The Anonymity of Trains

Unlike planes, wherein passengers are compelled to please fasten their seatbelts, and wherein the privilege of sitting in an exit row is not the luxury of following crew member instructions in the event of an emergency, but rather, the extra leg room, trains grant you that mysterious quality of anonymity only achieved by the steady ebb and flow of embarking and disembarking travelers scrambling for a choice seat. Not to mention the vastness of Alpine landscape that engulfs your journey.

That’s right. The purchase of a train ticket does not include an assigned seat. You can cough up another few euros for a reservation (which can be worth forgoing penny-pinching on a busy travel day, I assure you, having once been among the sardine-packed seatless individuals on the luggage-end of a lopsided wagon), but for whatever reason, most people don’t. My German teacher in Erfurt was affronted by the idea of paying €4.50 each way (“That’s €9.00!”). Even the Austrian Railway employee at the ticket counter advised me against getting a reservation (“You won’t need it”).

This inevitably leads to madness on the platform.

Perhaps thanks to German Ordnung, even before the train pulls in you can look up the very section of the platform your 2^nd-class wagon (because who travels 1^st?) will stop. Approximately 1.013 minutes before the train approaches, an announcement saying so is made over the loud speakers. This triggers the mobilization of the sitting/smoking/texting masses to the ridged yellow line of demarcation.

Personal space and chivalry become relics of antiquity as everyone around you hovers by the doors, anxious to board as soon as the flow of those exiting ceases. Once aboard, your eyes survey the status of occupied and free seats in either adjacent wagon, like a hawk on the hunt, and the field mouse is seat 102, window, with table, silent wagon, facing the direction of travel, no small children and therefore no potential temper tantrums in a wagon-wide radius.

At exactly 13:54 the train departs (but if there’s a 5-minute delay, that’s barely forgivable; 15 minutes and you have the right to remain silent and pissed; 1 hour or more and you’ll never make your connection). You curl into fetal position and settle in for a cat nap, but not before setting an alarm so you don’t miss your stop (a misstep virtually impossible by flight).

When you awake, you peek surreptitiously and curiously at who you’ve won in the transient-neighbor lottery. Sometimes you feel like talking, sometimes you don’t. (Most of the time you don’t.)

Last Thursday I woke up to see another young woman across the table from me, also catching some Z’s. When we made eye contact, I said a polite hello, and that was that. Unable to sleep further and at a loss for how to occupy my time, I began to make a stack of redundant receipts that had accumulated in my wallet. Being a good world citizen, I made my way to the end of the wagon where the trash cans for sorting (but not Sorting, as in Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, or Slytherin) may be found. Just as I made my way past three rowdy pre-teen boys, I heard an unmistakable “Ni hao,” spoken sideward with the lilt of mockery and followed by an echo of not-quite-low-pitched-because-they’re-still-going-through-puberty guffaws from his goonies (let’s call them Crabbe and Goyle).

“Oh, yeah, that’s hi-lar-i-ous!” I rounded on him.

Goyle looked over to “Malfoy” with an expression that read, “Tee hee, she’s actually talking to you, dude.”

Cooling off enough to revert to German, I continued, “So, you see someone who happens to look Asian – ”

“Uh huh…”

“ – and you think to yourself, oh, she must come from China! And with this presumption you say, ‘Ni hao,’ like it’s some clever joke. But guess what? It’s NOT funny.”

He apologized with a sincerity I had trouble believing, but it was probably the best I was going to get.

I marched on to the end of the wagon only to discover that there weren’t any recycling bins after all and felt foolish making an about face, returning to my seat, receipts still in hand, a bit unsure if it had been such a good idea to raise my voice in the train. I then made eye contact for the second time with my neighbor.

She nodded, “Gut.”

Though we only exchanged three words during the entire three-hour journey (“Hallo – Gut – Ciao”) that affirmation meant everything to me. That a perfect stranger had acknowledged my right to defend myself and teach those boys a sugar-free lesson. When would they otherwise ever get that chance? When bullying a shy foreign-exchange student still struggling with asking for directions in German? Or worse yet, after reaching adulthood?

Catching something along the lines of, “Man, she’s totally gonna whip out some kung fu!” I only wished I could muster up some kind of Jedi mind trick or send them a slew of Howlers by post – anything devious and devoid of a strictly Asian association.

