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!