Confessions of a Recovering Expat

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2008

In the Beginning...

In April of 2007, I disembarked at JFK airport, from a plane out of Zurich, Switzerland, where I had lived for the previous 8 yrs. I was about to live in a new city, where I knew nearly no one. This is the story of my journey to re-discover myself, and re-assemble a life. Self 2.0: From crash to re-boot.

From Personals Ad to Personal Fairy Tale

July 6, 2000

Personals Ads. We all get the illicit thrill of reading them, with an uppity smirk, and the knowledge that we would never do such a thing as advertise our loneliness. How sad. Go ahead; let’s hear it. You think they’re only for the fat, ugly, or otherwise desperate. Don’t get me wrong, I had never had trouble getting a date since college. I was smart, funny, and had a tight little booty that routinely turned heads, but I was in a dating rut. My last musician ex-boyfriend had just announced his engagement – and at my best friend’s BBQ, no less! Dating broke-but-fun musicians was getting old fast. I was seriously tired of my ‘type.’
So what now. I was young, attractive, and in the brainy-boy Mecca that is Boston. I should be up to my earlobes in men, right? Wrong! What I soon discovered was that most of the guys I liked – you know nice, liberal, educated hummus-eaters, into Soul music and Sonic Youth – found me INTIMIDATING. Why? Well, for one thing, I always though of myself as a sort of gene-spliced love child of Grace Jones and Holly Golightly. And that, in America, leaves lots of people scratching their heads. I would always have to make the first move, and once snagged, guys would always admit that they’d never thought they were my ‘type’.
This time, I thought, I would make the ultimate first move. I would place a Personals Ad. The local alternative paper in town offered ‘em for free, and after some soul searching and a Chardonnay, I was ready. My ad read: WINTER WARMER WANTED Sepia-hued honey, 24, seeks cultured cutie, 23-30, articulate, witty and charming, for foreign films, flirting, and frugal fun. Fondness of Cappio commercials [remember them?] and black turtlenecks a plus. No Republicans please.
Then I waited. As the replies came in, I knew I was on to something. There were artists, athletes, Britts, and even a Brahman too (the Indian variety.) I made dates with VC’s, and post-docs, as well as a lawyer whom I met while waiting for an ad date. But then one respondent caught my attention. A nervous voice announced his name, and went on to disclose his love of art, sun-dried tomatoes, red wine, French toast and the Cocteau Twins. He claimed to be intellectual, an industrial designer, who’d lived in Detroit and San Francisco. He ‘fessed right up front that he was balding (points! – ‘cause it shows he’s honest and secure.) But the real killer was the thick, but sweet German accent, and I thought ‘now there’s a man who can wear a black turtleneck and mean it!’
We met in a local hip-spot watering hole, made our bashful hellos and had all the awkward mutual discoveries of new relationships. We dated, moved in together, had some fights, then separated, he moving back to Europe, and I to another state. But, for some inexplicable reason, we couldn’t quit each other completely. He kept showing up for the odd holiday or birthday, while I found myself dating a guy with the very same retro 50’s china pattern. We knew it must be fate. Well, 5 years after that ad, we got married. After moving to Europe together a year ago, we now live in a small, but hiply furnished apartment in Zurich, Switzerland, and have French toast every weekend.
You know, I even ended up working in that alternative paper’s personals ad department for a while, cranking them out for other people, but that’s another story…

Langstrasse 8

Ten minutes to midnight, and the streets around Zurich’s red light district are thrumming. Dirty human remains stagger in dark corners, waiting for deals or johns. Scruffy-looking college kids roam in smallish packs, looking to score or just playing tourist. Around the corner, the new cinema, Riff Raff, stands set-off against the grit around it by its sleek design and chic café looks. Through the picture window the city’s urban hip sit and sip macchiato and beer, while drinking in each other...

If My Life is a Joke, It’s Not That Funny.

May 30, 2000

I got an invitation in the mail today for afternoon tea with Senator and Mrs. Rockefeller. Also enclosed was the offer of an audience with Mrs. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, or Maddy, as we like to call her, featured keynote speaker at a Symposium called Women Pacesetters of the New Century. It’s an alumnae thing. You know, the old school ties. Actually I only went for lower and middle schools, but it still counts. Remind me to thank the Hearsts, the Duponts (that was high school), and the other benefactors of my unfinished education. All dear, kind people, really.

But now, onto the other facets of my charmed existence. My family? They are, by turns, unemployed, alcoholic, on or off welfare, and often ten paces too far down the next poor decision.

