more scattered thoughts

More thoughts regarding the Germany trip:

• My mother also went to Europe, just weeks before I did. She traveled by boat down the Rhine, Main, and Danube from Amsterdam to Budapest. It was a very different sort of thing for her, a bunch of Americans in an organized tour, than for me staying in my friends’ homes. I got to do fun things like grocery shopping. Visiting friends for a few days and doing touristy-things together isn’t exactly real life, but it is much more of an exposure to real life than a cruise with group tours to the big tourist sites. She missed out on the countless observations of the little differences between here and there that so fascinated me. And many of those I really only noticed after the second or third family I stayed with and I realized that I was seeing things that are typically German rather than just quirks of a particular household.



• It’s good to be back home, but even that was an adjustment. The first night I got up from bed to use the toilet and was really consciously thinking about where I was. Home, yes. That carpet should feel familiar under foot (though it oddly didn’t.) Bathroom is across the hall. No need to worry about waking anyone up—no one else here. Light switch is inside, as always around here.



• We travel to have new experiences. One such experience for me was getting genuinely drunk for the first time in my life. I know many people try that before age 35, but some of us wait longer. And travel to a foreign country. The first bottle of wine shared with aryana_filker was fine. The second, plus whatever that high-proof stuff J. brought out was, might have been a bit much. Might have been, yes. Anyway, it was an interesting experience. Didn’t feel so good the next day, I’ll admit. Maybe should try to remember to drink a bit less next time. Crazy Germans. But I don’t regret it and among friends at their home is a safe environment for trying such things.



• I told people before the trip that my travel plans were to fly to Düsseldorf and follow the charming German women around wherever they led me. That, honestly, was the majority of what I knew of our plans. I will admit I was a bit nervous about traveling alone across the ocean to a foreign country where they speak a foreign language to stay with people who I’d never so much as seen in person before. Sure I’d exchanged lots of e-mail with aryana_filker and lisande, but, still, unlike visiting someone in Chicago, where I can just go home if we decide we can’t stand each other, Germany is rather far away. And kinder1of5, really, I hardly knew at all. Sure, lisande said she’d meet me at the airport with legoline and take me to her home, and, sure, I expected that to happen, but I couldn’t completely shake the thought that it had better not be some awful joke on the silly trusting American.
  
  My hosts all had the same sort of nervousness, too, hoping I’d turn out to be the sort of guest one would actually want. One did say, when we talked about this, that she wouldn’t have done such a thing had she not had her husband for support should it be needed, something I fully understand.
  
  It all worked out better than could be imagined. By the time I got to Bielefeld B., who I’d not so much as heard of before the trip, offered her very nice guest bedroom for my use, fed me chocolate, and trusted me with keys to her flat so as to be able to let myself out while she was at work.
  
  I just cannot say enough about the kindness, generosity, and trust I received from everyone.