Foreign Things and Smiles to Guide the Way

She smiled at me again.

I walked into Padeffke on Mühlstraße, and the barista smiled at me again.

Her smile gives me a bit of courage, and I stumble my way through an order that is six or seven sentences long, because I’m just not sure what the bread with the olives and cucumbers is called.

I have been waiting for this day. I checked my calendar over and over again: “Is it the eleventh yet? … no, just the 7th… keep waiting.”

I have been waiting for this day, because today marks 3 months since I moved to Germany.

Sure, 3 months is significant in it’s own way. It’s a quarter of a year. It’s 90 days, which is all you’re allowed on a tourist visa. It means that you’re sticking around for a bit because at the very least you had to legally find another reason for being here apart from “just visiting some friends.”

But more than that, it personally marks the longest time I’ve been in a foreign country. I have now surpassed the time I spent in Africa, Mexico, or any other place. And for some reason, this was an important barrier to cross for me.

Maybe it’s because I knew that I did it before… that I survived the foreignness once and therefore I could do it again? Probably it’s because I thought that if I could just make it to this line… that something magical would happen that would make everything easier.

What I couldn’t anticipate was how different this is than those other “foreign country” experiences.

You see, it’s weird to write the words “foreign country” about Germany. It’s not that there aren’t still things about it that are foreign. There is so much I still don’t understand, so much that is foreign from me. The trajectory I have taken is one that shows me so clearly that there is much further to go than I know how to handle. This cave goes deeper than I ever knew from my shorter experiences… and far from being an expert or crossing a magical line, I know I am just a beginner.

And yet, something definitely has changed inside me. The “foreignness” is not the same as it was earlier. It is more of an Otherness, and one with which I am not ambivalent. I have chosen to attach myself to that Other… I’ve chosen to ask it to belong to me. We are sitting together in a garden, trying to get to know each other… to be with each other.

 

It’s a big world, but we’re in it nonetheless. We belong to it; it belongs to us. And yeah, you don’t always know what the bread with olives and cucumbers is called, but there’s time to learn that too. There’re smiles along the way to help you.

Something happens when you choose not to float, unattached in a context. It is deep, and a bit hard to articulate. It is mysterious, and a bit scary. But most of all, it’s personal, and therefore filled with meaning.

I like meaning.

Still Wandering,

Tony

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