Change in Attitude

When I moved to the US in 1997 everybody back home (pretty much) was envious.

“Wow, great.”, “I wish I could come with you.” “So cool” were the standard responses I got.  of course there where people who thought I was crazy, not so much because I moved to the US but because I went back to school to add yet another graduate degree.  But secretly many of those who made negative comments did so because they were envious – and not the good kind of envious.

These days that is no longer true.  I mainly now saying that I live in California which most people equate with beaches, nice weather, extended road trips in cool cars, famous bridges and celebrities.  Still, people do know that California is part of the US and so increasingly the reaction is

“Really??” in the sense of “How could you” rather than “wow”.

Two words: politics and religion.  Although most Germans do not know the situation first hand enough information about the US can be be found in the news over there for people to realize that things are, well, different here.  For example, the notion of teaching creationism in school is nothing but ludicrous over there.  The idea that a country will not elected a leader unless that person publicly celebrates his/her religion – unthinkable.  The whole health care debate, having people go all their life without health care – I am running out of words for unthinkable.  A presidential candidate who has no foreign policy experience and offends people abroad right, left and center – not an option in smallish countries needing to get along with the neighbors and beyond.

Germans know enough about the US to find a lot of what is going on here frighting and weird.  And the enthusiasm which greets me when I say “I live in the USA, actually California” has markedly diminished over the years.

About Expats

I’d like to think that I was born an expat but admittedly that is a bit of a stretch given that my mom was born in my home town, still lives there and will never move away and that my father has lived there for something approaching an eternity as well.

Kind of curious where in the world this was taken. the website http://www.mad-mongolia.com would imply Mongolia.

Still, I think there is an expat personality, or maybe a personality that is frequently encountered in expats – and by that I mean people who move to another country because they want to, not because war, famine or the bossman forces them to.  One could also argue that moving from Silicon Valley to rural West Virginia or from Munich to Hamburg is an expat experience.  I think that would be a valid point.

So having defined expats that broadly I feel even more strongly about my earlier claim, there is an expat personality or character common to people who try something new, uproot themselves, deal with the unknown and enjoy it, learn from it and try and incorporate the good into their lives and make the best of the not so great.

Back in Germany I hung out with American expats and always thought how cool and open-minded, how worldly and broadly interested they were.  I thought this an American trait, just like bickering about the weather seems to be a German trait (which I share, at least in Germany and on rainy California days).  When I went to graduate school in Boston my class was about half foreigners and the other half Americans who had lived all over the world before coming to school and again I thought how wonderful and interesting all these people were.

After school I moved – not to the rural Midwest – but the San Francisco Bay Area and soon found out that the openness and worldliness is not an American trait.  Now I liked the Indians, other Europeans, even the occasional German.  I realized – and it took me a while – that whom I really like aren’t Americans or Indians or Mexicans or Europeans, whom I really like, get along with and somehow just click are expats.  Wherever they are from and wherever they live, as long as they are real expats and not those who  count the days and hours before they can return.

Okay, so I am an expat and I know with certainty that even if I return home, to my native town in Germany that is, I will remain an expat.  I will befriend foreigners and go to “Expats living in Germany” type meetings, I will look for opportunities to speak English and will never be entirely German.  But then, I never was.

Here and There

Here are a few pictures from California and Germany – here and there.