Shifting Christmas Gears in Texas / Durch die Gänge in Texas

Eleven days later I have successfully progressed past the most severe reverse culture shock in Texas. Christmas is over – without stress and angst. Now early capitalism gets in gear as I begin to shop shop shop. The latest booty: a pair of Levis slim fit and a book on literary criticism (which I really like, because it includes chapters on colonial criticism, gay and lesbian criticism, and other often neglected ways of reading texts. I am looking forward to this interesting read on the plane back to Leipzig.)
Of course, I have already indulged in several prerequisites to re-acculturation: one meal in a Mexican restaurant, several visits to Starbucks, one evening at La Madeleine French country restaurant, and today a meal at the California Pizza Kitchen. And, Half Price Book Store has already seen my face.
So, do you notice a trend here? What typifies my time here?
So, to the people: Of course, I see my family daily, since I am staying at my mother’s place. And the depths of the past have divulged friends not seen for ages. Saturday I was in a music store when out of the corner a female voice called my first and last name – it was LuAnne, an old friend from high school band, who I hadn’t seen for ten years! Then yesterday the pastor of my mother’s church dropped by; I have known him since I was 17. And today I had lunch with a friend I have known since I was 14. These meetings underscore the degree of change my life has experienced. As positive as such meetings – chance and planned – are, they have only highlighted how several years of life in another country change you. And yet I realize that most of my time here will not be spent with all the people I used to know in those woebegone days of yesteryear. So many people have moved on without enough desire for keeping in touch to precipitate successful attempts to contact me.
So, is there only family and Starbucks, Half Price Books, Pizza and Mexican restaurants and shopping, and playing the piano and running three times a week? Yes, this is “Jammern auf hohem Niveau” in Germany, or “high level complaing in English, but even this very act belies the European existentialism that has infiltrated my personality, for the American would say, “so what? Just have fun and don’t sweat the small stuff! If you don’t see those people now, who knows what the future will bring?” Okay, lets Americanize – for now – and just enjoy the moment. We are having fine weather, after all, and all are in good health. And I am thankful for these things…
I hope you – wherever you are – are also having a good and safe holiday season.

Your
Euromark, who is at the moment, well, “Texomark.” P.S. Es tut mir leid, aber ich bin im Augenblick überhaupt nicht gelaunt, Deutsch zu schreiben. Also müßt ihr euch mit English abquälen. Wenn das ein Problem bereitet, dann ruft mich einfach an :-) !

I'll be home for Christmas / Weihnachten Daheim...

I’ll be home for Christmas…

…as the melancholy song goes. Tuesday will be a long day – getting up at 3:30 am. and taking the first tram at 4:15 am. to the airport. The flight leaves at six for Frankfurt, and then from Frankfurt 11 hours to Dallas Fort Worth airport. Then 21 days of the Metroplex and ultimate individualistic free market enterprise. It will be good and important to be with family during these three weeks when most of my courses are on pilot light phase anyway. I will also have some time to see a few friends in the Dallas – Fort Worth area and maybe even in Central Texas. Since I have no car of my own, and I have much to do for my mother, I may only have one very quick trip to central Texas.
I am now one month short of living in Leipzig for four years. These have been four of the best years of my life, and it keeps getting better. While I look forward to seeing my “home” and family again, to sleeping in the bedroom that has been mine since I was 3 years old, my life in Texas seems more and more a part of the past as Germany becomes more and more my home. I will notice new slang expressions in American English that are strange to me, new devices and products, new stores, and new people in the lives of friends, just as there are many new words and people in my life: I don’t speak normal American English anymore, and all of my friends here are Germans. Did you know that no American (besides me) has ever been in my current apartment? That’s okay; it simply underscores the dichotomy in my life. So I am packing my baggage to take a short trip to the place I grew up in; the milieu that “hard wired” my personality, even though my Texas accent is gone without a trace. After tarrying long enough to make my luggage smell American, I’ll whiz back to Germany and open my suitcase and smell the aroma of Texas and of my mother’s house and wonder where it all went…

So, let this be a lesson to all of us: as with so many things in life, the good and the bad are often intertwined; we decide which threads will dominate, which melodies will climb above the others and establish the dominant themes.

