Homeless, A Miniseries: Heimat Edition

So, I was walking the pup yesterday when I got to thinking about how the weather sucks here (hey, it's fall), but that those suckers "back home" already have had a snowstorm.

See, the whole "back home" thing is embedded in an expat's vocabulary, and I'm sure some expats really do think of the place they came from as "home", possibly with the desire to go back there some day.

Try as I might, I've been trying to reprogram my internal monologue to say "Canada" or "Alberta", but it's not entirely easy, and I catch myself slipping up pretty much all the time.

The reason I try so hard to avoid saying "back home" (even in my head), is that I don't really feel like Sleepy Suburb is my home anymore. It was a place, to mostly everyone's chagrin, that I would loudly talk about leaving one day, never to return. I never really liked living there in the first place, never really fitting in. Still, Sleepy Suburb is where I grew up, and there's still a pull inside me that says "This is where you're from". That being said, it's not my home, and I don't like to think of it as such. It's not where I long to go back to, and I don't get any sort of belonging feeling from being there or thinking about being there.

Aside from the presence of Tim Horton's, my family and bestie, going back to Canada on vacation also isn't "going home" per se. I'd be just as happy if those things were in the States, Mexico or China.

What I'm trying to say is that the place holds no meaning for me anymore. (Emphasis on anymore... I'll get to that sometime.)

That being said, I still don't feel "at home" where I live right now. Sure, I live here, but it's not my home, coming with all the warm feelings generated by that word.

It creates awkward conversations when Krauts ask me where I'm from, and act totally surprised when they find out I'm not dying to go back, and I don't really have any plans to go home. Ever. And then to try to explain to these Heimat-lovers that I doubt if I even have a Heimat? Does. Not. Compute.

Anyhoo, I started this blog in an attempt to come to terms with what it means to be an expatriate, and to hopefully share that information with people either from "back home" (see, there it is again!) or those who are experiencing something similar. Now, I mostly write about the weather and jerk Krauts, which I suppose is part of the whole expat-experience on a daily grind sort of level. With this mini-series, I'm going to try to look at the big picture and figure out for myself -- with all of you watching me do it -- why I feel homeless in the first place.

Some things I hope to consider in the coming weeks include:

• How much control do I have over choosing a home, and how much does a home choose me?
• How have some of the places I've lived and called home affected my notion of Heimat?
• How does my hybridity (à la Homi Bhabha) and fact I moved abroad in my early twenties affect me in my search for Heimat?
• Can I have a Heimat? And even more importantly, do I want one?

So, yeah. Have fun with my ramblings. I hope that what I'm trying to do here will be more clear after my first official post on this thing.

If you're normally stopping by to read my stories about jerk Krauts and not mind-numbingly dull soul searching, have no fear. There will be plenty of that woven through. I could never give that up!

My Ears Hurt

Every so often, I have the chance to channel my inner housewife again despite the fact I'm no longer anything like that.

Despite the fact I am now a busy bee in the public sphere and have less time to make my cuddle-atmosphere in the private one, I still like home-y sorts of things.

Except vacuuming.

I've always hated it. It's loud, hurts my ears, and I hate dragging a freeking canister around my flat, plugging and unplugging as I go.

In order to avoid my life-long hatred of vacuuming, I got a Roomba when I lived in Canada. I was quite happy about the fact I could turn it on while I took Maxie for a walk in the morning, thus killing two birds with one stone. No vacuuming on my part, and no Maxie howling at the vacuum cleaner. I tried to take the fact Roomba would always end up locking himself in my bathroom with a grain of salt.

Seeing that Roombas are much too expensive for a student budget in Germany (and why in the world would I tote along a transformer to charge my Canadian one here?), I had to get something new.

So, I got myself what seemed like a decent vacuum: the Ergorapido. Now, it may seem like the perfect thing ever. It's lightweight, has no bag (hate emptying them almost as much as I hate trying to remember to buy them) and no cord, which theoretically meant I would finally enjoy cleaning my floors. It also had excellent reviews and a good rating from the Stiftung Warentest.

I mean, in theory it wasn't bad. It was lightweight and easy to clean, but the whole "mit perfeckter Staubaufnahme" (read: perfect at collecting dust for the non-Krauts of you) is an f-ing joke. Ignoring the fact -- for just one second -- it wouldn't pick up dust or dog hair from my parquet floors, imagine my disgust at trying to vacuum carpets with that thing.

