You Are Here: An Expat Arrival Tour

Learning the secret of the sunrise

Guten Tag from Germany! We are settling in and learning our way around (mostly by getting lost first!), and I’m finally sharing an update, of sorts. Here’s a little piece inspired by the many tours I have taken since we arrived.

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Here is the church, and here are its Neo-gothic steeples. See how those narrow, deep orange spires reach above the skyline, pointing into the clouds? If you’re ever lost—and you will be lost—you can always look to the sky and search for the tiny crosses atop each pillar. Follow them, and they will lead you back to city center. Perhaps you can find your way, again.

Here is the bakery, and there is another bakery—and over there, in the square across the street, a cart piled with baked goods. I know you have spent years trying to avoid carbs because they are bad for your blood sugar, but did you forget how fresh bread—truly fresh, not the kind you buy in a bag full of processed flour and preservatives—makes you so deeply happy? Did you forget how it feels to slather a spoonful of homemade strawberry jam across a chunk of baguette, to hold it close to your face and inhale deeply before opening your mouth? Did you forget the words give us our daily bread might not merely be a metaphor, but a way to live in the real world?

Here is the bus schedule, which reads like an algebraic equation but can, eventually, be solved. For instance, from this stop, any numbered bus will take you downtown, but only lines 5 or 15 will get you back home. Except bus 16 can get you home, too, if you are willing to endure the small moment of panic which will ensue when, for a few stops, it seems like you are going the opposite direction. But if you managed to get on a bus headed towards your destination, be patient. Trust the route. You will eventually get home.

Here is a map. Oh, should I have given you that first? Well, anyway, see this dot: you are here. You are standing at the intersection of two streets whose names you do not know (you could not pronounce them anyway), and for this moment in time and history, you inhabit this space. That little icon on your phone’s world map may have moved seven hours to the east, but you are still the same person, just in different surroundings. Your curiosity brought you here, remember? You could have stayed where everything was familiar, but you are increasingly the type of person who is unable to resist a nudge, who cannot seem to ignore a little wind at your back. 

Here, or should I say, hier, is an unfamiliar language. You have built much of your life upon language, around learning your native language and even teaching it to others—but now you are the student. Embrace the discomfort; it will be your best teacher. Hier are a few phrases to tuck into your pocket, and here are dozens of people walking around who know enough of your own language to help you. Here is how you practice: one day at a time, one person at a time, one interaction at a time. Guten Morgen. Bitte. Haben sie koffeinfrei Koffee? (Do you have decaf coffee?) You cannot rush this process; you can only wade into the current and paddle until you reach a safe shore—or until someone hands you your cup of coffee.

Here is the aisle where you can buy baking soda in a little packet, although at home, you always find the baking soda inside a box. So many things are like this: you know them, but they will be unrecognizable to you at first. You will have to think longer and harder about food, transportation, appointments. But you have resources to help you, like American friends, English-speaking grocery workers, and that priceless app Google Translate. It’s okay to use these resources; in fact, you must. You will survive only by reaching out for help, by embracing the humility of being a beginner each time you wake up in the morning, and by learning the secret of the sunrise: even if you have done something a hundred times, there is always a way to do it again, differently.

Here are five different types of recycling bins. Here are new electrical outlets with different voltages. Here are windows that lean back to let in the cool air, and here are blinds you must roll down after the sun comes up to keep out the heat. Here are seven pages of unfamiliar street signs, and here is a menu full of foods you will not recognize. Here are meters instead of miles, here is your water mit gas, here are coins for the toilets, and here are some rules you cannot read but must obey, anyway.

Pause here for a moment and look down at your dust-covered walking boots. You can stop asking if you made the perfect decision by coming, because you have already crossed the threshold. You have traveled across the ocean with your family and now you are here where the grass stays green in winter and castles grow up by the dozens along the hills of the Rhine River. Here, your shadow reflects back to you in the cobblestone streets, and you feel surprised by your own reflection in the shop windows because you are making your way across a new landscape when you could have found plenty of reasons to stop or quit or simply stay in bed. Instead, you moved.

And now, here you are, standing on the uneven cobblestone ground, craning your neck to look up at steeples which have stood for hundreds of years and been sought by many other travelers before you, who went searching for home by first leaving it behind. Seeking home has often asked you to find peace in the familiar, and it has also asked you to risk beyond what you could have imagined, and certainly it has taken you beyond a few safe borders you would have preferred not to leave. But for today, all you must do is walk, and trust your guide to lead you.

Here, we continue our tour around this corner. Please, watch your step.