Tag Archives: differences

Double translation

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I knew, of course, that there would be a language barrier when I moved here.  (The fact that the only thing I knew how to say in German was “Gesundheit” before getting on the plane was a small clue.)  I’m really very fortunate:  as far as I can tell, most people here study at least some English at school.  Under the age of about 40, the vast majority of people I encounter do speak at least a little English.  But, I didn’t know that there would be an additional barrier — the fact that I speak American English and not British English, which is what they study.

Whenever I am fortunate enough to come upon someone who does speak English, I still have to remember that an elevator is a lift, a diaper is a nappy, an apartment is a flat, a binky/paci is a dummy, a boo-boo is an owie, a bathroom is a wc . . . I know there are more that I’m not thinking of.  (There are many, many, many of these . . . )  It may not seem like a lot, but it adds to the language gymnastics I have to do in my head.

Recently, at a restaurant, I was looking for a place to change Benjamin’s diaper.  I tried, unsuccessfully, to ask in German, and resorted to English.  I asked three people where I could find a bathroom, and did it have a place to change a diaper.  I got blank stares.  So, I tried asking if I needed to take the elevator down a floor to get there.  More blank stares.  They called someone over to help this poor, confused, English speaking crazy woman and I repeated my question to the new arrival.  He understood, and upon hearing his explanation (in English) all three of the original guys said, “Oh!” in unison.  It wasn’t the English that was the problem, it was the American-ish.

Minding my own business

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People in Austria are very forthcoming with their disapproval — be it stares, scowls or comments.  This seems to be especially true when it comes to kids and dogs.  If you’re out with a dog or a small child, it’s open season for opinions.  This is actually relatively true at home, too (more so with kids than with dogs) and it starts as soon as you’re visibly pregnant — other people (typically, but not always, women older than yourself) will confront you with advice about everything from your beverage of choice to your choice of footwear to prognostications on the sex of the baby.  I remember the frustration of being confronted by complete strangers about my choices or behavior when I was pregnant with Benjamin, and thinking that it would go away once he was born.  It didn’t — and now it’s followed me to Europe!

But, here, I don’t care so much.  I don’t understand what they’re saying anyway.

On my way home from German class today, on the train, with both kids, I noticed an older woman who was scowling and who looked generally disgruntled.  When I got off the train at our stop, I proceeded to the elevator.  Waiting for it to arrive, this same woman came up and said something to me in German.  She wasn’t angry or overly confrontational, but she did seem stern and grumpy.  Taken by surprise, I didn’t catch a single word, so I asked (in German!) for her to repeat herself.  She did, more slowly, and the only words I caught were “children”, “seat” (maybe “sitting”?) and “street car”.  (I imagine she actually meant train.)  I told her I only speak a tiny bit of German, so she repeated herself again, more slowly and more loudly.  I still didn’t get it, so I nodded and smiled and got on the elevator.

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I have no idea what she was saying.  It might have been something very nice, and she’s just a stern looking person.  She might have been admonishing the other passengers for not giving up their seats so I could sit on the train.  But I suspect she was telling me I ought to sit down on the train with my kids (which, I would love to do, but for logistical reasons isn’t something I can do when I travel with both kids together — I won’t leave Liam in the stroller parked next to the door, and I won’t let Benjamin sit in a seat out of my reach, so if the seat immediately adjacent to where I’m standing isn’t available, Benjamin & I both stand).

If I’d been able to understand her, I would have either gotten defensive or agreed out of politeness — but either way, it would have stayed with me all day.  I would have been justifying myself in my mind, and feeling grumpy and bitter that she dared say anything.  Regardless of how confident I was in my own opinion, her words would have stuck with me, for the rest of day or even longer.

But, here, I’m immune.  I don’t know what she said, so I can only obsess about it so much.  I can try to imagine what she was saying, but I really don’t have enough information to even make an educated guess.  So, I let it go.  It doessn’t stick to me.  The truth is, there’s no reason I shouldn’t feel exactly the same way if I do understand what the other person is saying.  I’m doing the best I can, and, if someone offers me new information, I have the option of changing my behavior in the future.  The judgements of a stranger should carry no weight.  I’ve figured out how to feel that way, finally:  fail to understand the criticism in the first place.

Cowboy mentality

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Being an American and travelling the world can be tough.  As a people, we’re criticised a lot:  we appear to believe that jeans and a t-shirt are appropriate for nearly all occasions, we travel abroad without speaking the language, and we make eye contact, smile, greet and make small talk with complete strangers.

