freedom. I've earned my right to let loose and let life take the wheel instead of letting academia rule my life. I think I'm doing fine in school here, because I'm still me, but I don't spend a lot of time worrying about it. I have a healthier relationship with school here, because school isn't the center of my life here. Life is more important. I'm actually living.