Why did he think it’d be funny?

Why didn’t his “friends” call him out?

Why is it that people try so hard to be “cool,” even when it isn’t “right”?

I should say that this has happened to me before in Europe. But it must also be said that this scenario could just as likely have happened back in the States. Putting on airs and calling it “cool” at the expense of putting down others is an international problem. A problem that makes me very angry.

Slipping back under the blanket of anonymity I focused very hard on a round of Sudoku* in order to put my mind elsewhere. And I mused that perhaps it was best that this had happened on the train, where I could go back to doing my thing, and they could go back to their banter. Maybe the lesson wouldn’t sink in right away, but at least the boy wasn’t entirely losing face either, able to brush it off for now. Maybe he went home that day and reconsidered his actions. Or not.

*Actually, now that I think about it, this is somewhat ironic. I don’t have any martial arts skills, but I can play some mean Sudoku and Ken-Ken!

But maybe the next time he thinks about telling this same old joke, he’ll think twice. And not.

At the very least, I’ve realized that in comparing the trio to Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, that must make me Hermione.

Which is nothing but awesome.

Violence is not the answer.

Whiplash Culture Shock: 2.5 weeks in the States after 50 in Germany

When you return from a year abroad, you realize that nothing back home has really changed, but since being away, you have.

Sure, friends are either getting haircuts or getting married, but America is still the good ol’ USA. The national flag has always flown over every car dealership and in your neighbor’s front yard, but you were never quite so aware of their omnipresence until living in possibly the least nationalistic nation in the world made you as sensitive to the red, white, and blue as a dog to squirrels.

As I child, I used to recite the pledge of allegiance every time I saw the flag. (International readers: This is abnormal.) My parents probably remember with some bitterness that oft-driven stretch of highway with many a dealership.

And now?

Landing: New York, New York

The 70-strong CBYX crew said a bittersweet “Tschüss” and “Danke schön” to the Lufthansa flight attendants as we disembarked at JFK, a large U.S. flag greeting us at customs and immigration, along with a new station of electronic kiosks that have replaced human customs officers, who now deal only with non-citizens.

(You touch-screen your way through “No, I do not have fruits, animals, or more than 10,000 USD on me” and then fit yourself webcam-style into the outline of a torso to have your mug taken. As I squatted to align myself, a supervising officer enlightened me, “You can move the monitor.” Embarrassed, I laughed awkwardly, “How practical!”)

On the streets of New York City, everything is as I left it. Young 20-something sunglassed hipsters brush past 30-something fashionistas in Louis Vuitton pushing high-end strollers around suited-up, briefcase-toting businessmen juggling Starbucks and a Bluetooth ear piece.

I'm sure they were there before, too, I just never noticed --

Standing on the corner of 47^th and 3^rd I can count eight flags. Underground waiting for the 6, the subway whooshes past me, a flag adhered to the same corner of each car. Walking along the river, more than 15 miniature flags wave from the outdoor deck of a seafood joint.

Next Stop: Fort Worth, Texas

Coming back home is a familiar feeling.

The first notable experience is the dread of leaving the air-conditioned airport. The tinted automatic doors slide open and you are unapologetically engulfed in 100°F and blinded by the sun hitting concrete.

The second is hitting up all your favorite eateries. (More on that later.)

The third is driving a car again. Like riding a bike, you don’t forget how.

During my brief week home, between visiting family and Godfamily and adopted families, I say hello to some longhorns (no, really, I do), eat Krispy Kremes 3 breakfasts in a row, have the best homemade pie I’ve had in a year (sorry, Germany, but you don’t really know how to do pies), and try not to cry while singing a wedding.

At the Fort Worth Stockyards.

One night in Texas

Grandma, who is also a snake by the Chinese zodiac, is 60 years older than me. She’s lost a lot of her teeth, walks very slowly with the aid of a walking stick, and is suffering from failing vision and hearing, but most of all, from solitude. (Her most faithful companion is Cantonese television.)

