YOU'RE the foreigner now!

As you probably know if you're reading this blog, I recently moved to a smallish city in Northern Croatia called Varaždin. Here it is, in all its Central-European glory:

a
View Larger Map

Settling in to a new country is a challenge. Skills you take for granted--being able to read labels in the grocery store, knowing the procedure for getting your internet turned on, understanding the symbols on the buttons on the washing machine--are totally defamiliarized, which makes every day an adventure in.....well, dailiness! There are times when it's an exhilarating victory to successfully buy a loaf of bread, and times when I feel like a helpless child who can't even figure out how to ask which bus stops at the American Embassy. Don't get me wrong, my affianced is wonderful: he's worth any hardship associated with moving, and he helps me with things I can't handle on my own. But he does have a job, and even if he did have time to assist me with every little thing.....how lame would that be? I've got to learn to stand on my own two feet, and that means practicing my Croatian, using strange appliances, and going out on the town alone.

Something especially defamiliarizing happened the other day. In fact, something downright shocking. I was walking to meet Kristian for lunch, and I stopped at the street corner to wait for the light to change. Two women and a man were standing nearby, chatting quietly. It suddenly occurred to me that, for the first time in nearly two weeks, I understood every word a bystander was saying. I said, joyfully, "Yall are american!"

Right after I greeted my compatriots is when the really astonishing thing happened: the three americans weren't surprised to be greeted by a Texan on a street in the non-touristy part of what used to be Yugoslavia. They just kinda said, "Yeah." No follow-up question. No evidence in their expressions that they hadn't been greeted by five random americans that day.

As it turns out, they were there on a mission trip, but although I asked plenty of questions while we were crossing the street, when we reached the other side, they didn't seem interested in prolonging our acquaintance, so we went our separate ways. Maybe they were in a hurry, or jet-lagged. Obviously they aren't suffering from the same shortage of English-speaking friends as I am.

But the difference that stands out the most to me, after a few days of thinking about it, is that they didn't feel foreign; otherwise, wouldn't they have been surprised to meet a Texan where no Texan usually is? Had there been a Texan working at the bakery that morning? At the currency exchange office? Texans among the children they came here to teach? Had they not yet realized that most of the people around them aren't American?

I'm not sure that an American on a brief trip to another country ever feels foreign. I don't think I did. In my memories of past short-term trips--"mission" or otherwise--to Mexico, Ireland, Croatia before I had ever lived here, I seem to remember walking around within a pleasant sphere of Americanness at all times. I don't know how long I lived in Croatia the first time before the sense of my own foreignness really burst my bubble, but it was a few months.

But you know what, irritating, terrifying, or lonely as it sometimes is, I've come to the conclusion that feeling foreign is good for you. It changes you, as I think, for the better. I'm not sure yet how to elaborate on exactly what that feeling of foreignness is, but I'll leave that up to future posts.