A friend who looked after Max earlier on this year even expressed her disdain at the fact you had to go over the same spot about a gazillion times to get it halfway clean, which kinda "defeats the point".

Agreed.

Needless to say, I tried -- and failed -- multiple times in the last two months to vacuum with that piece of garbage, and finally gave up. I couldn't even stand my flat anymore.

So, I went to Real to get a new vacuum. It's a Dirt Devil, half the price of the Ergo, and sounds like a plane about to take off. It also has crappy ratings for having a difficult filter to clean.

BUT it cleaned my floors.

I probably will try to avoid vacuuming with a vengeance as has been my style for the past twenty-odd years, but at least the dog hair is finally out of the carpet.

Okay, I'm off. Time to start my non-housewife-y day now.

I feel OLD.

So, being back in Allgäu last week, I took plentiful advantage of one of my favourite Allgäu pastimes.

Hiking up Grünten, you ask?

No, of course not!

I was playing copious amounts of MarioKart on Wii, silly!

There's something you should know about me and video games -- I don't play a lot of them. I think it has something to do with the fact I hate losing. It's not just a matter of disliking being the loser. No, it goes so much further than that.

Take, for example, family game nights at my childhood home. There I was, Sunday evening after Sunday evening, storming off in a fit of rage after playing Uno-Rummy Up and losing to my sister.

Screaming, tears, red-faced frustration, the whole bit.

Naturally, my dislike for losing extended (and still extends) to video games. I was never a fan of games like Zelda, Super Mario Bros., or anything that required trying to beat some sort of boss. As a kid, I was much more of a SimCity 2000 kind of girl, especially with all the cheats in hand that I could find. (This, of course, ended up extending to The Sims, where I would live out magical fantasies for my Sims who didn't have to work since I graciously gave them one million Simoleans to live off of.) I also liked playing Donkey Kong's 1-3, but only the first couple of levels that I'd mastered. By the time I'd hit Mine Cart Carnage, I was a goner.

Anyhoo, back in the days of SuperNES (yeah, remember that?), I was a big fan of MarioKart. I always lost anyway, but for some reason it didn't bother me in that game. I was always jealous of friends who had the game on N64 when it came out, because I was not only still playing on SuperNES, but since my parents hadn't bought the game for me and my sister, we were still renting it whenever we could at the video store.

So, MarioKart has always been my favourite video game excepting the whole Sim-bit. So I love playing it when I go to Allgäu. Especially on the internet with those losers who are still playing it after umpteen years and have about 9000 points to their Mii's name. Losing (possibly partially because I still insist on playing Peach, though I've recently been testing out Toadette) still doesn't really faze me, and I've started to accept Rainbow Road as a beautiful thing rather than the subject of my (Mii's) demise.

But, yeah... My point about being old. On one particularly drunken evening, we decided to pull out N64 for a go on MarioKart.

WTF.

How in the world did we (as humans) play with graphics like that?! How in the world was this some sort of awesome step-up that was state-of-the-art in comparison to SuperNES ?!

As if Peach's "here we gooooo" wasn't enough to drive one silly, the graphics are ridiculous. In the back of my tipsy mind, I thought that there could perhaps be a problem with my vision, and the game was just as amazing as it was in my pre-teen memory. So, I tried again the next day in a more sober state of mind.

Alas, the graphics are just crap.

(In Nintendo's defence, it was 1996, after all. You know... Like before Titanic even came out the first time in theatres?)

Then I started thinking about other technologies I grew up with.

• I learned DOS to operate my family's first computer.
• The best thing about WordPerfect was getting to print out things on that paper you had to tear the sides off of.
• S., T. and I used to sit on dial-up forever so we could go in the official Hanson chat room. (Don't you judge! I hear you judging!)
• We used to play The Oregon Trail at school and save our progress from Number Munchers on a floppy.
• I used to love playing Dr. Mario on NES. Yeah. NES.
• We were using ICQ loooong before MSN even came along.
• My first laptop was bigger than most PCs, and definitely just as heavy.
• Back in high school, we used Nexopia and not Facebook. (Well, actually we used Enternexus. And who knew that the site was Canadian? Ahhh, maybe that had something to do with it?)
• And the list goes on...