I visit her now that I’m back. Dad and I enter through the garage door because she’s afraid of wasps and lizards dashing through the front door, where they’ve recently sprayed. I run to her side, bending over to hug her short frame, and I note that she smells the same as she always has, a mixture of her favorite Chinese soap and Bounce (her dryer sheet of choice). She wears a random T-shirt covered by her usual sweater vest (to stay warm, even though it’s 100 degrees outside), loose-fitting pants, and house slippers. Her hair is still salt-and-pepper gray. No doubt she trims her hair herself. Her eyes look smaller, the crow’s feet more pronounced, and I think she has fewer teeth than the last time I saw her.

She loves to save things and is loath to throw anything away, sentimental or not. Having barely stepped into the house, she shows me the mail and asks me if I need any books. I tell her gently that the Half Price Books coupons have already expired. We sort through credit card and airline advantage program deals. She’s told they’re advertisements, and she hesitates, asking me for a second opinion.

“Yes, Grandma, they’re advertisements.” The medium-sized print on the lower-right hand corner of one envelope reads, “This is an advertisement.” I point to each word and translate into Mandarin, “這是廣告.”

Moving beyond the foyer she begins offering all varieties of food: canned eel, instant coffee, guava-flavored hard candy, fresh plums, bran bars, and Little Debbie blueberry muffins. My father and I joke that, should any epidemic strike, we would be able to survive off of Grandma’s stores for up to two years.

For as long as I’ve known my grandmother, she’s always lived like this, with piles of mail and newspapers and packaged foods towering around her. It occurred to me that she couldn’t have always been this way, that perhaps she didn’t grow up used to having goods so readily available.

In fact, as a girl she often didn’t have anything at all.

Sitting on either side of me on the green pleather couch, my grandmother entreats my father to do something – what, I’m not sure, because they’re speaking in dialect. I interrupt the cyclic conversation, suddenly curious, “Grandma, what was it like during the War?”

Completely nonplussed by the abrupt change of topic, she begins to answer in Mandarin but quickly reverts to Cantonese. Dad has to occasionally translate for me into English.

…

婆婆’s father had made (marginal amounts of) money selling wares door-to-door. Her mother repaired costumes for Chinese theater troupes. A few days before it actually happened, her mother had a dream forewarning of a Japanese air raid. They retreated to a relative’s home in the countryside and soon received the news that their home had indeed been bombed. The Japanese were overtaking Canton (Guangdong) so the family retreated to Hong Kong, along with many other mainland refugees. At one point their shelter caught fire, and with only a split second to think before fleeing, my great-grandmother grabbed the costumes she’d been sewing, for fear that their loss would lead to demands for reparation from their owners. Otherwise, they had nothing.

            My grandmother was about ten years old.

Eventually, they made just enough money to rent one bed in a room full of bunk beds. The residents of the crowded room permitted two homeless refugees to take temporary shelter in the entryway and use the facilities to drink water and relieve themselves. These two would go around the city collecting cigarette butts, accumulating the very last dregs of tobacco to re-wrap and sell. When food ran scarce during the invasion of Hong Kong, there was much looting, and the two homeless ones stole a bag of rice, which they gave to my grandmother’s family. Because of their kindness, my grandmother survived starvation.

The British surrendered Hong Kong with little resistance. Normally, only young and fit Chinese would be hired by the Japanese as labor, but one Japanese official took pity on my bone-thin grandmother and allowed her to wear the badge that allowed Chinese to work. She carried firewood barefoot for hours, day after day. (“See,” she points to her arms and legs, “that’s why I have these scars.”) Sometimes, this same official would give her his leftover food, which she would then bring back to share with her parents.

“That’s why PoPo doesn’t hate all of the Japanese,” my dad explains. “She happened to meet a ‘kind’ one.” Air quotes around “kind.”

Eventually the Japanese decided that there weren’t enough resources in the territory, what with the crowds of mainland refugees. Those from the mainland were sent back, and my grandmother and her parents walked the entire way back to Canton. My grandmother can’t remember anymore how many months it took, but she does remember the hunger, falling sick, and just wanting the journey to be over. Some Chinese villagers living near the path offered ladles of rice porridge to these travelers, one ladle per mouth. Another miracle of kindness that allowed her survival.

One of my favorite Cantonese dishes: congee with pork and preserved
duck egg -- certainly not regarded by today's standards as fancy fare, but
still more than what my grandmother must have encountered on the
journey back to Canton. When I was a little girl, she would always make
me congee if I got sick.

