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Going through the interior journey of being an emigrant changes you forever. Your certainties shuffle around, the cultural shock is something unexpected: as the
by muxator 9y ago
Going through the interior journey of being an emigrant changes you forever. Your certainties shuffle around, the cultural shock is something unexpected: as the author says, it's not a big bang, but a continuous stream of small astonishments about where to buy your food, how to turn on the shower, where to throw out your waste. All of these small things remember you that you're not in your place. Oh, hell, if this drains your energy. Then gradually the balance between cultural mismatches and adaptations swings gently, and you start feeling good again. Would you try to go back home at that point? Difficult choice: hardly anyone would understand your backfiring difficulties of readapting to the peculiar defects of your country. You are no longer the same person, you went through the path of change, you are part of the ancestral tribe of human emigrants that always existed in our species, but that nowadays is clearly separated from those who have the luck of knowing their soul belongs to a single place.
- icebraining 9y agoFunny, as someone living abroad (alone!) for almost a year now - albeit from one EU country to another -, I wouldn't say it drains my energy; I find it stimulating! You get to see and compare different ways of doing things, and you feel a tiny patriotic sting when something works better in your home country :) I'm guessing speaking English well enough (even if it's not the country's native language) and the Internet help immensely. I could barely speak in person with my landlord, but emails were fine. And a public service generally has someone who can speak English, but not my native language.
- mseebach 9y agoCompare the two times the author came to the US, the first time, pennyless, to a distant unknown country in a "yolo" endeavour, the second with financial security to a known entity. I suspect you experience, like mine, is closer to the second, but the two are so different they barely deserve to be known by the same word.
- icebraining 9y agoWell, I was making less than the author and my savings were two paychecks. I did have a job secured, but so did the author. I guess I could say I "knew" the country, having spent two separate weekends there in the past. Does this make it closer to the first or the second?
- mseebach 9y agoI don't know, I don't know your situation, your background nor which countries you moved between. I'd be inclined to maintain my guess. I struggle to think of any two 2017-era EU countries as different as 2000-Poland and Boston, especially when you English is poor, which yours isn't. Two weekends was basically my experience with London before moving, and I had few savings. But London simply doesn't feel all that strange from Copenhagen when it comes to the basics.
- icebraining 9y agoWell, I wasn't trying to one-up the author, or anything like that. I'm pretty sure his experience had plenty of stresses that mine didn't. Not having to deal with immigration alone is great. I was only referring to those daily routines.
- mseebach 9y agoI didn't mean to imply you did! I was offering a possible explanation of the difference in yours and GPs experiences (culture shock vs energising). Not having to deal with immigration is probably the least of it, at least by the time you're actually making the move (the author had visa sorted, that only unravelled several years later). But yes, daily routines. I suspect those are a lot more compatible between two present day (western?) European countries than it would have been for the author.