After a week of traveling on my own around Germany, I covered a lot of ground, saw lots of sights, and I was ready for a some peace and quiet. My unanticipated but by and large favorite part of staying in hostels is the kitchen area. Not only does this make it easy to save money by cooking for yourself instead of eating out every meal, it also brings people from all over the planet together.
In Prague, I met a German engineer searching for a job that listened to ska with me for two hours. In Munich, I met two Australians that I ended up seeing sights with and reminisced about how tough long road trips on motorcycles can be with no windscreen in cold temperatures. In Nuremberg, I shared dinner with an Australian student visiting her German friends, a German organic foods entrepreneur, a Silicon Valley real estate agent, and a Brazilian classical ballet performer auditioning for German dance companies.
Not only did meeting all of these people make traveling alone much more enjoyable (eating meals at a restaurant alone gets uncomfortable after a while), but the stories I have heard give me an unexpected glimpse into the subtle differences in culture, even between nations I thought were so similar as Australia, Germany and America.
On my final night in Nuremberg, I spent nearly three hours with these fellow travelers chatting about everything from how hard it is to be a vegan to the societal pressures each was confronted with as they tried to carve out their own unique path in life.
I would introduce these people that I certainly consider as friends by their names, except that is part of why the interaction was so unique. After talking for hours and preparing to head to bed, I realized that I didn’t even know any of their names. Upon saying this to the group, the German man said, “Names are not really important. What is important is the talking we have done. I hope you will remember that instead of my name.”
The Australian student had studied abroad in Sweden where she fell in love with the culture and the people. After graduating from university, she planned to move back despite the disapproval from her parents that had never left Australia. We talked about how some people, Americans especially, live sedentary lives, not straying too far from their hometown, state, or even country. Studying abroad, it occurred to me, was an important step in breaking out of that cycle. It also made me think that my trend of moving frequently without a deep attachment to a particular place is not as abnormal as I once thought.
This conversation led into the German man telling stories of spending months in New Zealand working as a farm hand, staying in cheap hostels, and having the best experiences of his life traveling. He had to give up this lifestyle after two years, however, as the expectations from his family, friends, and German culture about holding a steady, 9 to 5 office job weighed on his mind. Now a year after returning to Germany to work as a marketing lead for new vegan supermarkets, he talked about how much he regretted leaving his previous lifestyle. Instead of being beholden to a desk, long term leases, and plans to get raises and promotions, his life was constrained only by his imagination. As we talked, he showed us a bookmarked search for cheapest flights to New Zealand and said that he checked prices every day as he was deciding whether or not to renew his lease and fly back.
“In New Zealand, I would work on the farm doing not very glamorous work and get paid very little, but the people there supported me. They thought it was so cool that I was living my dream of traveling, even if I was covered in cow shit every day. In Germany, it’s not the same at all. If I had a job like that here, cleaning bathrooms or something, everyone would ask what is wrong with me. But what’s the point of working a nice job here? Make enough money so I can pay for an expensive car that I can sit in for hours during my commute from my apartment that is too far away?”
As we talked, I was ecstatic to find someone that was struggling with this internal conflict that I have discussed with friends at school before. My inner CMCer wanted to extoll the benefits of a stable, salaried job like –gasp– consulting or finance. I wanted to tell him the same lie I told myself that ‘you can make enough money to spend on travel on the weekends’ and ‘there will be time when you retire’. But he anticipated my weak arguments, correctly stating that a weekend is not nearly enough time to actually experience a new place, and that your ability to travel is at its high point in your 20’s and you’ll be too tired and old to really experience the world when you’re older.
His argument was only made more convincing when the other members of our table chimed in. The Brazilian dancer talked about how she wanted to pursue dance and join a company so that she could travel while she was young and able, and find a steadier job after dance when she was ready to settle down. The Silicon Valley real estate agent talked about how he quit his job and moved out of his apartment because of the stress and fled to Europe where he had been traveling for three months. He dreaded going back and constantly called it “the real world”.
I wish I could invite these people to CMC to host an alternative Career Services event titled: “Alternative Careers Panel” where students dress up in sandals and cargo shorts instead of their usual case competition suits. Obviously, I have not been completely swayed by their words, but just the fact that there are people actively pursuing another option besides what I thought was unavoidable is inspiring.
While I still think about this conversation in the context of career paths and life in general, it also helped frame my study abroad experience from the start. It shouldn’t be a surprise, but what I want to get from my study abroad experience is not the ability to speak Czech which is spoken nowhere else in the world, or to try Czech dumplings which are basically just stuffed potatoes. No, the real purpose of studying abroad is to be confronted with attitudes and ideas that are foreign and challenge your own assumptions and attitudes. I am not sure if I could have had this conversation without traveling abroad –I likely could have somewhere in America– but I will keep frequenting hostel kitchens hoping to continue to be challenged in the same way.