Last stop:  Philadelphia, PA

I’m struck by the irony that I’m sipping a cappuccino in my favorite café on Germantown Avenue.

The Malta Club House on Boathouse Row.

Earlier this week I made a 20km (don’t ask me how many miles) trek into downtown Philly, where one in the row of iconic boathouses is another irony:  a quaint example of Fachwerk flying the American flag. Benjamin Franklin Avenue is lined by flags from around the world, including Deutschland’s. I visit Independence Hall, pick up a bubble tea from Chinatown (probably my last in a while), and discover at the end of my ride that the front reflector has since been stolen.

Naturally.

Maybe it’s the freshness of my German travels and the anticipation of being back on European soil very soon that makes me see all of these Germanisms (and Americanisms). I’ve had a little time to reflect, and I realize I’ve (worryingly?) found Germanisms in myself, too.

Distance makes the heart grow fonder:  Germanisms I can’t seem to shake off

1. Speaking English with German grammar construction and doubting my English
   (“…eligibility…e-li-gi-bi-li-ty…that feels funny…eligibility. Is that a word??”
2. Keeping my phone on “military time”
3. Showering the German way
   (i.e. turning off the shower head while lathering and turning it back on to rinse)
4. Lowering A/C levels
   (Americans, and especially Texans, really do blast it)
5. Wanting to wish everyone a “Guten Appetit” before digging in; being similarly unable to drink an alcoholic beverage without first looking everyone in the eye and saying “Prost”
6. Getting surprised when people I’ve never met before keep saying “hi,” but I get caught so unawares I can’t react in time
7. Cringing while every single thing at the check-out gets put in a plastic bag faster than I can say “No, th-”
8. Being appalled at the widespread use of Styrofoam L
9. Where are all the recycle bins? L

On the other hand:  Welcome Americanisms J

1. Nobody smoking in my face (smoking, recently described to me as “slow-motion suicide”)
2. Not needing an adapter to charge my appliances
3. Listening to NPR in the morning
4. Watching music videos on YouTube without a VPN
5. Nobody asking me where I’m from.
6. And...

Binge-eating my way through 2.5 weeks

It's not that you can't get good Chinese food in Germany, it's that you can't get good Chinese food in Weimar. 

As a warm-up in NYC, my first meal back in the States was of sushi and sashimi, featuring the appropriately-named "American Dream" roll. We hit up K-town for 순두부찌개 (sundubu jjigae) and 비빔밥 (bibimbap). My last meal in the Big Apple was conveyor-belt sushi at midnight -- because one can never eat enough sushi. Bubble tea was a daily beverage.

Back on home turf the first meal was similarly modest:  蔥油餅，韭菜盒子，紅燒牛肉麵，小籠包 (scallion pancake, leek turnover, beef noodle soup, and steamed pork buns)...

Left: beef noodle soup, leek turnovers in the background.  Right: steamed pork buns (i.e. heaven on earth).

...followed later by 紅豆沙麻糬（當然還有）珍珠奶茶 (red bean paste mochi, and of course, bubble tea).

Soft gooey goodness.

Not wanting to leave any base uncovered, Tex-Mex was the obvious other requisite cuisine.

Beef fajitas with all the fixin's, bottomless chips and salsa, and a frozen
margarita as big as Texas.

My stomach capacity would never again wish to eat so much food in so little time, but looking at these photos, I'm already drooling and ready to do it all over again.

…

Oh, America, I love you, I really do. (I just wish you’d recycle more.) And I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’m glad I got to see so many friends and family and collect their stories during this whirlwind return*, including a day of business in three different states, and I’ll only miss you all the more once I’m back in Europe.

*If I didn’t visit you, please don’t be offended!

This past year showcased:

• the NSA scandal and tapping of Merkel's cell phone
• the German general election in September, whose results I read on a chalkboard upon exiting the symphony hall post-concert in Cologne (pictured below)
• Germany winning the 2014 World Cup

"Bundestagswahl 2013"

What will this next year bring…?

Will I become more German…?

Will I be able to exercise these last 2.5 weeks off…?