There are plenty of things for which Americans can be fairly criticized, but I think these things are misunderstood.  People around the world, and Europeans in particular, take our chosen attire as a sign that we’re lazy and completely without fashion consciousness.  They think our lack of foriegn language training means that we’re rude and uneducated, and our friendliness to strangers means that we’re superficial and insincere.  Although there may be bits of truth to parts of that, I think, as a nation and a culture, we have a cowboy mentality.  We’re from a (relatively) young nation, used to pushing the frontier and surviving by our wits.  We’re accustomed to making ourselves comfortable in nearly any environment, and we love to explore.  We have a spirit of adventure, confidence and enthusiasm that we take out into the world.

I think we have different priorities when it comes to dressing ourselves for the day, particularly an adventurous day (as when visiting a foreign country where you don’t speak the language).  We’re all like Boy Scouts — we want to be ready for anything that might come up.  Wearing jeans and a t-shirt, you’ll be ready to walk a long distance, sit just about anywhere, be comfortable in a variety of temperatures and weather conditions . . . and even wrangle something, if need be.  I do think we tend to be less fashion aware, on average, than a European, but I think it reflects a different focus, not a cultural deficiency.

And yes, we will travel to a far off land with little to no understanding of the language and culture.  Sure, that demonstrates some hubris . . . but also a lot of confidence.  It’s true that our lack of ability to converse in multiple languages is a little uncultured (and an unfortunate lack in our education) but it also shows our willingness to go forth, into the unknown, whether or not we’re prepared, for the sake of experience and adventure.  It’s not an easy or comfortable thing to do (I’ve done it, I know).  But, we have a willingness to make things work and take things as they come, anyway.

Here in Austria, people don’t make eye contact with strangers.  They don’t smile, or say hello on the street.  At home, we look at each other, we smile, we say hello, we ask each other how we are.  Europeans find that superficial and fake.  They’re disdainful of it.  They don’t see why you’d ask a complete stranger how they’re doing when you don’t actually care — why you’d smile without a particular reason.  I think that Americans are reaching out to each other.  We make that very small effort, and it makes the world just a little friendlier.  I think it’s a small way of connecting with each other and checking in — we’re all in on this adventure together, after all.

We have a spirit of adventure, a lust for life and a desire to be prepared for everything.  I know, my view is biased.  But I do think our cultural perspective is informed by our history:  we’re all cowboys are heart, and we like to be ready for whatever may come.

Freedom

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As an American, I find it very strange that I’ve learned so much about freedom since moving to Austria.  Not in a “freedom of speech/religion/assembly/expression” kind of way, but freedom in the sense of personal liberation.  I don’t actually think it was important that I be in Austria to make these discoveries — I think I’ve had to be out of my comfort zone and stressed to a point of actually letting go of unimportant things (which is so very hard to do).  I think that could have happened almost anytime and almost anywhere, but for me, it happened to happen here.

Here, I’ve learned to accept that I’m going to get things wrong.  That was true at home, too, but I fought it.  At home, I tried to be “together”, I tried to be slick, I tried to do it all and look good doing it.  Here, I am so much more willing to accept that it’s a lost cause and just let go do the best I can in the moment.  I don’t know the convention of how things are done here.  I don’t know the logistics of how things are done here (I’ve finally figured out how to use the ATM — sorry, bankomat — so that I don’t have to put my card in two or three times in the course of a single transaction).  I don’t speak the language, so that’s like 1000 uncool points before I’ve even started to communicate with someone.

I’m having to find my own way of doing things here, too.  I have less help, more time alone with the kids, and everything I try to do is more of a challenge.  I’m having to focus on what is important — on what is really, truly, important to ME.  I’m having to discover my own priorities and determine the best way to execute them.  There isn’t even the illusion of enough time to do everything I want, go everywhere I want or do things as well as I want.  I just can’t.  In the acceptance of that comes the responsibility of determining what IS important and spending my time on that.  I’m learning to just do enough instead of trying to do it all.  I’m learning to just do well enough instead of trying to be perfect.  Everyone gets fed and cleaned and loved and read to.  Boo-boos get kissed.  The dog goes outside.  The house is not yet a toxic waste site.  Sounds good to me!

