I've read a lot of different things about a lot of different people who have moved abroad. For both those at "home" in Canada and here in Germany who have a good sense of Heimat, my overseas moves have been troubling.
When people find out where I'm from, one of two questions invariably follows:
"Why did you leave?"
or...
"When are you going home?"
I've left places for a number of different reasons, often good, sometimes bad. One day, when I feel up to telling stories of my individual homes, the reasons I've picked up and moved so often in the last eight years may become apparent.
For now, though, I'll try to tackle these two rather loaded questions.
Why did you leave?
I don't exactly remember how the quotation I once read goes anymore, but it went along the lines of that, in order to be an expatriate, you have to be a little bit brave, and a little bit of a dreamer.
I'd say it's rather true. Perhaps it's not such a shock for people who move somewhere for a specific job (or maybe it is, I wouldn't know), but the idea of moving somewhere you don't really know, where you know nobody, have no idea where you'll find a place to live, or if you'll be able to find work to finance those rent payments can be rather scary.
It's really easy to pussy foot around the idea and plan, plan, plan. I kind of liken it to standing at an outdoor pool with a cold wind giving you goose bumps. You know you have to jump into the water, but you have no idea if that water is ice cold or blazing hot, deep, shallow, or possibly full of sharks. You've got the option of toeing the water to test it out or jumping straight in. Sometimes I wonder if it's just better to dive right in and see what you're dealing with when you've actually got to deal with it.
Moving abroad, even to a place you're familiar with, can be an extraordinary shock in both good and bad ways. It's definitely a fun, albeit expensive, way to see what you're actually made of.
That said...
Someone once told me that it doesn't matter how far away you move, you'll never be able to run away from yourself.
This is true. Believe me, I've tried.
The first time I came over here, I ran away, and wasn't all too pleased when I found out I was still stuck with myself at the end.
The other two overseas moves have happened at certain times when I couldn't take the way my life was going. (The smaller moves have had different reasons entirely.)
There's nothing like an overseas move to shock your system into trying to do something different.
And, though you're always stuck with yourself at an end, living halfway across the globe often (albeit not always) makes your old reality seem a little less real, and thus less painful. That being said, if your past still catches up to you -- which it invariably does 100 percent of the time -- you can sometimes wonder if you're going crazy because the line between what actually happened in your past life and what you wish had happened can become awfully blurred.
Still, it's hard to tell random strangers you left because you were trying to run away from yourself, even though you already knew it would never work. (Yet here I am, blogging that sort of jibber jabber away...)
So, my official reasons:
1. Canada -> Germany: I wanted to experience something new and different.
2. Germany -> Canada: I knew I wanted to go "home" eventually, so off I went.
3. Canada -> Germany: Money. Plain and simple.
All of these reasons are real and true. They just brush over the fact they were part of larger, more private reasons that ended up tipping the scales in one way or another.
That brings me to:
When are you going home?
First things first (and notice the shift from sentimental to a jerk-Kraut in training):
Why the fuck do you care when I go home? I am more adjusted to life here than many foreigners I know. The whole when-are-you-going-home thing just reeks of "Get out, we don't want you foreign beings in our pure country, mucking everything up."
Overreaction, sure. But the assumption that I'm only here temporarily drives me batty.
I mean, don't misunderstand me. Upon re-entry to Krautland, I did not sign any paper that said "I solemnly swear to stay here until my death day". I'm not entirely convinced I want to spend the next decades here. While there are a lot of super things about Germany, I'm often shocked when I look in the mirror after just five years here; the idea of adding a zero onto that five and then looking in the mirror scares the bejeezus out of me.
Still, when I left Canada the last time, I went with the conscious attitude of "enough is enough". You might get why I actually had enough the day I get around to writing some of my stories of Calgary. But, copious amounts of money required for another overseas move aside, Canada currently has nothing to offer me. It likely goes both ways.
That said, I can think of three specific circumstances I'd move back, none of which are likely to happen ever, and particularly not in the near future. So, the answer to your question is, "I'm not going home." (Read: "I'd prefer to stay in my self-induced exile for the time being, thankyouverymuch."
I haven't committed myself to Krautland for the rest of my life, but I'm not going back. Somewhere new maybe, but not back.
Now stop asking me questions, please. I'm not some weird expatriate exhibit at the zoo.
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