Let's Go Outside!

These Bicycles Aren't Just for Show

    There is nothing like the enthusiasm of a Northern people for the warmer months. From the first day of Spring onward, it is simply time to be outside. Whenever possible. Even if there's still snow on the ground. Even if it’s just for the 10 minutes between rainstorms. Everyone seems to be in agreement that they made it through the dark, dark days of winter, and celebration time has begun!
    I’d felt a version of that difference when I moved north from California to Oregon, from a place where people can be outside almost all year long to a place where there’s truly a winter, and for three months it’s time to stay inside.

Rain is Just a Moisturizer

    Germany is another level entirely. When we first visited in April, the chestnut trees were coming into bloom, and there were already more hours of light than in Oregon. It was often quite cold and wet, but that didn’t stop people from being outside whenever possible. The café chairs that were tucked away for the winter were once again set up in the sun or the pouring rain. And they were occupied whenever there was a break from actual precipitation: café staff were constantly wiping them off. None of this “waiting until it warms up” for the Europeans: an hour without driving winds or snow or sleet is an hour to enjoy the weather, and what better way to do so (after one’s walk) than to have kaffee and kuchen (coffee and cake).

Color in our Cheeks: It's Not Cold, It's FRESH

"First Failure of the Day"

Humbly Asked for Help Finding A Place to Live

    You say you want to move to another country? And you don't want to wait for somebody to arrange everything for you, such as that mythical fabulous employer or that sometimes very real foreign love-of-your-life. You want to go now!
    You're the kind of person who knows how to take charge, is extremely capable, and takes great pride in knowing what to do and when to do it.
    Let me ask you this: are you ready to be humbled?
    When you are a foreigner, it becomes very clear to you very quickly how okay you really are with "doing things badly." That is the foreigner's daily bread.
    On the other hand, it's also a crash course in overcoming compulsive self-reliance. You get to either suffer, or learn to humbly ask for help. You get to let other people do for you what you cannot do for yourself.
    Whether it's worth it changes every day.

Step 7: We humbly asked our Higher Power to help us with the process of becoming citizens of another country, and to ask for and accept help when we needed it.

    We literally almost left Germany for good the weekend before we moved. In the midst of this beautiful city, with wonderful new friends, we were miserable. Simply because of the never-ending stress of finding and moving to an apartment. I've moved 23 times in my life, and it was never this hard. Because I could do almost everything myself, or easily hire someone to do it.
    Not so in Germany. As with so many things, we didn't know what we didn't know until we were right in the middle of needing to know it.

    And then we moved, and the stress stopped, and the craziness went away.
    We were walking through the forest near our house the other day and we realized, This is what we thought we were going to be experiencing when we moved to Munich: a comfortable flat in a nice neighborhood. And it took us 8 difficult months (and confiding to J's company that we might just leave, so they finally hired someone to help us) to make it happen. It's a huge leap forward towards comfort and the possibility of happiness.

Germany Wants to Know Where You Live

    But it's STILL insanely hard to do a simple thing like change our address. J is at this moment standing in line at a government building hoping he's in the right place, and not knowing whether his German skills will be enough to understand what he has to do. I'm really hoping it goes well...
    As I'm writing this I get a text from J: "first failure of the day." The frustrated emoticon sums it up. He ended up in the wrong LONG line on the wrong floor of the huge government building, just to change our address!! At home we'd just spend 30 seconds online to do exactly the same thing, or drop a postcard by the post office.
    But he's philosophical about it: he probably didn't have the right papers with him, anyway (he has his identity card but forgot his passport).
    The bottom line is, perfectionists probably should not apply. 

Doing "The Next Right Thing"

Daily Reading No Matter Where I Am

    Moving to another country is a completely different thing than visiting or working for awhile. It's really quite hard, emotionally torturous sometimes, in fact. The classic 1st-world Expat, although often well-paid and treated well simply for being American, is a deeply lonely person who drinks a LOT and slides into bitterness about Germans and Germany (or wherever) when he or she is in the company of someone who speaks their native language. 
    And we all know this unhappy person, because we end up spending time with people we'd avoid back home. We do it simply because they're American, and we crave that so much after we leave it, we crave the Americanness.
    It's good advice to avoid the Negative People. But sometimes you just can't, and sometimes they're very enticing. The "Contempt Prior to Investigation," or alcoholic, mindset has created some of the world's funniest (and most sarcastic) writers and performers. 
    I used to be really good at finding things to snarkily laugh about (and entertain others with) before I decided snark just wasn't good for me in the long run. It kind of rots the soul. The only other option is...sincerity.

And so I am sincerely working my version of Step 3:


We made a decision to believe in the possibility of living in a country from which our ancestors emigrated, to trust that this guidance comes from a Higher Power of our understanding, and to strive to take no challenges personally.

    J and I had the foresight (having done this before) to agree not to split up while we are here; otherwise we might have done it by now! (And be regretting it...) Because when you're miserable and you're isolated in another culture, it's easy to take it out on your partner. 
    That's where that part about not taking anything personally really comes in handy.
    We eventually have to feel what we're feeling, whether we distract ourselves with big life changes or not. Eventually it catches up to us. And often we need more than anything the comfort of the everyday. Doing the next right thing, like making a nest for ourselves, or helping a friend dig a garden or volunteering for something. Simple things like those are very difficult to do when you're a foreigner. And it's then you realize how important they are...
    The real challenge for me, over and over again, is to say Today is My Life, whatever and wherever I am. Spending time dreaming of the perfect life is for me both addictive and dangerous. I can say with absolute certainty that if I am not happy where I am now, I won't be happy in that dreamy place. Happiness is a choice and a daily practice and it's always different from what I thought it would be...What did I think Germany would be like? Just different, really, and boy, is it ever!

Brave Enough to Try, Brave Enough to Stay?

Darks Days, Light Hearts

We went to Füssen today, the city near Neuschwanstein, the "fairy tale castle" built by Ludwig II, who may have been murdered at 40 because he was a little too nice, a little too gay, a little too fond of building castles instead of going to war. The mountain ranges here are just astonishingly beautiful, ragged, jagged peaks, nothing rounded or comforting. Great vistas, and today was VERY sunny, a change for us. The snow has largely melted. 
    On our way today, a hawk was flying very low over the autobahn. And then there was one on the ground, not moving. I'm thinking maybe that was it's mate and that was why it was flying so low. Pigeons are mating in the snow on the rooftops here. Tomorrow, snow, high of 30. Saturday, high of 57. Wow!
    I'm getting many opportunities to explore enjoying cold weather and snow. And I'm getting braver about doing so, I think. We took the train to Chiemsee on Sunday, a lake with castles, and spent some of the day on the open top of the ferry. It was in the 20s but the sun was out, so hiking around the islands and even being outside on the ferry deck was unexpectedly beautiful. 
    My feet have yet to freeze, which keeps surprising me.
    Aging, winter, death, darkness - nothing like January to bring us back to our favorite philosophers to get us through. Mine is Anne Lamott.

    I am focusing on my version of Step 10 these dark days:

We continued to take personal inventory of our fears and joys, and to accept that we are not perfect, that change is difficult, and that we love ourselves for being brave enough to try.

    We were brave enough to try, but I still don't know if we're brave enough to stay. But I'm taking my friend Anette's advice and making no decisions about the future in the winter.