Heimweh

Friday was my last day of classes for the year and I am now officially on winter break, which seems like as good of a time as any for introspection. I know I’ve been slacking in the blogging department but I have been, among other things, caught up in the tempo and monotony of everyday life. A while ago I blogged about culture shock, the initial honeymoon phase, and the beginning of regularity in everyday life, but now here I am, two months later, and a lot has changed.

Okay, so in the big scheme of things two months is chump change, not a very long time. But two months or two days, the time I spend her and all of the experiences I have here will stay with me for the rest of my life, good or bad…

Which brings us to the next phase of culture shock, because what goes up must come down and after the good and the mundane comes the bad: homesickness. It’s something a lot of people struggle with and even deny or choose to ignore it, yet with every prolonged travel experience or international study, it is all but inevitable.

I feel it’s important to call attention to the difference between a house and a home. Though the two can belong to the same location, they in no way have to be, and quite often aren’t. This is topic that has particular relevance to me since I have changed my place of residence, my “house,” seven times in the past three years. Though these were (mostly) completely done by my choice, it still makes you aware of the differences between a house and a home.

Home, at least to me, is where you grew up, where you have emotional investment in a location, where your family and loved ones are, and where you can just let your guard down and feel “at home.” Being where you feel most comfortable and safe, where you can just relax, where you’re with the people who mean the most to you, that’s what is important, not the actual location.

Being homesick is being out of your comfort zone, away from where you feel comfortable and safe, and the experience of wanting that feeling back again, at least that’s what it means to me. That also explains how different people react to different situations with varying degrees of homesickness depending on their ability to adapt and feel “at home.” There’s nothing wrong with being homesick, because like the other aspects of culture shock, this is just another step within the larger process. It helps us gain further appreciation for home and what it means because if you never get at least a little homesick, it’s not really much of a home then now is it?

Auf die Dauer, fällt die Mauer

As Joe Jackson put it, “The walls are coming down between the west and the east, you don’t have to be a hippie to believe in peace. That’s obvious.” And the walls did come down, specifically the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. A monumental date in history for many people all across the world, it paved the way for the unified Germany that we know today and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. With the recent celebration of the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the progress that has been made over the past twenty years is still fresh in our mind.

And a lot of progress has been made since 1989. The former GDR is a very different place now than it was 20 years ago and is now very much a part of the unified Germany. With the recent celebration we think of accomplishments and progress that has been made, for instance, me being able to study in Rostock, but it’s easy neglect that this is a process that takes a very long time and as much as we’d like to think otherwise, the east and the west are still very different places.

I have been in Rostock now for a little over a month and a half, and until last weekend I hadn’t left the city the whole time I’ve been here. Being in one place for that long, you’d begin to get used to almost anything. Rostock is many things, but nice is not a word I would use to describe it. Don’t get me wrong, so far it has been a great and very interesting experience, but it is very drab.

After the war when almost everything was destroyed, very few, if any of the old buildings were restored to their prewar conditions. The communist government didn’t allow them to do so because there simply wasn’t money to do so. Instead of being beautiful old small brick buildings, they have been replaced sheer concrete buildings. Following the war there was also a severe housing shortage and the GDR’s solution, like many other communist countries, was to erect these massive prefabricated concrete monoliths called Plattenbauten. (This picture is of a residence hall for the university on my street.) This in combination with the constant overcast skies and relentless rain is enough to make a fairly depressing place.

This all became very apparent after a trip I took to Lübeck, a city two hours west of Rostock that also happens to be in the former west. (The picture at the very beginning is of Lübeck) Lübeck is also a hanseatic city of about the same size as Rostock, but one of the first things we notice when we arrive is how many restored churches there are. Lübeck was hit just as hard during the World War II, but the old city center has been beautifully restored with all of its narrow alleys and small buildings. It was just a beautiful city.

Whereas the anniversary of the fall of the wall is very important for the entire world and a huge reason to celebrate in Berlin, out away from the center of it all, it’s hard NOT to notice how big of a difference there between the west and the east, even 20 years later. "That's obvious."

Straßenbahn

When I left the United States back at the end of September, I also left my little red car behind too. Anyone who had seen it would know it’s not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, but it still got me from point A to point B (usually). It was a fifteen-year-old four door Honda Civic, which had three workings windows and three working doors and occasionally would die on the freeway or around sharp turns. The maintenance for it, more often than not, involved duct tape, superglue, and zip ties, rather than screwdrivers and wrenches.

I kept this car around because in car-centric American society, it is more or less a necessity. Outside of large urban areas, you simply cannot get around unless you do by car. Whether you own one yourself or not, it is almost always essential. Last year my family was living in Nebraska while I went to school in Morgantown, West Virginia, which is not a very pedestrian friendly town, with it’s twisty country roads (Country Roads… I know) and almost complete lack of planning, not having a car and walking places is almost out of the question.