I suppose it's worse for people who grew up without computers. Nevertheless, it's been interesting to go from my Motorola peanut phone, to wondering who the heck would text in the first place since "It's faster just to call", to wondering who the heck would need internet on their phone, to sleeping with my Blackberry.

Seeing the graphics on N64 made this rather clear to me, believe it or not. Otherwise, I've just been living in some sort of technology bubble without thinking how this all happened.

Anyhoo, not really any point to this all, except that I feel like a technology dinosaur. Also, I am torn between wanting to stick with MarioKart on Wii or better for the rest of my life and trying to get hold of a SuperNES copy to see how bad it really was.

What does your mail say about you?

Okay, wacky topic, but maybe I'm disillusioned (or paranoid) enough after seeing my fair share of postal workers deliver my mail to my door in person (usually in combination with a package). Rifle through the different pieces of mail, raise eyebrows, and hand the mail to me with a smirk.

I'm probably just paranoid. The response probably has less to do with my mail and more with the fact I usually answer the door in my pyjamas and have a howling dog on the other side of the door who happens to hate doorbells more than anything else in the world.

I mean, it's obvious that anyone's browsing history would give away some embarrassing secrets about habits and interests. (I, for one, have been recently recommended to watch "flying dachshunds" on YouTube, FWIW.)

I guess my mail, though, would probably give a fair look into my life, albeit excepting the hints to my ridiculous YouTube watching habits.

So, I invite you to sort through my mail with me! Yay!

• Bank statements: I apparently do not keep my money hidden under my mattress.
• Letters from the Canadian Government: Ausländerin.
• Der Spiegel: I am an Ausländerin who can read German at a fairly reasonable level. (Note the lack of a Deutsch Perfekt abo in my mailbox.)
• Lotta and Clara: I'm a socialist, and most likely a feminist, to boot. (*oh the horror!!*)
• The American Historical Review: I am a historian (or trying to be). I am also apparently bilingual since I can read academic texts in English and the Spiegel in German. Since I'm also a Canuck, the jury's out on joual, but I guess you all know the real answer to that one.
• Paperwork from my local Stadtwerke: I either subscribe to electricity or gas, which means I probably don't live in the dark. (You may think this is trivial, but you try living by candlelight!)
• Paperwork from Uni Köln: STUDENT ALERT! I must really be struggling to pay my energy bills! Still, combining this paperwork with my AHR subscription, chances are good I study history.
• And, of course, various other bills that point to my student status.

See? Sorting through mail is fun! It's also horrifyingly revealing about me as a person.

So, there you have it. I'm a bilingual foreigner from Canada studying History in Germany who happens to be a socialist and a feminist. I also do my best to pay my bills. It can also be assumed I do so, since I haven't included bill collectors in my mail-list. All this information is open to the random who delivers my mail.

It seems the only thing my mailman doesn't know about me is that I watch ridiculous dachshund videos on YouTube. Or watch the Season 6 promo of Gossip Girl OVER AND OVER. T-minus three days, yoop!

The System

One of the hardest things about getting work experience in Germany is that you often need German work experience to get it. The kicker is that not only do you need German work experience, you need the right kind of German work experience.

As I'm sure 99.8% of you all know, I'm not exactly in one of those highly sought-after fields that gobble up foreigners who can't speak a word of German to save their lives. Not only am I attempting to enter a field that is known for spitting out the brightest, most well-connected people out like garbage, I'm attempting it as a foreigner with a colourful past.

Okay, my past isn't colourful as in "I have made my living until now in some illegal sub-sector of the economy", but as in "I am a foreigner who has happened to not only skip the globe a couple of times, but also take the sad advice of doing what other people thought I 'should' be doing, rather than focusing on what makes me happy."

It's not as if I haven't worked. I've worked, done very well at it in most jobs, and enjoyed it. I've developed weird interests like filing and fixing/writing company e-mails that go out to clients and customers that don't come around unless you've ever worked in an office environment.

Unfortunately, these roughly eight years of job experience account for nothing here since a) they're in the wrong field, b) I'm studying humanities and therefore am not "qualified" to do what I've done the last eight years, and c) I don't have a fucking piece of paper saying I performed x-activities for x-years.

