Last month I wrote about a little bit about the life of a Fest singer—but I left out one big point, because I think it merits at least a thousand words all by itself. In order to be Fest in Germany, you have to actually live in Germany. Yes, I’m stating the obvious, but with that frank fact come many repercussions. Not only do you have to learn how to function in a completely foreign environment, you also have to figure out how to thrive.
I lived in London for seven months just out of graduate school, which gave me a good foundation for moving to Germany. But I went to London knowing I wasn’t going to be staying, and I spoke English the whole time. Moving to a new country and tackling a new language at the same time proved to be quite the challenge.
When I first moved here, everything was new and different, and every new day brought some new experience. There’s Bach’s grave! Robert Schumann lived right there! The Berlin Wall used to be right there, and now I’m riding over it with my bike! And although it was an exciting time in many ways, there were days when I really felt like I would never feel at home or comfortable in Germany.
For every new discovery I made, it seemed like five problems cropped up that I just didn’t know how to solve: Where do you buy an inexpensive pack of pencils? Where can you get brown sugar? Or vanilla extract? And what about Crest toothpaste? Why are cell phone calls so expensive? And how do I pay my bills if there are no such things as checks?
I remember riding my bike to a concert my first year and snagging my pantyhose on the pedal en route. If I’d been in America, I would have zipped over to Target and spent a couple of dollars on a cheap pair of L’eggs. But this was Germany, where they have neither Target nor, as it would turn out, L’eggs. I stopped at the first department store I saw and refused to pay €12 for what looked like a pretty cheap pair. Huge mistake: the next store I went to was charging even more money for that exact brand. But I was out of time, and since I didn’t have any idea where to get something less expensive, I was also out €15.
Then there’s the no-stores-open-on-Sunday rule, which didn’t take me long to get around. The grocery stores at the main train station are open on Sundays. I can always get groceries there if I forget something during my normal weekday shopping trips. Always, that is, except when I invite friends over on a random Sunday that also happens to be Reformation Day, and the stores all stay closed, and we’re forced to improvise like mad. And that was just last month.
It’s moments like that which make me wonder if I’ll ever have answers to all of my questions. (I have found out all the answers to the ones above: Pencils? You can’t. Brown sugar? At the Asian market. Vanilla and Crest? Sorry, only in America. Expensive cell phones? Because. And bills? Bank transfers!) But then there are those unknown unknowns that I haven’t yet come across, that are just waiting to jump out at me when I least expect.
Culturally speaking, I’m constantly shocked at how Germans have a way of criticizing one another without making it personal—a skill I have yet to acquire. And I still don’t know what the etiquette is when you’re on an FKK beach (look it up). So no matter how comfortable I think I am, I find myself in situations where I’m suddenly faced with something I don’t know how to deal with. When I look around, all the Germans around me seem to be just fine. It’s easy to get frustrated in an environment with an unwritten set of rules other than the one I grew up with, and in which the accepted common knowledge is sometimes worlds away from what I know.
And then there are those moments when it’s the written rules that make me really dislike living here. Within the space of two days last fall, my older brother got married and my grandmother passed away. I knew months in advance that I wasn’t able to make the trip back for the wedding. I had an orchestra rehearsal the day before and a performance the day after, and there was no way they would release me. My older brother set up a camera and a laptop, and I was able to sit in the front row at his wedding and watch it all from the comfort of my living room in Leipzig. I got to talk to all of our relatives and family friends and not deal with any of the wedding stress. We even took a family portrait (we have a similar portrait from this year, too, when my sister-in-law gave birth and the rest of my siblings all went home for a weekend to meet the baby).
But then my grandmother fell the next day and was taken to the hospital. I was woken up in the middle of the night by my dad’s voice on the other end of the phone, telling me she probably wasn’t going to make it. I went into work first thing the next morning to get released from rehearsal for the next weekend so I could fly back and attend the funeral. But it turns out they’re obligated to release you from rehearsal only if a member of your immediate family dies, and grandmothers do not count. I was so shocked that there were rules about this! My brother promised to set up the camera and laptop again, but in the end it didn’t matter: I had rehearsal, and they wouldn’t let me out.
I remember going home from that rehearsal so angry and upset. It’s not an easy decision to make to stay here, and that day made me really want to go home. All I wanted to do was be back with my family, in a place where I knew exactly what to expect, where I knew how to successfully interact with the people around me, and where I knew I’d always be able to find what I need at an affordable price.
And then I realized that if I were at home with my family, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m lucky enough to get to do every day here. Yes, in a perfect world, I’d have exactly this job, but near my family so I could see them every week and still make a living as a singer. But we don’t live in that perfect world.
There’s no uplifting end to this column. In the midst of loving what I do, there are days when I miss feeling at home and at ease. Today is one of them. Such is the life of an expatriate living abroad.