The pressures are different here, too.  The moms do things differently.  They worry so much less about their kids falling down and getting scraped or bruised or even breaking an arm.  They don’t worry about only introducing one food at a time to screen for allergies.  On the other hand, they bundle their children in the cold weather or the rain like they’re going to dissolve.  It just shows me that the things we choose to worry about are fairly arbitrary.  Things that would cause an American mother to gasp in horror would go unnoticed here, and things that would make an Austrian mother stare accusingly (they’re not so big on the gasping) would make an American mom scoff.  So, I worry less that my 3 year old isn’t potty trained and still drinks from a bottle, and I’m grateful my 10 month old doesn’t need to eat plain pureed chicken on the extremely remote possibility he has a poultry allergy.  People can stare and gasp all they like.

I’m accepting myself, too.  I’m good at some things, not at others.  I enjoy doing some things, and not others.  It doesn’t make me a bad mom, wife, daughter, sister or friend.  It just IS.  It doesn’t mean anything.  The distance from my structured environment at home is giving me permission to just be who I am.  I’m judging myself less and less for not being good enough, for not being slick enough, for not doing things right, for not doing enough, for not doing it all, perfectly, 100% of the time.  (I find I’m also judging others less for the same things.)

And all of that is ok.  In fact, it’s incredibly liberating.  I’ve never felt so divorced from my concept of what I ought to be doing or how things are supposed to happen.  In so many ways, the pressure is relieved — pressure I’ve felt my entire life, but most acutely since becoming a mother.  These concepts of perfection weren’t even mine, and I didn’t know.  For the first time, I’m experiencing the process of deciding what’s important and allowing myself to be just who I am.  And that isn’t sad, it’s wonderful.

Awkward

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I am not cool.  I am not smooth, slick, suave or together.  I wish that I was:  not like the “cool kids” in high school . . . more like James Bond-ette with a diaper bag.  I want to smile at the right times, catch people’s meaning without them having to come right out and say it, always have what I need in my bag, be dressed for the occasion and do it all with a smile and without breaking a sweat.  Instead, I’m more likely to accidentally offend someone by laughing at the wrong moment, misinterpret directions and walk through an alarmed fire door and be pooped on by a bird (possibly all in the same afternoon).  I don’t know why this is, but it is.

Living abroad has really put me in touch with this part of myself.  Only the coolest of the cool could pull this off and look slick at the same time.  For me, it just throws my awkwardness into greater focus.  The language barrier, the cultural differences, the little idiosyncrasies of the expectations of day to day life — I’m ill equipped to be able to keep up.  We all pick up on words and cues and expectations based on experience to help us understand when we’re welcome, liked, understood . . . or not.  Everything is different here — I don’t pick up on anything, and even when I understand the words, I’m missing a lot of the meaning.

I took B to the doctor today (a new doctor) to check on a scratch that I thought was getting infected (it wasn’t).  The appointment went well, but I sat in the wrong place, tried to leave before she was done, tried to leave without paying and was literally chased out the door by the receptionist who was bidding me farewell (I made eye contact but didn’t say anything on the way out, and I get the impression that was NOT the right thing to do).  This is not uncharacteristic of my afternoons in Vienna.  And, all of the people I was dealing with today actually spoke English (it’s worse when they don’t).

Being cool is just not in the cards for me.  For some people, perhaps it’s easy, but for me to achieve such heights of slickness, I’d either have to devote most of my life to it or be so tightly wound that I’d end up institutionalized in the very near future.  There’s no way for me to get there without letting go of things that are more important.

I’m really getting to be ok with it.  (It’s a process.)  I have a lot going for me, but coolness isn’t on the list.  There truly are more important things, and I refuse to sacrifice any of them for the sake of being slick.  It’s not cool, but it’s who I am.

The longest day

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5:03 a.m.

5:03 a.m.

I woke up this morning, as I often do, to the sounds of one of my little ones awake, ready to start the day, and in need of liberation from his crib.  Dan usually gets up with the boys in the morning, but he was groggy to the point of complete incomprehensibility, so I went for it.  The sun was up, and I was ready to start my day — but why, oh why, was I so tired?  Well, partly, because it was quarter of five in the morning.  Quarter ’til five, and daylight.  Crazy.

Benjamin was awake, but it didn’t take much to convince him to go back to sleep (it was, after all, two hours before he usually gets up, as well).  I had a tough time getting back to sleep, though, and before I knew it, it was quarter of seven (that’s more like it) and time to actually start the day.

Other than being hot and exhausted, we had a good day, and celebrated by inaugurating our new inflatable “paddling pool” for our terrace.  (I know that’ll come in handy tomorrow when it’s supposed to be above 90 here — and that’s the temperature down on the street, not in our relatively closed up attic apartment.)