I have now been in Rostock for a little over a month and have not been in a car since I arrived. For the average American to say something like this is practically impossible. Here in Rostock, and Germany at large, there is a very well established and well-maintained transportation system. They have high-speed trains connection major cities and regional trains connecting different regions. In Rostock there’s a light rail service connecting the outlying areas like the beach or the shipping yards with the center of the city. There is also an extensive bus and streetcar network throughout the city.

The streetcars really are my lifelines here. There are two stations within a ten-minute walk and the vast majority of my daily destinations are all on one line. I take the streetcars to class, to the grocery store, whenever I feel the need to go anywhere; I usually get there by way of streetcar, and I’m certainly not the only one.

It all comes back to culture and the realities of living in a different society. Europe is obviously a lot more compact and densely populated than the United States. Gas prices may also play a role since the price for gas here is currently the equivalent of over $7 a gallon. But whatever the reasons, a lot fewer people here drive, and even if they do, they do it a lot less often than we do in the United States.

So now here I am, over a month later, and not only getting by, but also being better off for not having a car. Even though it’s hardly a drastic or difficult change, it’s an adjustment nonetheless. It’s an example that we can imagine and relate to, which is important because isn’t this all about stepping beyond our cultural comfort zone and experiencing something new, even if it is something as simple as walking or taking a train instead of driving a car?

Perspective

The other day as I was visiting a church in the older part of town to take pictures. The church is pretty old and they have a small gift shop in the base where you pay a small fee to go up to the top of the tower. While I was waiting to pay to go up, an elderly woman who was accompanied by a man with only one arm was talking to the cashier. I was standing there, zoning out, waiting to pay so I wasn't intentionally listening in on their conversation but it caught my attention after about a minute. I had missed the first part of her conversation but she was talking about when Rostock was bombed by the Allies during World War II. How she was outside when it first started to happen and rushed inside for shelter. She said she was lucky to be alive because her neighbor's house had been completely destroyed.

We all learn in school that there was a war, and it was bad. We occasionally see pictures like the ones above from the Allied bombing of Rostock in 1942 in books, but they rarely have any meaning to us. Underneath the two black and white photos I have pictures of the same areas today in 2009.

I've been living in Rostock for almost a month now. These are streets I walk every day without a second thought to their history. These pictures suddenly become very meaningful and humbling, to think that these things happened right here where I'm standing. How many people's lives were changed forever that day when the city was leveled to the ground?

Going abroad is about many things including gaining another culture's perspective to further your own. We often examine the differences in our cultures without wondering how we got there. It was 67 years ago, but however horrible, it helped shape the modern cultural perspective. This is hardly the whole reason for cultural differences, but if you think about it, you'd act a little differently if your neighborhood was bombed to the ground too.

Culture Shock

Right now it's almost 1:45 pm and I just finished breakfast. Routine has officially begun to set in...

It's a slightly different experience for everybody depending on what their situation is and how familiar they are with their surroundings, but whenever you leave your home, your family and friends, and your familiar surroundings, and travel to a foreign land with a different culture and different customs, you experience culture shock in one form or another. Culture shock can mean very different things to different people, but for the most part, everybody experiences the "honeymoon" phase where everything is new and exciting, the first part of the "shock" of culture shock. This is one of the most exciting phases of doing a foreign exchange program because even if you've done your homework and think that you're prepared for change, you can never really be prepared for what's ahead.

Everything is new and exciting, from the moment you step off the plane. The first thing that hits you is how it smells. The smell can be one of the most memorable parts and stick with you forever. Once you get out and start to feel like you've finally landed, everything around you hits you all at once, the smells, the sounds, the sights, everything new that you do, is all part of this honeymoon phase.

But as its name implies, the honeymoon phase is just that, a phase. Gradually you become more familiar with your surroundings. You stop noticing the smells as you grow used to them and the landscape begins to become familiar. All the sounds that were overwhelming and new become normal and routine. (For example, the novelty of hearing people speaking German in Germany begins to wear off quite quickly.)

And now we come to how this applies to me. I've been here for 18 days, and have a week of class under my belt now, and everything that was exciting, difficult, or even frustrating, are becoming routine, or at the very least less difficult. And in the end all these things are good, this is how we adapt to new situations. It's all part of a multiple step process that takes time.