The job search is a tough one for a lot of expatriates, and even if you speak the language and don't have visa issues, it's not necessarily a walk in the park.

Still, my year and a half of perseverance has paid off, and I now have two jobs.

Yay for me!

Except for the fact they're still not considered official work experience most of the time because they're student jobs.

You try getting a non-student job as a student.

Hello, catch-22.

I don't know. I mean, what I'm doing feels like work, and I'm apparently getting paid to do it (albeit at the student wage that's actually below the minimum wage in all Canadian provinces, including rip-off-Alberta (where I'm from). I'm also using some of my past non-work-experience to do it.

But really, I suppose it's not fair to always be bitching about it.

I mean, if I were in Canada with a Master of Arts degree in my field, I can guarantee you that my job prospects would be 0 (you know, overqualified for my experience and under-qualified for what I'm actually trying to do), and I would be begging to answer phones for 8 bucks an hour.

...On some illegal sub-sector of the economy, of course, since I wouldn't technically be allowed to work for that wage in Canada anymore.

Germany, your system is stupid. But I'm going to play along anyway, because 8 bucks an hour is better than 0. Besides, my jobs are actually awesome! But you know me... Always find the less-awesome side of the coin and complain about it. So isses.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly: Hiking

So, about a week ago, I was in Allgäu with the 'rents and my puppy.

Unsure of what to do on a Friday night, it was decided that we would all do an evening hike of a smaller mountain! Yay!

Why such a small mountain, you ask?

Well, to the chagrin of M., I always show up in Allgäu in non-hiking-appropriate footwear. You know, like the leather shoes that everyone runs around in over on my side of the country. To M.'s triple-chagrin, both of my travelling companions were in even less hiking-suitable footwear than me. (Read: Sandals and newer leather walking shoes.)

Therefore, we chose to hike a smaller mountain of around 200 metres or so.

And thus, I present to you an Allgäu hiking edition of "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly"!

GOOD:

• My dog cannot only hike mountains, he's f-ing amazing at it. Perhaps he didn't really tire because he's so low to the ground and thus doesn't notice he's going up a steep slope. More likely, he's just a tank and can handle jagged rocks like one of those mountain-running champions. My lovely trooper, I've never seen anything like that before in my life... I wish I had pictures of a Dackel manouvering jagged rocks triple the size of him like a champ.
• I used to hike a lot when I was 18. You know, backpacking, camping and that sort of thing. A nice combination of my asthma getting worse and a nasty break-up led to the fact I haven't done ANY hiking since then. Despite the fact I had to take my inhaler every five feet not because I was out of breath in the "I can't do this" way, but because my asthma is about a quadrillion times worse than it was a decade ago, I am very impressed at the fact doing nothing can still allow my legs to go, go go!

BAD:

• Lots of nice dairy products come from Allgäu. This unfortunately means there are lots of cows in the mountains. I mean, I get this is an Allgäu thing, but I am used to hiking in the Rockies in silence, save a few animal growls in the distance, bear bells tinkling from passers-by, or people singing in the absence of bear bells. The whole "klang-klang" was not necessarily terrible, just a little off-putting.
• Of course, going up a steep trail in leather shoes is fine. I've worn those puppies in! BUT: Going up a steep trail of jagged rocks covered in mud in leather shoes without grips on the bottom is not really fine. So, what do I do? Pretend I'm a yeti and take off my shoes. Yeah, that's right. Barefoot up the mountain!

UGLY:

• As awesome as it was going barefoot up the mountain, going barefoot down jagged rocks while having a Max-who-just-couldn't-get-enough on the other end of the leash pulling me down was not included in my definition of a fun evening hike. Pray, what is better? Sliding down a mountain because of non-grippy shoes, or slicing your feet up? No worries, I did both!

Guess who's bringing their decade-old hiking boots on their next trip to Allgäu??

Half a Decade

September 5th this year marks five years since I first moved across the pond. My Germany today wasn't the same as it was five years ago, not by a long shot. When I make the comparison to what I experienced eight years ago when I first came here on vacation, I feel like I can't even make a comparison because things are so different. The only things that are similar are pretzels with butter and that ridiculous tetra-packed shelf-milk that sits on my shelf until I'm ready to put it in the fridge.

