So, to start 2009 with a bit of blog bang, I thought a sweet double post would do the trick. The first part is actually blog, the other a bit of odds and ends and posting of answers to comments and things.
This holiday season, our noble adventurer (i.e. Me) was home in the good ol' US of A for some well-earned R&R. Now before you get all up in arms over me not seeing you, I need also mention I was only home for a scant 10 days, 2 of which were consumed by travel. Which, by the way, is a novel concept when one lives in Europe. My time was spent in the company of my wonderful family, with many anecdotes, adventures, and good times too numerous and of a familial nature to post here. It bears mention that I had enough pizza, burgers, and glorious tacos, burritos (I'm thinking of you Cancun) and general American cuisine to catch me up on my supposed deficiencies this fall.
However, I was slightly hesitant to post a blog, especially a travel blog, on a trip involving a return to my home country. Wouldn't it be just like going home? I spent a lot of time contemplating such a question. My problem is this: Just where am I from? Does it involve where my family lives? Where they're from or I'm from? Part of my identity is so rooted in a sort of geographic free-form that for me to not write about going on a trip to America would be counter to who I am and where I'm at as a person right now. In that same sense, after really integrating into a German/European mindset and worldview (to some extent anyway on that last point) it was utterly fascinating to experience America as someone who had never been here. I mean that in the sense that obviously I knew where I was and recognized things I knew and loved, but in a very real sense, a lot of things felt very foreign. The sights, the smells, the weather, simply everything, but particularly the land itself. Distances in California, and having places sufficiently far away to drive to, but still in the same state was simply mind-boggling! I can't understand how people come to terms with just how big America, or even California really is. Driving to my mom's in lovely but remote Humboldt, is roughly the distance from Berlin to 3 different European countries.
Anyway, to close, California and my family was great, but I must say it was quite another very odd sensation coming back to Berlin. It felt like when I left, that I had had a good time, but that it was time to get back home and in the swing of things. Which of course, set my mind in motion once again. Is home really where the heart is, or is it where we make our place, our niche in the world?
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It's amazing how much of our identities are tied up in where we live. I vacillate between attributing it to nature or nurture: maybe we are wired to be most comfortable where we grew up, and feel possessive over our developmental stomping ground. Of course, your European experience suggests this may not be the case, so maybe "home" is a concept learned to facilitate community building in both foreign and familiar places?
ReplyDeleteYour point about the geographic size of the U.S. vs. Europe brings up a good point: My campaign for world domination might be more easily accomplished if I start in Europe. Racking up a few countries in succession would be quite a momentum builder. Napoleon was on to something.