Frame of Reference

I say "toe-may-toe," you say "toe-mah-toe." I say "baked potato," 

you say "Ofenkartoffel" and add a whole lot of dill.

The other day I’m sitting on the train from Austria back to Weimar, reading Die Zeit, a German newspaper, admittedly with the occasional aid of my dictionary. Across the aisle is a presumably American family (they could be Canadian, but on the son’s jacket are the Stars and Stripes embroidered), and a couple rows back are three presumably American Collared-Dress-Shirts chatting over an array of IBM laptops.

I’m not being my usual “Ooh, Americans! I should talk to them!” self because I’m feeling motion sick and also in the mood to write. (I am, moreover, receiving the socials cues of their sitting in complete quiet, Dad reading a book and Junior asleep, face plastered to the window.)

Also, I just have to sit down and write because (a) I am rather impressing myself by virtue of reading a German-language newspaper, (b) I've been starting a tragically growing heap of potential-but-soon-neglected blog posts for the past couple months, and (c) I've only got 4 CBYX days left before I hop on a jet plane and can no longer reflect on the German-American relationship with the legitimizing status of American-living-in-Germany.

I'm not sure what a June 26 issue of Die Zeit is doing on board this 10th of July, but it does occur to me that since living in Germany, I've become 500% more aware of the goings on in not only Germany, but also on the European continent (Russia, too). That, and how these Eurasian folk perceive us A-murr-icans.

The long media-dominating NSA scandal aside, little effigies of “AMERICAN” pop up in more realms than I’d expect. In supermarkets on jars of peanut butter and packages of hot dog buns. Broadcast in every bar, Germany plays against (OK, defeats) the US team in the World Cup. On the 4^th, a small brotherhood of Americans in Weimar sing the Star-Spangled Banner from their apartment balcony, concluded by a round of “U-S-A! U-S-A!”

Exports, sports, "culture."

A German asks me what I think about Obamacare. A man from Eritrea asks me if I can even name other countries in Africa. An Austrian refers to “that horrible war” in Vietnam, adding parenthetically that I personally had nothing to do with it, and his fellow countrywoman describes with fondness visiting pre-2001 America – an America that earnestly believed in possibility and making anything happen if one worked hard enough – this, the America I described one year ago as “a place where dreams come true,” in contrast with the post-2001 obsession with fear.

The role of government, the “living in a bubble” syndrome, history. The very definition of “America.”

I see an economic effigy (oh, that’s cute, an FDA-regulated picnic basket) on the front page of Die Zeit.

"Will the Americans soon have control over us? Trade with the USA shall
become alleviated: the Germans fear genetically-engineered corn, hormone-
pumped steaks and chloro-chicken from overseas. As well as new conven-
tions in the economy. But what really lies ahead of us?"

“What lies ahead of us?”

Perhaps this is too strong a claim, but I would guess that the average American is ill-equipped to answer a European’s questions: why the high levels of obesity, why no universal health care, how have you never heard of the EU Parliament?

I have a theory.

The American frame of reference is simultaneously enormous and microscopic.

Allow me to illustrate the enormity of America with an observation from the point of view of language.

The German "berghoch" means "uphill,” literally composed of "Berg" (mountain) + "hoch" (high).

Ok, fair enough, one can go up both a mountain and a hill. No gravity-defying transatlantic difference yet.

But the use of “Berg” this side of the Atlantic is much more generous. I’m walking uphill to the church and the girl with me sighs, “Ugh. Berg.”

And I assure you, it was a hill. It’d be like me taking a stroll in the park and spotting an anthill that I have to circumvent. “Ugh. Mountain.”

Now from a geopolitical point of view:

After kicking out the Redcoats, purchasing Louisiana, and fulfilling “manifest destiny,” we had a lot of land on our hands. Though China’s land mass is comparable, our population density is 4.23 times more manageable. Add into the equation 2 peaceful neighbors plus-or-minus 24-hour Wal-Mart’s and up-to-15-lane highways, and you’ve got yourself a self-sustaining, resource-rich, politically-powerful, militarily-mighty 1^st-world country.