Whereas this is relevant in and of itself, settling into a routine. The bigger objective is to have an idea of what is going on now and how that feels, so that you can be as well informed as possible for what comes next, after everything stops being exciting and becomes routine, because what comes next is not always easy and quite often the most difficult part of being in culture shock. But as I mentioned before, this whole thing is a process and the difficult stage of accepting routine and being happy with your surroundings, dealing with the possibility of homesickness is just one step in the entire process. It too will pass, come hell or high water. Regardless, I will continue to keep you updated on all that is my life here in Germany, the good, the bad, and the mundane.

And, once again, on a completely different note, I suppose this is the part of the post where I put up more pictures to help give you a better overview and impression of what my life here is like. The first picture is of the market in the center of town where there's always a lot going on. Directly across from the market is the city hall, which is the pink building in the second picture.

Am Anfang des Semesters

Today marked the first day of classes here at the Universität Rostock and despite all the confusion and lack of clarity about virtually everything, I attended my first class, History of the German Language. The way the university functions as a whole here is very different than it is in the United States. The main difference, which may be at the core of everything, is that you go to a university to study one thing, for example physics, and you study ONLY physics. There are no general education requirements and very few interdisciplinary courses offered because when you go to study at a university here, you go to further your education only in your selected field.

Since the various fields of study are so isolated and separate, it only makes sense that the requirement of interdepartmental communication is minimal. For all the normal going-ons within the university, this usually isn't a cause for concern, however for the international student "fresh off the boat" so to speak, this translates into nobody knowing anything about anything going on anywhere else within the university. Communication is clearly lacking and it's effect on disorganization is very evident.

After a 4 days of new international student orientation, there had still been no mentioning of any scheduling or any mentioning of classes at all. After looking more in depth into it we found out that registration for regular German students closed way back in August. We then went in search of answers as to how we were to get classes and have a schedule, but due to the lack of communication we received conflicting information from several different sources. The simple answer to everything is that there is no way for international student to get classes and nobody seems to know this.

That being said, after practically begging for someone to help us, we finally got someone from the international office to show us the course listings and we just have to go in on the first class and hope that there's a spot open for us. After this week I'm beginning to understand why I was told that I would have to be proficient in German to be able to come here because at times even for me, the German system and processes involved were a little frustrating and I could speak the language.

All in all I would say that after all of this I'm not discouraged at all. I knew that it would be a very different experience and that I would have to be independent in many of the things I did here. I would say that I definitely didn't realize the extent that I would have to be self-reliant, but it's all part of the experience of coming here. I've not always been the most patient person ever and when I was growing up, my dad was a big fan of the phrase "proceed as the way opens." As much as it pains me to say, The only way to go through an experience like this, enjoy it, and make it a positive experience is to "proceed as the way opens."

On a completely different note, here are a few extra pictures that don't really have anything to do with the post. Just pictures I've been meaning to put up. The first one is another view of my bedroom here in Rostock, the second is the Reichstag in Berlin, the next one from inside Heathrow in London, and the last one is a picture of my girlfriend and I before I left the states.

Home

So this lovely building right here is my current and future home for the next six months. I took this picture during a rare patch of sun (it rains here almost constantly). Once I had my things set down in my room, I looked around the apartment a bit, not that there's much to see since it's so small but I found hints of a roommate. I say hints because his name is on the door, he has things like towels, plates, and some food in the apartment, but it's been almost a week since I moved in and I haven't seen any sign of him actually being here yet.

That being said, I set off alone to go in search of supplies for my apartment.

After poking around for a little while, I realized I was back at square one as far as household essentials go. Food was easy enough to find, supermarkets are supermarkets the world over, they may have different formats and cater to different crowds but they all serve the same basic function: provide me with food. After I had food covered I hit another road block: I had no plates or cups, no silverware, no pots or pans either. My American intuition would have led me to Target or Walmart for all my genre-encompassing needs. But this isn't America and there are no Targets or Walmarts. So where is one to find such essentials when he's alone in a foreign land with no clue what to do? The simple answer is do without, for the first couple days I ate off halloween paper plates and cups.

Eventually I did find everything I needed, the cooking essentials at a department store and other things like detergent and kitchen towels at a small connivence-like store (think Walgreens without the drugs). It was an interesting, and at times, difficult process to do all of these start up things completely on my own. There were many things going on all at once, not just thing finding of replacements for my halloween plates. I was becoming familiar in a city I had never been in and being completely reliant on myself to get everywhere and find everything. It took me a couple days to figure out the streetcar system and all the different lines for it. Fortunately for me, for some reason they didn't start checking tickets until after I got my rail pass from the university.

I'm glad to finally be settled in to my apartment and start to finally get a grip on things, just taking everything one step at a time (I still haven't figured out where to wash my giant mound of dirty clothes). Classes will be starting soon and I feel like I'm just about as ready as I can be. I know how to get to the places I need to go and my fridge is well stocked. At this point, I don't think there a whole lot else I could ask for.