I however, live in Zurich, as I have for the past 9 months or so. That was after moving from Vienna, you know the politics there were so… unpleasant. We, my new husband and I, were there for 8 months. I have no children, no pets, nothing to do all day really, but keep house, which I do only begrudgingly and with great harrumphing. I’m also nearing 30, and for the first time, am conscious of my physical decline. Broadening hips, new crinkles, the usual.

I sometimes feel as if caught in a vise-grip of extremities. The constant worries and strains of too many and too few options are always with me. I find it all so exhausting.

I often think of myself as the genetically-manipulated spawn of Holly Golightly and maybe Grace Jones, I guess early immersion in Truman Capote and post-punk disco will do that to a person.

First Attempt at Blogging

The Price of New Sensation

My mother still thinks I am crazy. Why else, she asks, would her otherwise reasonable daughter give up good friends, great weather, a Fortune 500 job, and a generally comfortable existence to move “half way ‘round the world” (as she puts it), to be in some strange country (read: anywhere but the East Coast), with ‘that man’ (my then boyfriend, now husband). The answer, I guess, is that I’ve always been a sucker for adventure. The promise of new sensation, if legal and non-life threatening, is pretty hard to ignore.

More than two years ago I made a choice that would radically and irrevocably change my life. I accepted a proposal from a man I adored, and decided to move from Atlanta, Georgia to be with him in Europe. He and I have been together in Europe now for over five years, having first spent eight months in Vienna, Austria, and now settled into Zurich. Has it been adventurous? You bet, but sometimes I wonder if I would still have moved from the States had I known exactly what it would mean.

Washingtonian by birth, I have lived all along the eastern seaboard. Leaving home at thirteen for boarding school in a small semi-rural town in Delaware was something of a jolt for a girl used to free reign in the big city. It was stranger still to then leave those closely monitored environs to run amok in Boston, where I went to college. Like so many others, I stayed in the area for many years afterwards. It was in Boston that I met my husband, a prototypical German industrial designer who is much more like the Mike Myers Sprocket character from the old Saturday Night Live sketch than he might care to admit.

We moved in together, but then soon moved apart. He went to Milan, to fulfill his obligation to return to Europe after receipt of a Fulbright Scholarship. I moved to Atlanta, where I figured the warmer weather would outweigh the cultural isolation. I was wrong. After two years of expensive phone bills, even more costly plane tickets, and endless e-mail, he finally produced a ring, and we agreed to be together, in Europe. As I had less interest in learning Italian than I did in learning German (which still wasn’t much!) we decided on Vienna, Austria. He worked for Philips Electronics, while I systematically rented the entire five-year catalog of X-Files tapes at the local English video store.

Vienna lasted less than nine months, when a promising job opportunity presented itself in Zurich. Now here for five years, I’m staring down my thirty-fifth birthday and wondering what have I done. I miss so many things. I think back with fondness to days before German lessons, ceaseless currency conversions, and inane Italian television. I think back to days when no one turned to stare in horror as I ate pizza, fries and chicken with my fingers, or wore sweats and sneakers just because, or any other Euro faux pas I never cared about until now. I miss my support network, the friends and family members who ‘knew the ropes’, who were my council and confidants, those I would turn to when life needed solving. Now reaching out and touching them involves an international toll call, letter, or even less personal e-mail. Also gone are the goofy girl fests of trashy magazines, take-out, and still trashier talk. Where else can a girl go for honest appraisal on a new pair of shoes? And maybe what’s toughest of all is that suddenly I went from being hip, tuned-in, and urbane, to feeling awkward, semi-urban and on-the-fringes. I didn’t realize culture shock could carry such high voltage.

Yet in fairness, my life has been enriched in so many new ways. For one, I suppose I now qualify as junior jet set, having seen such far-flung European cities as Prague, Stockholm and Rome. I honeymooned in Paris, and religiously vacation in Tuscany. I have tried strange new foods and made new friends, and know the pride taken when obstacles and fears are faced and overcome. I still remember the first time I managed three errands and the food shopping all by myself in Zurich and survived - it was a banner day! I have even found I can re-create my comfort zone when needed: rent an offbeat video, flip through an Essence magazine, and check out the New York Times on-line. I have figured out where to find maple syrup, peanut butter, and (best of all) southern-style hot pepper sauce. I have a promising career with a celebrated investment bank, where I am surrounded by the best and the brightest. One unexpected bonus is my increasingly sleeker, more European, fashion sense. I have not worn a baseball cap in years, and can name every designer outlet store in Italy by address. So I guess it really is not so bad after all. I have had a host of new experiences to use as fodder for every lull in cocktail party conversations for many years to come. Would I make the same choice again? Absolutely!