Na so was: man soll sich ja darauf freuen, die Heimat wieder zu sehen. Ja, Freude ist da, aber ich bin vielfach einfach unentschlossen, denn ich bin beinahe 4 Jahre in Leipzig, und das sind die schönsten Jahre meines Lebens bisher, und es wird momentan, mindestens, nur besser (bin ja Ami und muss ja optimistisch sein…). Wer diese Sätze lesen kann, versteht wohl das Gefälle: die alten Freunde in den USA melden sich schon längst nicht mehr, und ich muß immer emsig nach jemandem suchen, der mich vom Flughafen in Dallas abholt: willkommen zuhause! Bei meiner Mutter habe ich viele nützliche Aufgaben: Hecken schneiden, Blätter rechen, Rasen mähen, Fenster und Gitter putzen, Autos putzen, im Hause putzen, Garage a bissl entrümpeln, und dann auch schön in Dallas shoppen, Postkarten an die Freunde in Leipzig, Pirna, und Lübeck schicken, Geschenke für meine Lieben in Deutschland finden – das macht alles Spaß, aber viel von diesen 21 Tagen besteht nur daraus, dass ich Sachen für andere mache. Das ist schon in Ordnung, aber wer die deutschen Urlaubssitten kennt, weiß, dass hier keiner den Urlaub plant, in dem er hauptsächlich nur Dinge für andere macht. Und so steht die Welt für mich jetzt Kopf: alle hier wollen scheinbar irgendwie in die USA, womöglich endgültig, aber ich fühle mich sehr wohl hier in Mitteleuropa. Mal schauen, wie ich bis Mitte Januar schreibe. Bis dann würde ich mich auf Beiträge von euch freuen, in denen ihr so eure Erfahrungen oder einfach Sicht der Dinge mal mitteilt. Danke fürs Lesen und Schreiben!

Six Weird Things About Me (Really?)

Well, Aggie in New Zealand has tagged all who read her blog, so I'll respond. Do you think I'm weird? First of all, I must mention a caveat: “weird” is in the eye of the beholder; what is weird to you may be – yawn – boring to me, or plane Jane normal. Sorry, if your name in Jane.

Number One: I love to eat a big long slow candle-light breakfast in my sleeping clothes with lots of hot tea, even with a glass of Champagne to go with it. I feel like I’m in Heaven. It can last an hour or two, as long as the company and conversation is good, no problem… (The NZ people among us would probably prefer the Champagne breakfast by candle-light au natural, but I’ll not betray whether that would interest me or not….)
Number Two: It is wonderful to go running through the forest in the winter when the snow is deep; I imagine I’m an elf in a Lord of the Rings movie running to Lothlorien.
Number Three: I cannot sleep late in my own apartment, because I know there are too many things I have to do (cleaning, taking care of plants, translations, practicing the piano, friends, etc.). But, I can sleep very late when I am visiting somewhere else and don’t have to get up early, though I will gladly get up early for breakfast as I describe in #1 above.
Number Four: I love to play the piano or sing in the dark – who needs the distraction of things you see? I can concentrate on the music better.
Number Five: I hate house cleaning, but I hate a dirty apartment even more, so I clean very fast, and I absolutely detest dirty door handles and light switches, so they all get a wipe down once a week from me with a cleanser.
Number Six: I have to listen to music on my big stereo while I take a shower – it makes showering much more aesthetic.

Florian in Lübeck

When the beer glass is empty, you can only smile... :-)
This is my friend Florian in Lübeck, a city on the Baltic Sea coast. We originally met via blogs on the internet, which is sometimes not the best way to run across dependable people, but after a few emails we both quickly saw that we had met someone who was not flakey. He is finishing his schooling and already has a job lined up – a smart guy – for the beginning of February in Lübeck. He speaks excellent English after having spent a year of high school in the Midwest, and he is active in a theatre club in Lübeck as well as in a charity organization for AIDS help. He is also a talented artist – drawing – and a gifted rollerskater. So what else is special about this guy? So much, but one thing sticks out above all else for me: whether in an email or in a conversation, he has the ability to make you relax and feel like time has stopped. This is very helpful, because Germans are always on a schedule, making shortness of time a chronic situation here. Thank you, Florian, for your gentle spirit, making time stand still.