That said, the happenings and goings on of other lands are simply far away. We worry about immigrants from the southern border, but not in the way that Germany worries about immigrants and asylum-seekers coming from Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine (and the list goes on). We rely on neither the peso nor the Canadian dollar, whereas the EU is an interdependent network of small countries, each led by its own politicians, held together by a thread that is the Euro. We worry about the flow of oil from the Middle East, but not to the degree that some EU countries worry about a 90%+ dependence on energy from Russia.

We are enormous.

Sally and Bob Johnson from Cornfield, Kansas can work their day jobs without any racket from neighboring France or Italy. In fact, a cruise on the Seine or a gondola ride in Venice is just what they’re looking forward to in retirement. Acres of gold rolling about them, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson know what to call a mountain, and what to call a hill. But enormity buffers their daily lives from the rest of the world.

Therein lies the conundrum. Enormity dwarfs.

With only roughly three centuries to work with, their children and grandchildren will study in roughly equal parts (1) the American Revolution, (2) the Civil War, and (3) the 20^th century (cramming in WWI, WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Gulf War(s) , and basically every other instance of America “mitigating international conflict” in Central and Southern America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia). Thanks in large part to being enormous and having an ocean on other side of us, the most conflict on home soil (not that I wish for more) that we can relate to is that first two-thirds. Yet that last third is the most relevant to a global frame of reference.

Enormity dwarfs.

Until what is American is super-sized and what is not is – still of the utmost relevance.

A rainy day in Weimar

Today, May 1, was a national holiday, which I remembered while waiting for a bus that would never come.

May 1 is also, consequently, the first day of May. I’ve heard there’s a tradition of “dancing into May,” which might mean dancing around a fire through midnight, or even leaping over a (minuscule, I hope) fire.

Back home we say, “April showers bring May flowers,” but today it did nothing but rain.

I had been slowly losing focus on the Mozart score before me when my eyes drifted to my bedroom window and I saw the clouds begin to open. In the midst of what has been my most stressful period in Weimar, I had to smile. Leaving my music behind in my room, I opened the front door, pulled up a chair, and just sat, breathing in the fresh air and listening to the rain hit the courtyard’s steel roof.

A while later my roommate suddenly appeared in the doorway – me, having zoned out and therefore vulnerable to shock by sudden appearances, she, wondering what the heck I was doing.

“Es regnet so selten zu Hause,” I explained. Where I come from, rain is a true blessing. Summers can run 100 days in a row at 100+°F (in the neighborhood of 38-40°C) without a single drop.

As I sat there, I asked myself why I enjoy the rain so much, and I think it must be the single most beautiful smell nature has to offer, the smell of water cleansing the earth, returning to the surface in a cycle that has sustained life since the moment two hydrogens decided to sandwich an oxygen at an angle of 104.5°. Snails and slugs are invited from their burrows onto the otherwise barren asphalt by the deluge of raindrops, tiny freefalling travelers, who some call the teardrops of angels.

“Why are the angels crying today?” I mused.

look around you

Later that day I saw an article shared with the American CBYX-ers in Germany headlined, “Deutsche Teenager in den USA: ‘Meine Mitschülerverteidigen den Schützen” (“German Teenagers in the USA: ‘My classmates are defending the shooter’”).

A 17-year-old German boy on exchange in a Montana high school was shot and killed by a local gun owner. Other German teens abroad in the States shared their reactions in the above article. I’d highly recommend quickly running it through Google Translate for a wake-up call, not only to see how Americans are being perceived by the young Germans they are hosting (and by the German readership of Der Spiegel), but also for the chance to view the highly-controversial “2^nd Amendment/gun control” issue from a non-American perspective.

Other news sources:  American | British

  

Eine US-Amerikanerin in Deutschland:  "Ich würde absolut nie die Schützen verteidigen"

Upon hearing of this young man’s death, I felt tremendous sadness, anger, and shame.

Sadness, because his death was unnecessary. Life is precious and should never be violently taken away, let alone for something as inconsequential as “the presence of a stranger in one’s intentionally-left-open garage.”

Anger, because his death was unnecessary. With the incident being so recent, it remains unclear exactly what happened, but even as the investigation continues, even as testimonies (reliable or not) are collected, the fact remains that a 17-year-old, a guest in our country – one I pride myself as being a place where dreams can come true – will never see his family again or have the chance to pursue his dreams. All because some trigger-happy, overly-anxious “adult” thought he’d play detective and deliberately lure “danger” onto his property.

