Riding the Waves

My first night in Wien was simply spectacular. I needed to pick up my room key from a friend who's here with Central College Abroad for a year directly upon my arrival, and so I sat outside the Westbahnhof U-Bahn-Station for twenty minutes. The weather was gorgeous, there were pleasant smells wafting from cafe across the sidewalk from me, and I kept hearing snippets of conversations in the beautiful, lilting Austrian Dialekt I've come to know and love. I was also glad to (finally!) unpack my suitcase after 10 days of traveling. And that night, I met up with Marshall, another Central College student I knew from last semester, for döner kebab and a beer at a park near our Wohnheim. As we walked through the gorgeous, familiarn side streets of the 6. Bezirk (district), I wanted to scream "Wien! Ich bin wieder da!" at the top of my lungs. I couldn't believe I was finally back.

Thoughts on the Plane

Ich hab im Flughafen ein Schild für einen Flug nach Dallas-Fort Worth gesehen, und plötzlich ist es mir eingefallen, dass ich eine große Menge Zeit im Ausland vor mir habe, bevor ich heimfliege. Und ich habe plötzlich Angst. Nicht die gute aufregende Angst, die man hat, bevor ein neues Abenteuer anfängt, sondern richtige ernsthafte Angst. War es wirklich eine gute Idee, den Sommer hier in Österreich zu verbringen, bloß weil ich im Jänner nicht bereit war, ein neues Semester an Harvard anzufangen? Weil ich mein wunderschönes spannendes Auslandssemester nicht beenden wollte? Ich war endlich wieder in Amerika eingelebt. Ich habe da Freunde, die mich wirklich lieb haben, und ich habe ein ganzes Leben da gebaut. Was hab ich in Österreich? Einige gute Erinnerungen, einige leere Bierdosen, einige Bekannte aus meinem Studentenheim. In Wirklichkeit ganz und gar nichts. Was suche ich in der Ferne? Wieso bin ich überhaupt auf der Suche? Ich habe gar keine Ahnung, was diesen Sommer passieren wird, und das stört mich.

Photo Journal of France

After London, I spent a wonderful week in France with two of my good friends from Harvard, Eunice and Marion. We stayed at Marion's family home in Villeneuve-les-Bordes, in the province of Ile-de-France, a small village about an hour away from Paris.

The central courtyard of Marion's house. Whereas American houses are compact and then have yards to the outside, European houses are square-shaped and have inner courtyards, which allow for more privacy.

The Charmed Life

This year, the stars aligned perfectly for a European vacation with my friends from Harvard. Marion had a polo match against Oxford (the men’s team – yes, she is that legit!) over the weekend, and then planned to spend a week at her home in France before heading back to Boston for a physics internship, while Mariam was expecting to spend a week in London with her best friend from Georgia (the country) who just completed a journalism program there. Because I would be in Austria for the summer anyway, it just made sense for me to join them. And when Eunice heard that a trip to London and Paris was being planned, she couldn’t pass up the opportunity. So, before fulfilling January’s promise to myself and returning to the country of my dreams, I spent the weekend in London with my friends.

Inspiration, Round 2

I'm already counting down the days (24 at the moment) until my triumphant return to Europe. Often, as my boots clack against the Harvard Square cobblestones on my way to class, lines from this song -- a half-remembered anthem of my parents' youth -- start running through my head. A fitting epigraph to a period of expectancy:

Well she was an American girl, raised on promises.
She couldn't help thinking that there was a little more to life somewhere else. 

In just a few weeks, I'll again be in pursuit of whatever it is I think I'm missing.

Grüß di ... But how?

Greetings are awkward. First of all, the customs are different in Austria and America: Americans hug, while Austrians do the double-cheek kiss. But that's just the start of the problems. As an American, my normal response would be to hug. But I know that Austrians find it weird to get body-shoved into someone, so I don't wanna do that. The Austrian I'm greeting would normally go for the bussi-bussi, but knows I don't like to put my lips on people unless I'm trying to crawl in bed with them. So neither of us makes the first move, trying not to make the other one uncomfortable. And we just end up feeling unsatisfied, as if we actually don't give a shit about each other, even though that's not true at all.

It's Not Goodbye, It's Auf Wiedersehen.

Because we have to see each other again. We just have to.

My semester abroad is over. During my last weeks in Austria, I was asked many times whether I was happy to leaving or not. "I have mixed feelings" was always my answer. And now that I'm back at Harvard, my mixed feelings are even stronger. I'm happy to be in the company of my friends, of people who care about me, social justice, and overly-intellectualized radicalism; excited about my classes (even if I'm not excited about the amount of reading); and loving the perks of campus life, like a gorgeous, spacious single bedroom and a chocolate fountain for Sunday brunch. But at the same time, I miss the Austrian customs to which I've grown accustomed. I greet everyone I pass by in Kirkland House. I make eye contact with strangers on the street -- especially important as we both try to navigate the very tiny paths between the four-foot piles of snow covering the streets of Boston this week. I really just like eating grilled vegetables. When entering a room, I immediately take off my shoes and put on Hausschuhe. I go to bed at midnight and wake up at eight.

On Saturday night, I was explaining how I felt like I prioritized relationships during my semester in Austria, and that I was able to lead a more balanced and fulfilling life there because I wasn't so damn busy all the time. "Well," she asked me, "how are you going to bring Austria back to Harvard?" And that's the question. I do feel that I've grown a lot as a person during my semester abroad, and I want to transfer those lessons back to my life here. I don't want to be the college freshman who slept until 11am, then threw on sweatpants before running to class, and stayed up half the night finishing her papers. I want to lead a more balanced life here at Harvard, too. Let's see if it's possible.