It is summer now.  Although I understand why this is the first day of summer, from an astronomical perspective, it never ceases to astound me that the longest day of the year should come so early in what we experience as summer.  July and August still stretch stickily out ahead of us, but the days begin to shorten now.  It will begin to be easier to sleep a little later in the morning, and to get the kids in bed at a reasonable hour in the evening (it’s after 10:00 here and not yet quite dark).

I know I’ll regret these words in November and January, but right now, I’m looking forward to just a little less daylight tomorrow.  Sleep is lovely and precious.

Crying in public

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I have one of those faces — if I have cried, anytime in the past 4 hours or so, you’ll be able to tell when you look at me.  I don’t know if it’s because I’m so fair, or because I have a lot of pink in my complexion, or just because when I cry I tend to really let it out, but I can’t hide it.  I’ve never understood when people say, “Go in the bathroom, splash some water on your face and pull yourself together”.  All I get is a wet face.

Being overwhelmed, homesick or just stressed — I’ve cried several times since I’ve been here.  And I have definitely gone out in public after crying (without waiting the requisite 4 hours to get the evidence off of my face).

But I doubt anyone would notice.  Not because people don’t really make casual eye contact here (although that’s also true) but because it seems to happen all the time here — people cry in public.  It’s not something I’m accustomed to from home — there, we’re all very busy pretending to have it together and showing everyone how happy we are all the time.  If you see someone crying in public, you’ll avert your eyes and probably be embarrassed for them.  Here, it just happens.  People (mostly women) will just be walking down the street in tears, or very obviously recently in tears, with no shame about it.  No one pays it any particular attention, as I can tell.

It’s awesome.  It’s really liberating for me, as someone who has to hide for hours after crying, to have one less thing to worry about.  I can cry if I need to, and even if I’ve cried recently, no one is going to care one bit if it’s obvious on my face as I walk down the street.  (I’m working on not caring whether or not they care, but I’m not there yet.)  I haven’t taken advantage of this liberation yet, but I’m sure opportunity will present itself soon enough.

Surprise holiday

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Monday is a government holiday in Austria, and even better, it’s one of the holidays that the UN observes for their employees, so Dan doesn’t have to go to work.  Great!  We’re really excited to have a three day weekend, and there are some things we’ve really been wanting to do and to get done, so it comes at a great time.  We didn’t find out about this until yesterday, so it came as a complete surprise to us.

It’s a weird sensation to be taken by surprise by a holiday.  (This one, Whit Monday, I had to look up, because I didn’t even know what it was.)  We’re still adjusting to things here, and it often occurs to me that once we adjust, it’ll be time to go home.  I know that at some point in the past few months, we’ve read a list of the holidays for the UN employees (in fact, I know we’ve read it several times) but it just hasn’t sunk in.  We’re just getting past the point of being in a kind of “panic” mode, where we only had time to focus on things that had the potential to wreak havoc — things like work holidays, being good news, just didn’t sink in.  But that kind of makes it extra special, because finding out at the last minute, it’s less like a holiday, and more like getting an unexpected snow day in the middle of June.

Dan has 10 work holidays here, similar to what he had at home.  Some are the same (New Year’s, Christmas) while many are obviously different (no Thanksgiving or Independence Day) with an strong emphasis on religious holidays here (Good Friday, Easter Monday, Whit Monday) and some that just make sense (UN Day, of course!).

For now, we’ll take it.  On the list of things we’ve found out about that have come as a bit of a surprise, an unexpected day off of work rates pretty pleasantly.

The zoo

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I’m working on turning over a new leaf in terms of being flexible (especially with the family schedule), so when Dan suggested that we eat breakfast out this morning, I went along with it, even though it totally blew our busy schedule of chores and house cleaning.  We had a lovely time, and still managed to get to the grocery store and do a bit of laundry and organizing before nap time.

037It was important, after all, that we keep our afternoon free, because we had plans to go to the zoo today.  I mentioned it to Benjamin earlier in the week and he has been talking about it non-stop ever since.  He would wake up in the morning and ask if we were going to the zoo today.  Then, all day, he would periodically tell me that we couldn’t go to the zoo today because we couldn’t go without Daddy, and Daddy had to work.

Today, we finally went to the zoo.  It’s on the grounds of the Schonbrunn Palace, which we’ve visited before.  We saw giraffes, tigers, reindeer (with babies!), cranes, lions, monkeys, goats, water buffalo and a rhino.  (We tried to see the Pandas, but they were hiding or sleeping or otherwise unavailable.)  It’s very zoo-like . . . by which, I mean, it’s what you’d expect:  lots of animals.

