A New Era

Just in time for my blog's first birthday, and now that I've been home in the States just over a month after my 2+ years in Berlin, I feel that this blog needs to undergo some sort of face-lift, or somehow change its identity in some way. Unfortunately what I experience on a day-to-day basis at home in Iowa is far from the wacky, unpredictable life I had in Berlin and therefore far less interesting, no matter how much I am happy and thankful I am to have great parents to live with!

Every time I came home to the USA to visit during my 2+ years in Berlin, it was almost as though my life in Berlin was just a dream. I went from riding in the smelly subways with Turks (and some Germans) in Berlin to driving in a nice, automatic transmission car at home. I went from hauling heavy linen bags (or sometimes a suitcase) full of groceries from the corner grocery store to my apartment in Berlin to being in the States, cruising down to the grocery store at any hour of the day in a car, having my groceries packed into bags for me, and then driving home. And I went from long, beautiful walks down historic streets filled with gorgeous old buildings, or by the Spree River with all its charming bridges, and through my favorite part of Berlin: Tiergarten, a mystical park with woodsy trails, ponds, and open fields - right in the middle of the city of Berlin - to a rather uninteresting, yet homey, walk in residential neighborhoods or the golf course at home.

Quite a difference. But coming home to the States was always such a luxury! I didn't have to pay for anything, I drove a car again, I sat around on comfy couches watching cable t.v. (in English!), and most importantly, I got to spend time with my family and friends from home.

But then it was always over, usually after a month. Then it was back on the 3 planes that would take me over the ocean to my far-away apartment in a big city filled with action, rude people, and loud neighbors (well, one in particular).

It never failed: Coming back to Berlin was always hard. There was no family with smiles on their faces and tears in their eyes to greet me at the airport. There was no car to whisk me home, stopping for dinner on the way. It was just the anonymous travelers at the airport, and the bus and train that would take me to my stop, and a hard 10-minute walk with a heavy suitcase, oboe, and other carry-on bags to my apartment door.

Arriving in Europe in the early morning was the worst part. Arriving in the Midwest was always evenings, where I could almost immediately go to bed and sleep fairly normally, but on the long flight back over the ocean to Europe when you watch the sun rise, though beautiful, was like a cruel joke for my body knowing a fresh new day had just begun without sleeping a wink the entire flight. Though it felt like midnight, we were always served a complimentary breakfast roll an hour before landing just upseting my stomach further.

Upon arriving back at my apartment, I was always welcomed to the musty smell of a place which hadn't been aired out in too long and had a lonely, forgotten feel to it. Or a plant, withered or dead from not being watered in a month. Then there was the time when I was greeted me with a very terrible surprise:

I walked in from the entry way to the living room to see a reddish substance on the floor curiously creeping out of the kitchen. As I got closer and saw the origin of the matter I knew something bad had happened: I had left a bag of plums in my wooden fruit bowl for a month!

Not only had the plums all but dissolved into pure syrup, my beautiful wooden bowl had expanded and cracked from the moisture, letting a river of sticky plum juice seep out and spill down the side of my cupboard, onto the kitchen floor right out the door to the living room, drying into a gummy coating. And the worst part: There were millions of fruit flies feasting on the mess and flying hungrily around my kitchen.

I was already jet-lagged and in a bad mood. How was I ever going to deal with this disaster area? I closed the door to the kitchen to gather my thoughts and create a strategy. (The worst part of living alone is always having to deal with the bugs, you see.) I ventured back into the kitchen and opened the window, hoping some of the bugs would fly out on their own. Then I looked to see if I had any bags big enough to throw the whole bowl into to dispose of. I didn't. All I had was a medium-sized H&M bag which didn't have much give on the sides. But it was the biggest I had, so I had to use it.

I scoped out the scene of all the fruit flies in their plum paradise. Yup, it was just as disgusting as it had been 3 minutes ago. I took a deep breath....and counted to three....and in a whirlwind rage dashed over, shoving the bowl into the bag. It didn't fit, so I pushed until it did. I tied up the bag as quickly as possible and ran out of my apartment door to the hallway trash chute. I opened the chute, put the bag in, shut the chute and sighed a deep sigh of relief.