Friendship in Germany

Friends in the kitchen preparing a meal...
Many from the USA notice the more serious or even bored expressions on people’s faces in Europe. Yes, Americans smile and laugh all the time, and most people over here admire this easy-goingness in the USA. But these traits do not exist by themselves; they are manifestations of substantial ways of interfacing with people in groups and as individuals.
In the USA I think Will Rogers said it best, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” And in Germany you have the phrase “Trust is good, but control is better.” Since I am probably writing for a predominantly American audience (Verzeih mir bitte, die Ihr dies lesen könnt!) I will focus on the German aspects here. The American tends to be open and curious; isn’t it cool to meet new people and find out new things! Well, yes it is, of course. But many here often think, “Who knows what kind of a person this really is; I don’t want to start something I will regret later!” And, in Germany we pay much more attention to detail, especially in dealing with people. Your conversation partner will notice everything you say and everything you don’t say, and your body language, voice inflection, posture, clothing style, it is all registered and stored to help construct their dossier of you. Then, when you have down time alone, you sift through the dossier and come to decisions, whether you want to get to know the person better or leave it at more of a distance. Then, if you decide to move closer, and if you are on a last name basis (using the formal form of address), you offer your first name and the informal form of address to the person. If you were already using first names, then you usually tell some detail about yourself or use a more special greeting with the person. This is an important barrier you cross, because this is now a relationship of trust and mutual support – you are both friends – a word used carefully here. This can sometimes require months, and sometimes some difficult situations in which you don’t know if you should venture more openness or stay reserved.
In a friendship much more openness on both sides is assumed, and this includes the readiness to criticize each other’s actions. But one thing is critical: a friend will stand by a friend to the end, regardless of what may come. This means that in test situations some will cheat helping their friends to pass a test. In socialist East Germany your friends warned you about spies and helped you find food and goods you could not get otherwise. And so, the outside world is brutal, cold, and you don’t know the people or what they want, so you don’t give them anything to use against you, which also means you don’t smile in many situations. Here control is better; you control yourself and keep distance from others. When you meet a friend, trust takes over: the greeting makes it obvious that these are friends: the personal space is closer, they may even touch each other longer, and always start by asking and telling in detail how they are doing.
It was difficult for me in the beginning; you traverse a great distance going from stranger to acquaintance to friend here. While I still value the openness of American society, I cannot imagine my life without the friends I have and am making in Germany, for they are what make life here so special and rewarding for me.

The Greatest Christmas Gift

Said Irenaeus, over 1600 years ago: "In his incomprehensible love for us he became as we are, so that we might be as he is."
This is ultimate love and friendship: identifying completely with the other person and sharing in each other, by which both persons become more themselves rather than being taken up into the other person. In other words, gaining your true self by losing it in the other person. There is no greater gift than this.

Belated Thanksgiving in the Peace of the Forest...

What a wonderful weekend I’ve had! Let me tell you about it…
Friday evening my friends from Pirna arrived, and we walked to a restaurant on my street, tried it for the first time. Its name is Waldfrieden, or “peace of the forest.” Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. It’s one of those restaurants. Walk in and you peer through the smoke to see really eclectic décor: old branches on the wall, every window styled differently, the bar “wallpapered” with old beer caps. And the place was full with people straight out of the old GDR socialist East Germany. A young guy from Poland sat on a makeshift stage and strummed guitar and sang the likes of “I don’t get no satisfaction”. He played and sang quite well, but I don’t think he had seen a bar of soap in a while. The help behind the bar was dressed in gothic with wavy long black hair halfway down the back. A little black puppy dashed among the tables and a cat meandered through the chairs. A rather old and extremely overweight drunk man kept asking in a loud voice if the guy would sing old folk songs from East Prussia and Danzig. So the waitress came, and I asked for the menu. “I am the menu” she said. She wanted to know what I wanted to eat, and they simply fixed it. So I had a dark Budweiser (the real thing from Czech. Republic) and food, and my friends had mineral water and a cola, and the whole bill was 9 Euros, a really good deal.
Saturday evening we were 10 people sitting at my table to have a belated Thanksgiving meal. What was the menu? Turkey baked in champagne (I did eat meat for this one meal), dressing, corn-sweet-potato pudding, lettuce salad with raisins, soy beans and balsamic vinegar, and home-made pumpkin pie. And a pino grigio from north Italy gave the perfect white wine for the event. Both Saturday and Sunday we were at the Christmas Market in Leipzig city centre to have hot spiced wine, Christmas goodies, and just walk through all the booths.
A note from my previous post: the odor problem has thankfully all but vanished. I think it may have been stress related. I have come to terms with the conflict that may have caused it, even though the other party has not yet started communicating. (More on communication and friendship in Germany later: it’s different than in the USA…)