We have a visitor this week, a high school girl from Kentucky visiting Austria with the same group that first brought me here thirty years ago.
I have been looking forward to this for years. It was only a matter of time before my daughter brought one home. I was all for it. I thought it would be neat, and it's neater than I expected, having a bright, interested kid hanging around.
Seeing things through her eyes.
She asks a lot of questions. She listens to what you say, then has an intelligent response. One of those people effort isn't wasted upon. Also she doesn't like Bush either, so whenever someone runs out of things to say, they can always say, "man, that Bush, man," and it kick-starts the conversation.
Your language fossilizes when you move away, you know? I've been away for about 20 years now, and conversations with native speakers have been rare during that time. I can read, or watch movies, but that's about it for means to keep up with the evolution of the language.
For a long time I thought I could fake it. I thought internet communication would help me stay in touch, and it has to an extent, but there are certain expressions I can use in writing that are simply not part of my active vocabulary.
We took our visitor for a walk along the Danube in a nearby town last night and she almost got runned over by a cyclist. She gasped and said, "I almost got owned."
I've read that a million times, owned, and use it with ironic intent in writing, but that was the first time I've actually heard it used. Having an American high school kid around is linguistically refreshing.
Thirty years, man.
Some things, it turns out, don't change in thirty years. She was showing us her high school yearbook this morning. There was a tragic story about a boy who died in a car accident. There was something about a skills club, which turned out to mean job skills. My daughter asked about that. They're not, like, the special people? They're more like the dumb boys that no one likes? she explained.
But, yeah, thirty years, man. A lot does happen in that time, no matter what you do. Where were you thirty years ago? I was getting off a bus in Austria, wondering if I was going to like the host family I would spend a week with, and if they would like me.
In May I had to fly over to Seattle for a conference. I met people from 46 countries and decided not to explain anything.
"Where are you from?"
"Austria." [actually from Germany, but living in Vienna and representing Austria, yes, couple of years now, nice place, really beautiful, great friends, don't wanna go back, family and friends all over places ...]
It's not that I dislike Austria, but saying "I am from Austria" was a pretty strange feeling. Almost like betraying my origin.
But I now know what it must be like to be Australian, erm, Austrian.
At least ten times it went like this:
"Where are you from?"
"Austria."
"Oh, that's nice - Australia!"
And on my Australian colleague's badge it said: "Beth - Austria".
Did you know that they sell T-shirts in Austria saying "No kangaroos in Austria"?
Still better than being German and being confronted with question like "Have you ever met Hitler?"
Seventeen hours in transit and I'm back in the US for the first time in a year. The money is strange-looking, and suddenly everyone in the shops has a funny accent. Oh, yes, that's right – it's mine. I keep forgetting which way to look before crossing the street, and whenever the car I'm in takes a turn, my heart skips a beat as I wait for the head-on collision.
But the weather is hot and sunny, unlike the dreary winter cold I left behind, and I'm forcibly reminded of just how far I've gone. No matter how fast our broadband, how low our international phone rates, how frequent our emails, the laws of physics can't be abandoned, and I have hurtled through the air in a metal tube some ten thousand miles, to the opposite side of the entire planet. A side so far away that not only is the weather different, but they're in completely opposite seasons.
The security procedures at the Los Angeles airport are also a sea change. Everyone's in their stocking feet, shoes in plastic bins, divesting themselves of the slightest pieces of metal; the legions of TSA workers look bored and restless, the guards with loaded guns resting casually on their thighs. And yet with my meal on the flight over I was given a metal fork and a thick plastic knife – does anyone seriously think that they couldn't be used as weapons? Has everyone really just accepted the rampant paranoia as part of everyday life here? I feel like a convict in prison, stripped of personal possessions and pride, shuffling down the hallway and doing as I'm told.
So here I am, jetlagged and washed out, back in the country of my birth. I know I sound and look the same as anyone else, and yet I feel entirely different, and the juxtaposition frustrates me. Surely I'm not an expat simply out of some petty desire to stand out from the crowd? People often seem a bit put out when you tell them you're hoping to find a job so you can stay overseas, that you'd prefer not to come back to the US to live; after all, they live here just fine, so am I implying there's something wrong with them? Of course it's all so familiar at the same time as it's different, and if I had to, I could certainly live here again; it's not as if I'm an impoverished refugee fleeing a war zone. I still have my passport; I still speak the language; I could get a job and settle back into living here. Being an expat by choice is a luxury, and one that I'm sometimes hard-pressed to justify.