Shame, because his death was unnecessary. I am a born and raised Texan, and I love my state for the wild bluebonnets that bloom in the spring, for its Southern hospitality and pecan pies, for its rare rainy days, when the earth sighs in relief and the air smells its freshest. What hits home the hardest is the fact that Texans are also known as proud gun owners, a broader group to whom the shooter belonged, and that my label as “Texan,” which I normally bear with an easy grin, is only that much harder to bear as a “young cultural ambassador” in Germany, the young man’s former home.

Out of curiosity I often ask Germans what they associate with Texas. They answer: cowboys, oil, George W. Bush, and – let’s not forget – guns.

Americans hear “guns” and think: 2^nd Amendment, the NRA, DickCheney, metal detectors in schools.

Germans hear “guns” and just cannot even –

I can’t even –

Why?

Why was it ever possible for that man to own a gun? Why did he think it was acceptable for him to open fire?

Yes, I understand that not every gun-owning American will kill an innocent, but the fact remains that a percentage of them will and have. How do you account for that? And no statistic, no matter how “small,” is life that we can afford to lose.

The eradication of guns would be the only fail-safe way of preventing death by guns. That’ll never happen, obviously, in a country where 19% (or $643 billion) of the 2013 national budget was allocated to defense and international security assistance; in a world where North Korea drops little gifts off the coast of its southern neighbor; in a world where just today, Russian President Putin informed German Chancellor Merkel that Ukraine must remove its military from the southeastern region of the country, where conflict between local officials and pro-Russian separatists has continued (despite the US-EU-Russia-Ukraine-brokered call just two weeks prior in Geneva for the disarmament of illegal formations) and where NATO and Russian forces are humming in the background.

Who will call whose bluff?

It’s certainly a completely different scale – multi-national conflict and shooting someone on one’s property. Either way, it involves humans feeling empowered by the destructive capabilities of weapons, even beyond peaceful resolution. It involves the blurred lines of right and wrong.

“I have the right to defend myself on my own property.”

“Russia retains the right to send in troops.”

“I have the right to take away human life.”

Who do you think you are?

Wherein I am an alien...

A Letter in the Style of a German Letter

                                Weimar, the 1st of February, 2014

Dear Germany, 

why and how are you still making me feel like an alien? 

I would rejoice upon hearing from you soon. 

With friendly greetings, 

Adrianna

Right-y-o. So. Hello 2014, Happy Year of the Horse, and all that jazz.

Despite having been here for a half year (today marks the 6-month milestone/kilometerstone!), I still:

1. cannot speak German
2. confuse people when I tell them I am an American ("You're not from China?")
3. do not understand weather in Celsius (my own fault for only reading forecasts in Fahrenheit)
4. have never seen "Forrest Gump"

Relevant* point of illustration #1:

The other day I decide to buy "Bio-Salat" for the first time (i.e. organic lettuce). You know. Since I'm already sorting all of my trash into paper/packaging/glass/compostables-aka-BioTrash/other, I might as well try the "Bio" produce, too.

Admittedly, another reason I went for the Bio-Salat (despite being habitually thrifty) was that I had T-minus 5 minutes 'til closing on a Saturday to get all my groceries, and two heads of Bio lettuce were all that remained in the crate, like the runts of the litter hoping to be adopted but have been quite ignored because they're a bit beyond the "Aww, puppy!" phase.

Speaking of which, does anyone remember that 90's game show, "Supermarket Sweep," where contestants ran mad around the store trying to scoop up as much expensive produce as possible?

It was like that, except I didn't win anything, and I wasn't purposely trying to grab valuable items. Ok, mostly had to do with the running around mad part.

Anyway, I get home and start to peel off the leaves for washing.

Hey wait, I did win something!

A slug.

1-cent Euro coin for scale

There was actually a second slug, too, but it was so tiny it seemed only marginally worth mentioning. As in, it was the width of mechanical pencil lead.

*Relevant because, let's face it, slugs are probably aliens.

