The Bends Bending into Stockholm Syndrome

The feeling of overwhelming tiredness. It is a feeling of pressure. Pressure on my chest, eyelids. Like I am swimming deep under water. My body is about to get the bends. It bends in its seat. When I close my eyes, REM tries to pull my brain deep underneath the surface. I fight free, I open my encrusted eyelids. There are people around me. I am sitting in a train. Seats lined up against the walls. Across from me there is a bicycle--the back-light still glowing from the pedal generator. It must not have been there very long. A teenage boy wearing jeans, legs spread, slouched, with earphones, staring passively in my direction. A middle-aged woman holding a mirror, dabbing her eyes with smooth, waxy black eye-liner.

A subdued automated voice calls, "Nächster Halt. Großenhain Cottbuser Bahnhof. Ausstieg in Fahrtrichtung Rechts." I rise. I walk towards the door. I stand towards the direction indicated. The train screeches to a halt. A button on the door blinks green. I press it, the doors slide open with a hiss. The sky is greyish blue, the sun has not fully risen. It is 6:55 am. I woke up this morning at 4:53 in Dresden, and left the house at 5:40 to walk 10 minutes to the Neustadt train station. My train left at 6:07. It was still dark. Night. Pitch black.

On my way out of the train I notice hoards of teenagers filing into the mist. They are heading to the Gymnasium for Social Work, where most of them are working on completing a specialized Abitur in Social Work--Abitur is the exam that German students have to take if they want to go to college. I head beyond this Gymnasium to my own, Werner-von-Siemens. As I determinedly, yet absent-mindedly walk over the cobble-stoned side-walk, the church bells are ringing like they ring for Cinderella on her wedding day. Busses motor past down the one-way street, and eject hoards of school children out onto the sidewalks. Some go to the elementary school, some to the high schools. They all push past each other, mingle, the younger ones waddling with their over-sized, square backpacks full of book--like mini-sherpas on a flat Mount Everest.

The schools stands majestic. Three stories tall. An ancient-looking building with doors big enough for the giant in Jack and the Beanstock. I heave one door open. Inside students scramble up and down stairs, caught in their own worlds of popularity, puberty, presentation. I recognize a few and smile, "hello!" From speakers in the hallway, modern rock and pop songs bounce off the walls. This morning "one, twenty-one guns" is playing as I head to the teachers' room on the second floor. It opens with a key--a 10 thousand Euro key that I keep around my neck on a chain, not daring to take it off unless I am at home in Dresden.Somehow Germany has become my everyday life.

Foreignness and otherness has transformed into comfort and logic. At the Fulbright Welcome meeting last weekend in Frankfurt, there was a talk on "Reverse Culture Shock"--I took part. The phenomenon of culture shock is different for everyone. For me, it is a very gradual process of accustoming myself to a new system of acting and interacting. In Germany, it is not necessarily a system that I like more or less, it is just different. It is certainly different, but in a thousand tiny ways that sometimes catch you off your guard. No, there is no canned pumpkin or isopropol alcohol in the supermarket. Yes, there is a prominent group called the FKK (Freier Körper Kultur -- free body culture) that lobby to be able to walk around naked in (relatively) public places. No, the customer is not always first--companies do not even pretend to think that. Yes, people will directly tell you if you are doing something stupid.

How will "reverse culture shock" work in my personal case? By the end of the year, will I get a form of Stockholm syndrome, not wanting to re-enter the USA, defending my kidnapper, wanting to always stay by its side? Ok, Germany is not a kidnapper. I got a fellowship, for goodness sake. At the moment, I am feeling the first spurs of "Heimweh" (home-sickness), but they are accompanied by the desire for the opposite. Maybe I do want to stay here? Maybe I should study my masters for free at a German University? I have a while to decide whether I want to teach one more year--until February. I just handed in an internship application to Fulbright yesterday--it is for a three month internship starting in August. More to come! Thanks for reading...