It could also just be that I become more aware of certain things the longer I get here.

Still, there are some significant things that I've noticed in the last five. Let's play show and tell!

• You can get Froot Loops here now. I remember my first couple months here, when my ex brought me Froot Loops from the Commissary in Stuttgart, and I just about wet myself with happiness every time I took a bite from that lovely box. (Oh wait. I mean the Froot Loops box. Hey-oh!) That being said, I probably still would have the same reaction today, since I have little to no inclination to shell out money for something that costs around 10,00€/kg.
• Come to think about it, certain foods are just all-round easier to get here. It's not like I couldn't get them before, but I no longer have to hunt and comb stores for: maple syrup, peanut butter, SHREDDIES and baking soda.
• I see people running around the streets every so often in sweat pants. I see little girls running to school in sweats and runners; little girls running around in thick tights and dresses seem to be more the exception than ever.
• That being said, I see a growing Americanization everywhere. Whereas people used to wear proper trousers, everyone including their grandparents are wearing jeans, running shoes and t-shirts. My mom is coming to Germany to visit, and upon advising her packing list, she was in disbelief that things had changed so significantly in eight years. And the consumerism. Whatever happened to the schwäbisch Sparen, Sparen, Sparen! ?? Even they hit Königsstraße with a gusto!
• Trigger warning for the menz: I remember running around for hours upon hours when I first moved here looking for tampons with applicators. Sorry, but I've never been okay with the ob/finger deal. Still missing are plastic applicators, but I'll get over it. Maybe in the next five, eh?
• Sundays are different now. Bakeries are now open on Sundays in many places. Just not in Möhringen in Stuttgart. Imagine my surprise when walking Maxie one Sunday morning whilst visiting friends, dying of hunger, with no open bakery in sight. We NRW-ians are spoiled.
• You still get your average Kraut running around about the Ruhezeit, but I've noticed this happens less and less often. Being silent between the hours of 13:00 and 15:00 is also becoming less important. Hell, some people even do their laundry on Sundays these days! The horror!
• Just when I got used to the faintly comforting smell of Persil, I noticed that they now have regular Waschmittel with a scent. I mean, sure, there was always fabric softener, but the smell never really stuck to the clothes, so I never worried about it. I remember when I lived down south, my American neighbour would always smell me when I came over because -- having PX privileges and all -- I smelled strongly of lavender and vanilla fabric softener. No, it wasn't as creepy as it sounds. I admit I only tried the Lenor soap because it was on sale and cheaper than my regular Persil, but every time I take something out of the closet and put it on, the smell of orange blossoms shocks and awes me every single time. Especially because it lasts through wearing, too. Boah. I'm not really sure how I feel about it. Ambivalent. That's how I feel about it. I like it, but it just feels so wrong. Yes, I know you have no idea what I'm talking about.

But those are just things. For me, both so many things have changed while nothing has changed at all. I'm no longer a 21-year-old exploring a new country and culture. I'm in my mid-twenties, and while that isn't old, I feel like Germany has aged me dramatically into a nagging, ordentlich Kraut who follows rules without fail.

"Hey, you! Do not cross the street on red! What will the children think?! Yes, I realize there aren't any children around, but there could be! Don't break the rules! Jaywalking is VERBOTEN!!!"

I still can't stand 97% of Krauts I meet, and I'm still not sure if I dislike it here, am just ambivalent, or am only here because it's cool to tell people that you're living in Europe, even though it's one of the least special characteristics ever.

Oh yeah, and I can't really speak English anymore. I've long given up on genders for German nouns, and thus speak some sort of Denglish with most people. You know, English sentence structure, German nouns, and a mix of German and English verbs, adjectives and adverbs.

"So, I went spazieren with Max, and dann I saw this Stück Brot on the grass, and had to pull Max weg since he tried to eat it. Er war soooo sauer auf mich, but seriously, es gibt people who are putting razorblades or Gift inside things to make dogs tot."

The worst thing about the whole Denglish thing is that 95% of people I converse with on a (semi-)regular basis are German-English bilingual, so there is no reason for me to give up this nonsense.

So, yeah. There's me five years later. Degenerating and ambivalent.

Funsies, oder?