Second point of illustration:

In recent attempts to ONLY SPEAK GERMAN, I have creatively made up such non-existent phrases as:

1. "Wasserwolken" (literally "water clouds")
2. "Denk außer der Kiste" (No one says this.)

when really trying to say:

1. "steam"
2. "think outside the box"

I have also entered a room saying, "Ich hoffe, ich habe dich nicht zerstört" instead of "Ich hoffe, ich habe dich nicht gestört."

Those few letters morphed my good intentions from "I hope I haven't disturbed you" into "I hope I haven't destroyed you."

Third point of illustration:

Ok, actually, this is going to be a meta-point of illustration (and quite possibly of anti-illustration), like, a frame-within-frame illustration (You still with me?):

Question:  You know what both restored my German-speaking self-esteem and made me feel like an alien-squared (a2)?

Answer:  Spending the evening of the Lunar New Year in Deutschland speaking only in Chinese. With "speaking" being loosely defined as "stuttering, rejecting proper grammar, and supplementing heavily with charades-like pantomiming." (Which I've gotten quite good at.)

Imagine that you've been around the Chinese language since birth, grew up attending "Chinese school" like all of the other Chinese-American kids in the neighborhood, even took a couple courses in college and spent a summer in the Motherland and YOU NO LONGER REMEMBER HOW TO SAY "WINDOW."

That was how bad it'd gotten.

6 months.

That was all it took to render me unable to speak the very language that so many here expect to be my mother tongue. (The irony.)

While wrapping dumplings (the most Chinese thing I've done since coming here -- and which is also really awesome in and of itself) my brain grasped at straws. Any time I tried to say something in Mandarin, if it didn't come to me in the first five seconds, the German equivalent immediately made itself available. (How useful.)

(Hey, so maybe when I get stumped trying to speak German, I should just speak to everyone in Chinese!)

Coming back to my apartment, I experienced for the first time ever relief to speak once again in German -- to once again be able to express myself! (This is not the norm. I usually feel like I can neither express complicated "legit" ideas nor contribute to conversations conducted in German.)

But WAIT. Let's get something straight here.

"The moral of the story"

When I first got here, in all my bedraggled jet-lagged glory, I wrote for all of the Internet (and therefore also for the NSA and really anyone in the world) to see:

"I'm not here to become fluent in German.
"I'm here to make lots of mistakes."**

**I actually also had the gall to add a smiley face. Such optimism.

But I'm kind of proud of myself for trying to set myself up for failure. I mean, I would in fact like to become fluent in German. That is a goal toward which I strive. And who enjoys making mistakes? Not I. But those first few hours (of 8400 total) were so overwhelming all I could do to cope was to aim low, to not carve out grand dreams and expectations before actually understanding the context of those dreams.

Now I've actually lived 4200 of those hours (give or take).

And what do I have to say? What kind of inspirational one-liner do I have to offer to wrap up this post?

Well, for starters, let's review something here. The Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange is a two-way swap. I can only imagine that the Germans in middle-of-nowhere Texas (and I can say this because I'm a Texan) are just maybe a little tired of saying:

1. Yes, German beer really is better than American beer.
2. Actually, I do know how to drive a car. (Manual at that.)
3. No, I do not wear Lederhosen to school.
4. I have never seen "The Sound of Music." (Which took place in Austria.)

So. Much. Respect.

I have so much respect for anyone who has ever lived in a foreign country, whether as a student or an immigrant or a refugee. Nobody can prepare you for the inescapable feeling of (appropriately termed) alienation you will feel, submerged head under water in a salty sea of creatures who cannot understand you because, unlike you, they are not freshwater frogs.

Ok, that analogy didn't work.

But say the frog used to be a prince. And he knew how to run his kingdom. Pay his respects to the king. Use silverware from outside to inside. Wear the proper regalia. Converse with courtiers (who were notorious for saying one thing, but thinking another).

Then suddenly he is put under a spell and (being a frog) cannot speak. He is forced to leave his home for fear of being squashed by a frying pan (Nursemaid Nana has a strong forearm) but must, without hope of reversing the curse, somehow survive. Everything he has ever learned will be lost upon his new habitat. He will move awkwardly in his new webbed-feet body. He will grimace at the first taste of "flies for breakfast" when he could really use some peanut butter.

He will be alone.

Until the day the princess bestows a kiss, which in the case of this metaphor is...

...coming to terms with self and finding inner peace?