Get back to... wherever I belong now

Almost exactly twenty years ago, I published a short story in an anthology called Experiencing America: Through the Eyes of Visiting Fulbright Scholars. The editors, Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani and Omer Idrees, chose mine together with several other stories by Fulbright scholars from around the world, who were studying or teaching in the US at the time.

This is where the magic happens

Fast forward to today, I am sitting at one of the places where I belong now: at Shut Up & Write in Thessaloniki, surrounded by a wonderfully supportive community of fellow writers, and I am rereading what I had written.

What fascinates me is not so much the story as the distance between the person who wrote it and the person working on her writing today: back then, I was a Fulbright student in the United States doing my MA degree in Industrial & Organizational Psychology, I had no idea where life would take me, no idea what my career would look like. Zero idea which relationships would last, which friends would stick around, which countries I would call home, or which dreams would quietly disappear and be replaced by others.

Twenty years later, almost everything has changed.

The entire story itself will be republished on June 22, exactly twenty years after the book's publication. For now, I've decided to share only a short excerpt, a small glimpse of the person I used to be.

Get back to where you now belong

I was 29 when I moved to America and had always considered myself a European through and through. Of course I had been to the US before, and even made some very good friends there; when I finally arrived, they expected me with open arms - and in my friend Howard's case, on top of that, with a bag of bagels.

I had applied for a Fulbright scholarship because there were hardly any job prospects back home with a degree in History and English, and I was hoping that the skills I would acquire at my MA program of Industrial and Organizational Psychology would provide me with better opportunities once I returned to Europe. I would definitely return as I had no aspirations to spend the rest of my life in the United States, unlike some of my friends in Vienna.

[...]

Naturally I was elated when I was accepted by the Fulbright Commission, but there was also a grain of doubt: did I really want to spend such a long time away from my friends and family? I had always been of the impression that some people were fleeing something if they left their home. I was leading a very comfortable life in Vienna. Apart from the dire job prospects as a historian, I had no reason to try my luck elsewhere. In the end I put all my worries aside and just started to look forward to what was to come.

I hardly suffered from any sort of culture shock when I settled in at my new life in New Haven, Connecticut. I adapted to my new surroundings and circumstances quite easily. At heart I still felt that Europe, in particular Vienna was my home, and that was the place I would gladly return to after my program was over. So it was no surprise that during my first one and a half years I enjoyed being the foreigner, holding up my homeland's traditions by voting for a new president by absentee ballot, commemorating all the important Austrian holidays by calling my family, and adding my own two (Euro) cents in discussions at my university by interjecting, "In Europe, we always...?". I was content being somewhat of an outsider, because I knew that there was a place that I truly belonged to.

Finishing up my studies had been more cumbersome than I had imagined. Also, I had hit a rough spot with my roommate, which had forced me to move out of our apartment in February. I was extremely fortunate that my boyfriend's parents, who lived in a neighboring town, were kind enough to take me in on a short notice. Eric, my boyfriend, was attending graduate school in Knoxville at that time, and we had made plans to move in together once my program was over. My last classes were getting stressful and I was longing to graduate.

On top of my course load I was working three jobs at the time: one much hated research assistantship at school, a great teaching assistantship, also at school, and a job at a small HR consulting firm. I loved this last position, I adored and respected my boss, but I thought that I had worked really hard over the past months. It was time to take a break.

In early March I got an unexpected phone call from my best friend Annette. While I was away studying in the US she had moved to Barcelona and was living there with her boyfriend Alberto. I had not seen her in 1 ½ years, and because of unfortunate circumstances she hadn't been able to attend my Farewell Party in Vienna in early September of 2003. I missed her, and was of the opinion that we didn't stay in touch as much as I might have liked. When she called I was immediately reminded of how much I wanted to see her again, and when she told me that she definitely had enough room to put me up, and would love to see me, too, I made up my mind at the spur of the moment and agreed to visit.

Eric didn't seem too surprised when I filled him in on my plans.

"She's your best friend! I know you haven't seen her in so long, and you definitely deserve a little vacation after all the stress of the last two months. Once you've moved to Tennessee with your cat and found a job you'll hardly have time to travel anyway. It'll do you good to get out a little bit."

I was weighing my options and the thought of strolling around Barcelona, in the spring sunshine and in the company of someone who means a lot to me, sounded more and more tempting. I talked to my boss at the consulting firm (the assistantship at school would be over by then) and I asked Eric's parents if they would be able to take care of my cat, and in due time booked a flight to Spain and a seat on the shuttle to Newark Airport. I could hardly idle away the hours until the last day of my program, as if I was a teenager again in high school, anxiously awaiting summer break. I had only been to Vienna once during my studies, and the mere thought of being among "my people" again hardly let me sit still during the 8 hour flight to Paris.

[...]

The first omen that things were not exactly going as I would have liked materialized when - even though my plane out of Newark had not been delayed - me and a few others were not allowed to board the connecting flight in Paris/Charles de Gaulle. The airport crew had closed the doors well before the actual departure time, and we had to spend more than 20 excruciating minutes watching the plane sit at the gate - right in front of our noses - with its doors closed, while several of the less tired passengers of my flight tried to argue with the airport personnel not to let us miss our connecting flight. Surely we had not been late. They must have known at the gate that we were coming, and after all, the plane was still there! Couldn't they make an exception and open the doors again?

Maybe they could have, but they didn't. The plane left without me. [..]

More to come. There is always more to come, isn't there?