Welcome to the 5th installment of the personal story series. If you are new to the series, be sure to check out the previous editions linked below!
This week I wanted to discuss the rules of traveling abroad, which are best to ignore, which are best to follow, and the consequences that might coincide with both. From Costa Rica to Germany, the mistakes I made may just save you some trouble when you are traveling abroad.
Leaving home never really gets easier. In fact, the more time you spend in a new place the more difficult leaving home gets simply because you start to lose the idea of what home is. I remember leaving Costa Rica and thinking it felt like I was leaving my new home.
Then, a year later, I was leaving the US once again to fly to Germany. No prior German experience, one friend, a plan to move to Belgium, no French experience, no Dutch experience, but I was open to learning and I had my best friend by my side. It didn’t take long before I felt that leaving Germany was going to hurt, and it did. In a short 2 months I had made lifelong connections with people who irreversibly changed my life for the better.
It didn’t start out that way, necessarily. When I first landed, there was no focus on learning a language or studying to improve my cultural competencies. Rather, I integrated in the way that one must in Germany, by partying. Fortunately, in doing so, I was able to meet people, make friends, and begin learning the language in the only way I knew how, by speaking to locals until they thought I was a local.
Germans can seem cold. They are very matter of fact. Very direct. You never have to guess what one is thinking. However, with a pint of beer or two they become the biggest softies who want to talk about anything and everything. Whether that’s because of my personality or because of their repression of their emotions remains to be seen. Either way, what I learned then was that Costa Rica wasn’t a fluke. It is, in fact, easier to speak a language with a little bit of liquid courage. This wasn’t just true for me, it was true for everyone I interacted with while abroad. People who wouldn’t even look at you during the school day, wouldn’t speak a word of English in their English classes, suddenly found the ability and the desire to speak with you as soon as they had a drink in them.
Before going on, it is important that you understand the “rules and regulations” we were given by the organization I moved abroad with, they are called “The Four Ds”
“Don’t drink, Don’t drive, Don’t date, Don’t drugs” essentially. This is easier when sending people to the US due to the drinking age, but as you can imagine very few students followed these rules. Instead we created our own “Four Ds” which were/are “Do it, do it again, don’t get caught, if you get caught deny it” which essentially meant the only rule was, no documentation of any sort. Seems easy enough, right?
Well, the first week I was in Germany, the town I was living in held a festival. Anything in Germany is a reason to have a festival. Need proof? The name of this festival is, “Andy ist auf einem Tennis Turnier” which translates to “Andy is at a tennis tournament” and that is why there was a festival this week. It’s why there is still a festival during that weekend every year, now almost 10 years running! And that is what we did my first week in Germany, we went to the festival and the only thing I had to do was not end up in any pictures.
So the next day when I saw myself double fisting, on stage with the band, on the front page of the local newspaper I was, well, slightly shocked. My host mom held it up and asked what I had to say, my host dad laughed and said, “deny, deny, deny” and my best friend laughed pointing at the picture and, accurately, observed that very few people would be wearing American flag sunglasses, a Germany world cup shirt (twas August 2014), and American flag chubbies.
Fortunately, if the family didn’t turn you in, you really didn’t have anything to worry about, so long as you avoided the internet; and luckily for me, the Andy’s crew didn’t get the promotional material out for the next year until after I left, I ended up being in that video quite a bit.
The other thing I learned, or had reaffirmed for me, is that foreign exchange students have an unfair advantage on the dating market. I had recognized this when my German friend was living with us stateside, but it is always different to experience it first hand from the other side. Even people who wouldn’t speak to me, wanted to “spend some time together” and it was always what you’d expect it to be.
While normally this wouldn’t be an issue, as there is a certain unspoken understanding people come to with foreign exchange students, in one case it turned my life upside down entirely. Yes, the hard rules from the organization are important to pay attention to, bend, and sometimes even break, but the rules from other exchange students are far more stringent.
The reason for this is simple, the people in the organization are disconnected from the experience by time. Those who are on the ground and experiencing it know what you actually can and cannot do and what you truly should and should not do. The number one rule? Do not fall in love. That was my mistake…