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| Summer view of Heidelberg from a hiking trail called Philosopher's Way |
A Long-Overdue Update!
It's been 11 months since we moved to Germany, and the time has passed quickly for us. On the one hand, we've been able to experience a new culture in odd form because of the pandemic, which is special and interesting and historic in it's own way. Not many people are able to do what we've done in this situation. On the other hand, for that very reason it has been a much bigger challenge than we anticipated. Although, if there's anything I've learned in the last ten years is that life in every direction is always more challenging than we ever expect it to be...
I wouldn't have been able to function without the help of our very generous neighbors and church community. These people have treated us like family in the amount of ways they have offered us real support, from giving us rides to the grocery store, to giving us furniture, to helping us through the very paperwork-heavy visa process, and simply explaining their own culture--things they would normally take for granted. Our current neighbors helped us find our current apartment and the church community gathered to deep-clean it, and fill it with food and furniture before we even arrived. Our initial quarantine was lived with a warm place to sleep and plenty of food to eat, and even places to sit! They also donated bicycles so we could get around before we were able to purchase a vehicle. Without this community, frankly this situation would have been unlivable. Trying to move into a new apartment on our own when all the furniture and second-hand stores and restaurants are closed due to lockdown would have been very miserable and unnecessarily difficult. We simply wouldn't have come at this time. For that reason, it was been an interesting lesson in hospitality. I thought I was hospitable, until I encountered this community. Their level of hospitality has put any of my previous notions of it to shame. And I've learned to be a little more inter-dependent, which has admittedly been difficult as an individualistic North-American.
It's also difficult to explain our experience without describing the process of learning a new language. While I still do speak a lot of English (my boss speaks decent English) and most people can at least speak some English, most everything we do with other people is in German. And when we try to speak in English, for some it can take twice as long to find the right English words, and the same goes for myself, trying to find the right German words. A lot of misunderstanding tends to happen, and a lot of explanation happens over simple small things that are usually taken for granted in conversation. So I spend twice as much time listening as I do speaking, and I haven't been able to be as expressive as I normally am simply because I don't have the right words yet. And at the same time, I often feel very gosh darn proud of my progress.
All this was happening during a time when I couldn't see peoples' mouths when they spoke because they were always covered by thick N95 masks, and I had to stand at a distance so I couldn't really hear their voices, and could barely make out their words.
Listening to a new language is a different kind of focused listening: one must listen intently to every syllable, because it is all unfamiliar, and some words are the same with only subtle variations. Some of the consonant sounds are sort of swallowed in conversation, so sometimes it's trying to figure out if I've just heard a word I know or a new word. Just visualizing the spelling of a word at first is a puzzle. Plus, you don't understand every word in a sentence, so you can only pick up what you do know. So you have to listen very intently to all the subtle sounds for anything you might understand and those are your only context clues... You find yourself pondering the length of words, weighing which word they meant, and looking up a word they said five minutes ago when the moment has passed and by now you are totally lost but aren't inclined to back-track... This quickly becomes frustrating because of corona, when those words are very muffled and at a distance. For a time, I found myself preferring online virtual meetings because at least then I could see faces and adjust the volume. And that context is still more difficult than in-person conversation to pick up cues and subtleties... The first several months were full of naps and migraine headaches and tears.
A big part of joining a new community is getting together, but this wasn't really possible when we first arrived because of Corona. This was something I didn't foresee, because I wasn't aware of how strictly Germans keep to the rules. We couldn't go out to neutral locations, i.e. restaurants, because everything was closed under lockdown. We couldn't have a house-warming or welcome party because the rule when we arrived was that only 1 individual could enter a household at a time, and there was an 8pm curfew! So that meant Dustin and I couldn't even visit others as a pair! Individuals had to stop by, we had to split up, and together we visited a few who were willing to bend the rules. I wasn't very good at keeping the curfew...
Something else we didn't know, was that when a German invites you to their house for lunch or dinner, they mean to have you there for 3-5, sometimes up to 7, hours. This was in contrast to our 2-3 hour expectation. So in the beginning, as we were trying to learn the culture, and a little more passive than usual, we found ourselves stuck in peoples' homes for hours on end, unsure of the polite way to say, "Okay, bye!" Turns out, that is the way some people do it. They simply slap their knees, and get up and say "Okay, bye! (Okay, Tchüss!)" while awkwardly heading for the door. Others are more like Americans in the way they give body language cues and give thanks and then subtly express their intention to leave. Since then we've learned that the best thing is to tell people when we intend to leave before we get there, so they aren't baking cakes for tea time later.
The hardest thing, as I'm sure it is for many leaders around the world, has been navigating the changing corona situation with a community. One must balance individual freedom and the safety of the community in a way we haven't had to in the past. And the way Germans think about the pandemic is very different than the way Americans do, so it has been difficult for me to not feel like a fish out of water sometimes. I have stressed over the difficult decisions trying to follow government rules that go against natural human connection. When you lead in a community built on the unity, love, and the communion of Christ, it's so counter-intuitive to try to keep your distance, block your own instincts to hug people, and to live with people for months without ever seeing their real smile. Even the normal ways I have taught myself to learn names has been thwarted because I couldn't connect their whole face to their name in my mind's eye. I have to help this community fight against the temptation to see people as threats rather than as people. We have to fight fear head-on.
The thing that keeps me going is understanding that these difficulties are temporary. Corona won't last forever. And my difficulties with German will lessen as I learn the language more. In time, I will be able to really go somewhere with this community, and that is what gets me excited. Hopefully I will also take advantage of my location and explore more of Europe when it's possible. And I hope my family does the same and visits me when this pandemic subsides.