040But, it’s different, too.  First, many of the animals (although not the big carnivores) could get out of their enclosures with relatively little effort.  The reindeer, for example, were behind a 3′ fence that I imagine they could jump easily if sufficiently motivated — I’m guessing the designers are counting on them being sufficiently motivated very, very rarely (and I’m sure they’re right — why would a reindeer want to visit downtown Vienna when he’s got a cushy reindeer-friendly habitat at his disposal?).  Also, people could get IN to many of the enclosures even more easily if they wanted to (which I am not used to).  Even Benjamin could have climbed into several of the enclosures (again, not the lions or the tigers, which is good) if we had let him.

041It is a very Austrian approach, and it makes me smile.  I can imagine having a conversation with the designer:

Me:  “What if someone climbs in to the enclosure!  They could get hurt!”

Designer:  “Why would anyone do that?”

Me:  “I don’t know . . . curiosity, foolishness, showing off for their friends?”

Designer:  “That would be stupid.  They’d probably get hurt.”

Me:  “But, they might hurt the animals.”

Designer:  “I don’t think so.  No one would do that.”

058In the US, this conversation would be a precursor to a multi-million dollar lawsuit from the family of someone who was mauled by a reindeer or trampled by goats after climbing into the enclosure with the animals.  In Austria, it’s an attitude which is part of the oldest zoo in the world (it’s been there for over 250 years).

If you ask Benjamin, his favorite part of the zoo was the tigers and the flamingos (which we didn’t actually see — but he’s been learning about them on “Go, Diego, Go” all week, so he’s got them on his mind).  My favorite part is the fact that you could climb into the enclosures with the animals, but no one does.  I love this philosophy that is so pragmatic and irreverently Darwinian, and the fact that people actually seem to be able to control themselves and behave, even though they have the option not to — imagine that.

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Baby food

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Liam is working his way up the baby-food-chain . . . from rice cereal to oatmeal to wheat to veggies.  He is a human version of a baby velociraptor — this kid will eat anything that doesn’t move faster than he does.  Most babies are relatively slow to take to “solid” food (if oatmeal and pureed carrots can be counted as solid) but not Liam.  He doesn’t spit food out, he doesn’t make faces — it goes in, he swallows it and he looks for the next bite, even the first time he tries something.  We have to cut him off, at some point, so he doesn’t make himself sick, and he cries when we put the food away.  (Don’t worry, he’s still nursing — he won’t starve.)  He has yet to meet a food he didn’t like.

The difficulty is that baby food is hard to find here.  At least, the kinds of baby food I’m looking for.  A variety of formulas are readily available, and rice cereal and oatmeal were easy to find, too (once I learned the word for oatmeal:  “haferflocken”, which is a great word).  Beyond that, the next step for Austrian babies seems to be “peas and lentils with ham”.  The only “single ingredient” pureed baby food I can find here is carrots — everything else is some kind of combo.  (I also realized that I’m pretty unlikely to find pureed sweet potatoes here — they’re more of an American continent thing.)

I don’t know if mothers here are more industrious than I am:  maybe they’re all making their own baby food (which is possible).  Maybe they’re less hung up on uber-testing their kids for allergies to every single possible thing, so they just puree a bunch of stuff together (which is likely).  Or maybe I’m shopping in the wrong stores (also possible — I’m looking in the grocery stores and the drug stores, but there may be something else out there).  It’s hard to tell, and it can be frustrating.  It’s not just that I’m not able to find what I’m looking for, but that I don’t know if what I’m looking for exists, and I don’t know where I’d look for it if it did.  I’m not sure which store names to look for, and when I look for the stores online, I’m searching Austrian websites in German.  This is not a trivial process.

Today, I packed the kids up and headed out to look at a store which seemed promising.  Upon arriving at our destination, I couldn’t find the store (let alone the baby food).  I tried a grocery store that I happened upon, but with no luck (they had the same “peas and lentils with ham” that our local store has).  When I got home and re-checked the directions, I realized that the address of the store was correct, but the placement on the map was wrong.  I was familiar with the area, so I walked to the place I saw depicted on the map, and couldn’t find it (no wonder I couldn’t find the right street, since I was in the wrong neighborhood).

This doesn’t go in the category of major frustration, just mild curiosity turned minor obsession.  It is yet another of the things that I took for granted at home and am struggling with here (there are so many).  Liam will be fine and will be introduced to all manner of foods (and he’ll probably start catching his own meals next week).  But here I am, thinking wistfully of the baby food aisle at Safeway — never thought that would happen.