But knowing the trash chute sometimes gets stuck with a bag too big, I hesitantly wiggled the handle to make sure the door still opened, just hoping it had gone down smoothly. But the worst had come true: I had jammed the chute with the fruit bowl. The door was stuck so tight it didn't even budge when I pulled with all my might.

At that point, I really did just want to give up. I thought I had victoriously disposed of the bag, but it was still there - jamming the chute, and my kitchen was still filled with many more fruit flies on the cupboards, ceiling, and probably still drinking the plum syrup left on the counter and floor. I went back into the kitchen and scrubbed it clean, all the while killing numerous bugs. It was then that I heard the voice of the house master, who just happened to be out in the hallway.

I wanted to ask him to help opening the chute, but didn't want him to know I'd been the idiot to jam it. After all, if I'd even so much as looked before shoving the bag into it, I would have seen that it was too big to fit. But I decided I should say something before the other tenants discovered it and got mad. So I went out into the hallway and ever-so-casually said,

"It seems the trash chute is stuck!"

The handy man that he is, he was able to remove the door and dispose of the bag. He rang my doorbell a little later telling me it was all fixed and I just smiled and thanked him, hoping he hadn't been clever enough to figure out that the H&M bag more than likely belonged to me, seeing as I was the only girl under the age of 65 on our floor and they were sure not to shop at that store. I'm sure he did know and was just being nice in letting me think he didn't. And to be honest, it didn't matter anymore; all I could think about was taking a nap.

And nap I did. The time difference going back to Germany is rough on the body. Not only do you arrive in the morning and it feels like night, if you do take a nap, you are stuck for the next several days with severe feeling of US time which means being wide awake until 5 a.m. and sleeping until 2 p.m.. With a 7-hour time difference between countries, it literally feels as though you are sleeping when they are.

Since I usually came back to Berlin before my semester started and therefore had a bit of flexibility in my schedule, I was able to succumb to this pattern, as much as I hated it. Who knew Seinfeld and Cheers were on t.v. starting at 4:30 am, dubbed into German? (And is really bad, by the way.) Only once was I able to really force myself to stay awake upon my arrival in Berlin, as much as it hurt, thus getting onto a pretty normal schedule right away.

However, aside from week-long the time adjustment, and the strange, initial feeling of being far away from home and alone in a big city in a foreign country, after that period was over, I would feel as though I'd never left and was totally acclimated again, excited to live in an amazing city. The adjustment period was simply an inevitable part of living in two countries.

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Part of keeping life interesting is always having a destination, or something to look forward to, whether it be moving from country to country like in this blog, planning a trip, career change, or even how the living room should be decorated. I suppose I could keep my blog with this title, "Destination Germany," (partly because I don't want to have to think up a new title) as a cheesy metaphor for life, trying not to get swallowed up in the monotonous routine of every day, making sure to notice the strange and humorous things that happen even on my own soil and being excited about adventures to come.

I don't know if my life will lead me back to Germany, but I do know it has been an important part of my life thus far and I learned and experienced a lot there during 3+ years (including my college exchange year). I appreciate things in both countries and am so happy I had the chance not just to travel abroad, but live abroad. I learned so much about how other cultures think, act, and speak, about history, about music, about the value of friendship, and the importance of an open mind. Here's to the end of an era, and to the beginning of a new one, wherever it may be!

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Just a side story illustrating again the differences with Germany and Iowa. Tonight my parents asked me to go out and get some milk for breakfast tomorrow and so I got in the car and drove to Wal-Mart (at 10:30 p.m.! We were lucky in Berlin that the grocery store was open till 8 p.m.!). And to make matters weirder, my cashier was a classmate of mine from high school, and in line in front of me was another classmate who I didn't recognize until after he was gone.

The cashier had been one of those gorgeous, but ridiculously ditzy girls in the preppie crowd who I remember used the glass-case mirrors in 8th grade science class to curl her hair with a curling iron during boring class lectures. She ended up getting pregnant after graduation and then marrying a football player classmate, and now she is divorced with 2 kids working the night shift at Wal-Mart. It's always interesting to see what became of former classmates. But she seemed happy and was nicer than ever, so that's the most important thing.

But this just shows you can never leave your house in a small town without freshening up a little - you always run into someone you know! *sigh*