At the moment, the city of Munich is celebrating (and big) its anniversary with a lot of events since May to September and with the motto “Building Bridges” . The city will be 850 years old in two days (14th of June, date of its foundation).
But that’s not the only anniversary I am celebrating. Indeed today, it's been exactly two years that I moved to Munich. Tadddaaaaaa!. Of course the level of importance is nothing comparable but the resonance for me is pretty big… So as I was completely unable to keep a diary on a regular basis, I thought, at least, time for a general assessment, right?
The first thing coming to my mind when I think of these two years is how much has changed in between. Biggest change I would say is the status change, already mentioned in my previous post: I switched from Intern to an adult full-time job and if the working hours themselves did not really increase, the lifestyle did change a lot.
Well yeah, I have money like a grown up now, so obviously that’s a big change in life style (it means I can shop in more expensive stores or simply shop more!) but the real change is that I settled and organized my life. As silly as it sounds to mention, it is one thing to be in a foreign country for a six-month internship and therefore in a permanent carpe diem mode, it is another one to actually live there for an undetermined time and actually build a life. Undetermined becomes really undetermined like in no-i-do-not-know-when-and-if-i-move-back-to-France. You kind of automatically settle, because after a while, it does lose its fun to go out every week-end and spend all your Sundays in bed recovering; small or big trips become planned in advance and more organized, because you don’t feel like it is now or never. You got time.
People you hang out with also change. A lot. When you stay longer in a place, you slowly build a friends- circle carefully picked out. When one is new, and alone, one tends to stick with the ones one already have, even if they don’t really correspond, because, one does not really have a large choice so the standards for friendship get lower. The (very human) necessity makes that you keep up friendships with some people who you would probably rarely see or not at all if you were at home… that’s only when, after a while, the new place becomes a “home” that these people are progressively “evicted” and replaced by friends that fit one better. That’s when one starts building “real” friendships, which are not based also on necessity but purely on choice. So that’s what happened to me too. It is always long to get there but that is definitely worth some efforts. It was for me.
Now let me tell you something I am incredibly proud of: How I changed the language I use on a daily basis. I used to do everything in English because I just could not speak a word of German, then progressively English only with my friends and German at work, now I am on a full-time German basis with some very rare exceptions. I did a lot of progress (having a German boyfriend is for sure a nice carrot) but I put a lot of efforts into it. So every single time someone compliments my German abilities, I am so satisfied with myself I could almost purr.
What also changed progressively is how I feel about the Germans and Germany. After the Swedish culture-shock, I had a pretty long honeymoon phase in Germany, where everything was awesome. With time and a bit of reflection, I skipped the culture shock part and went straight to Integration. I realize what I like more about Germany, what I like more about France and I feel good in both countries. It is a pretty nice situation actually. Not to feel lost or out of place; not to be shy or confused. And now that I feel completely at ease and confident I am also able to have a way more objective perception of Germany and its culture than before. I don’t see everything pink (or black for that matter). Therefore it takes more to impress me and it takes more to annoy me.
Finally, I have developed an over sensibility about all that is about French stuffs and France when in Germany ( I bite when I feel like my country’s honor is endangered), over sensibility about Germany when i am in France, and a pretty serious addiction to Travel books like Bill Bryson, Stephen Clarke and Co which now fill my bookshelves.
What did not change is that I still love
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