FREIBURG, Germany ? Twenty years old seems a bit young for an identity crisis, but it appears I am smack in the middle of one. Oddly, my confusion does not stem from any personal questions — rather, from a question of which nation I belong in.
Since last September, I have been studying abroad in Freiburg, a small city in southwest Germany. Each day is an adventure, whether it involves calling resident management to fix my telephone, asking a professor a simple question after class or even grocery shopping. Simple tasks requiring little to no thought in the States are a project in a foreign land.
Thus, for the past four months, I have been working hard to assimilate myself to the German lifestyle. But no matter how hard I try to assimilate — to figure Germany out — my nationality precedes itself. I have realized if I stay in Germany for one year or 100, I will always see this country through an American pair of spectacles. Before I left for Germany, I promised myself to take it on its own terms. Despite this, sometimes I cannot make sense of the why. Why Germans do some things they do leaves me completely and utterly stumped.
Germans are known as methodical and orderly people, but I have found many aspects of Germany to be contrary to its reputation. My fellow Badgers, the luxuries we enjoy at Madison! Pre-registration for university courses is unheard of in Freiburg. If 80 kids show up for the first class, professors, usually about 15 to 20 minutes late for class, will commonly say, “Next time, only 40 of you come back!” Or, as I have experienced, the professor might throw you out of class straight away.
Dear Madisonians, do not take the University Book Store or the Underground Textbook Exchange for granted. No such bookstores exist here in Freiburg. It would be very methodical for professors to order an appropriate number of textbooks for their classes prior to the semester, but if a bookstore has no copies of a certain book needed for one class, each student must come in separately to order his or her own copy.
A surprising difference from America came in my living situation. I live in Germany’s version of public dorms. I live in an apartment called a Wohngemeinschaft with seven other students. At 20 years old, I am the youngest by three years. All eight of us have our own room, and we share a large kitchen. The way the rooms were assigned, I share a bathroom with three boys, which would never occur in American dorms. (By the grace of God, they are the three cleanest, most polite boys I have ever met.)
While my best friends in Madison are the kids I met in the dorms, my friends in Freiburg primarily do not live in my dorm. To my amusement, my dorm complex centers on a two-story bar instead of a cafeteria. It is as if Ed’s Express in Gordon Commons were a bar. It would be quite a frosty day in hell when an American dorm complex was built around a bar.
Although I have loved (almost) every moment of my stay in Germany, I was excited to fly home to Chicago to spend the holidays with my family and see my friends. After one semester where each day is an adventure, I was glad to embrace America and all the normality that comes with her. I have America figured out; I can do America.
Just as my life had been moving forward in Germany, life had been flying along in America. When I left, my little sister was still a baby in my eyes; now she seems practically grown up. She likes fashion now and has plans on weekend nights. With my friends I felt strange catching up on an entire semester I had no part of.
Also, I had to adjust back to the American way of life. More than once I caught myself thinking in irritation, “This would never happen in Germany!” A 65 mile-an-hour speed limit on the interstate? Ridiculous. Germans enjoy driving more than 100 miles an hour on the Autobahn. Eating day-old bread? Disgusting. Germans buy fresh bread every day. As I had been enjoying the German drinking laws for the past four months, I absentmindedly picked up a six-pack of beer at the grocery store, forgetting that I am still five months shy of my 21st birthday. Even speaking was difficult; I was constantly using German vocabulary and phrases in English sentences.
For two weeks, I, a girl predefined for an entire semester by her nationality, was stumbling around her own nation, homesick for a foreign land. Now I am glad to be back in Germany, yet still lonely at times for my American home.
Joan Cleven ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in English literature and German literature.
