Stranger in every land

A few weeks ago a posted about the sense of paranoia, or fear mongering that I felt when visiting America (that post is here, if you somehow missed it and want to know what I am going on about:  http://hadleyswanderingsandramblings.blogspot.de/2014/09/land-of-paranoid.html ).

That post generated a lot of commentary on my facebook page--and one of the first comments was that I now see American as a "foreigner"  I don't dispute that at all.  In fact, that was sort of the point of the post: how, having been OUTside the country for so long, I felt this so much more acutely than I did when I lived there and was accustomed to the constant messages in the media, etc (though I felt it to a lesser degree then).   I guess I always thought that was somewhat the point of many of my ramblings--that my views, always a bit quirky and out of the norm, are more so now that I am living in another culture and experiencing a different way of doing things.

 So, yeah, I am pretty much a foreigner in my home country these days.  In the past five and a half years I have spent a sum total of 8 weeks on US soil that was not Disney property (and we all know that is not reality, but it would be 11 weeks if you want to count those).  If I did the math right, that works out to about 3% of my time.  So, of course, I am completely out of the loop on American culture at this point.  The US hasn't frozen in early 2009 and not evolved and changed (nor have I as an individual), but my experience with it, for the most part has.

The result is, sometimes, quite unsettling.  In many ways it is harder to deal with not fitting in when I go "home" than it is being in a totally new environment, or even one I have visited before, but only as a tourist.  It makes sense (both logically and emotionally) for me to feel a little lost and a little overwhelmed when visiting Milan or Paris.  The noise level, and honking, and people pushing up against you closer than Germans would in public; the prices feeling off of my norm for everything from food to t-shirts to train fare, etc is to be expected when I am a tourist.
 Logically, I know to expect the same when I return to the US these days, but emotionally, home is supposed to be comfortable and familiar and, well, easy.  Even going in expecting it, on a deeper level it is still a jolt and disorienting and rather unsettling to not just slide in and fit comfortably there anymore.

But here is the great catch-22: even though I now have that "foreign" view of the USA, I am still very much an outsider in Germany as well.  I still don't have the language down really well.  Quite honestly, I doubt I will ever master the complex grammar.  For now, after all these years, it is still a terrific strain to get through an "elternabend" (bi monthly parent's night at school) and understand all that is being said, especially when parents chat with one another while the teachers are speaking.  I mean, really, how at home in a culture can you be when you have to WORK at simply understanding what the new attendance policy is at the school or which supplies your kid needs to bring in by next week?

Beyond the language barrier, the much bigger cultural issues loom.  By dent of not having grown up here, there are always, ALWAYS things that feel "off" or "funny" or just "different" to me (and conversely, things that I do scream "foreigner" to the Germans around me), or things that I simply do not know and no one else thinks to tell me because it is so ingrained in this culture that it never crosses the mind of a local that I don't already know it.

So, my tendency to walk around my neighborhood with an ice filled beverage and smile at anyone I pass screams AMERICAN to, well, pretty much the whole town.

And I still don't like fizzy water, or the way the German school system tracks kids starting after fourth grade (or keeps people who really excel in one area from studying that in college if they are not high achieving in all areas), and I can still be taken aback by how abrupt and to the point Germans can be and have to remind myself that it is not meant as rude or hurtful and just is how things are done here.

And it can take months of landlady issues before someone realizes I might not know about mietveriens and tells me about this awesome place I can get help.  Or, it takes months to find a tutor for Rio, partly because I don't even know where to look or what to put on a flier seeking one and partly because, not being from here, I don't have a network of friends and friends of friends who can ask around for me.

At the end of the day, no German is ever going to see me as German.  My accent alone gives me away (though, apparently, often as Ducth? lol).  While, at the same time, I am increasingly, obviously, not really American.

So, where do I fit in?  Where do I belong?  The short answer, is: I don't.  I'm caught in this weird in between state of not fitting any much of anywhere.  We're not even a part of some of the communities of ex pats that sort of build their own pocket--we are not military, or on 3-5 year US contract that will take us "home" or onto another land soon, and pay for our kids to attend school in English with other ex pat kids, nor are we part of the "post doc" crowd of academics doing research and teaching at universities all over Europe.  There certainly are others like us--ones who just took the chance when a job came up, or for some other reason, and moved and are much more long term residents than the typical ex pat crowd, but also still deeply tied to our home nation roots.  Actually, one of the appeals of cruising for me is that we seem to end up on ships and itineraries that appeal to other people in similar circumstances, and for that week or ten days we feel normal.  We've sat down at tables for lunch in which 10 of the 12 people were from one place but living in another.  We've become friends with Danes living in Switzerland and Indians who immigrated to Canada but now live in Kuwait, Canadians living in Qatar and Germans who immigrated to Australia.  And all of a sudden, being Americans who live in Germany is just one more set of perspectives to enjoy and one more group of experiences that might help get a trivia question correct.

In spite of how this post probably reads, most of the time I don't mind not really fitting in.  I was always on the fringe of things anyway, and I often revel in the difference and love seeing so many perspectives and ways of doing things.  I enjoy comparing and contrasting and trying things out and laughing at things that strike me as odd (in a good natured way, of course).  I like seeing how things could be, and thinking about how different ways of doing things affect so much of our cultures and ourselves overall.  I love ferreting out possible connections and motivations and the like.  Overall, I truly enjoy the opportunity to look in at so many cultures with such a varied view and see the good, the bad, the in between, the silly and the frustrating and just soak it all in.

But, sometimes, if I think about it too much, it can be a little bit isolating and disconcerting--especially when I feel accused of having done something wrong for having seen something from a different perspective (and it happens from time to time), or when I am dealing with a difficult or scary situation without much local support.  And, increasingly often, I worry about what it does to my kids.  Is it a good thing that they have an expanded cultural view?  Are they better equipped to get along in an increasingly globalized world with people from hugely varying backgrounds?  Or is it a bad thing for them to have no firm sense of place, no where that is THEIRS?  Have I condemned them to a life of never quite fitting in and always feeling lost?  It is too early to tell, and no one decision sets the future anyway.  I can only hope that instead of feeling like strangers in every land, they can, for the most part, feel at home in many.

--Hadley