…until I board my flight for New York and by 8am CET tomorrow, I should be back in Germany. I’m looking forward to getting home to Rainer and Charlie, and actually, I’m looking forward just to be going back to Germany as well. I think if we ever moved back to the USA, I’d have a definite readjustment period. People here (in the Washington DC metro area at least) have gotten much less polite since I left. For example: Many able bodied, young people left a VERY pregnant woman to stand on the entire metro trip from Metro Center to Vienna; nobody is holding doors open for each other anymore and people were quite (pleasantly) shocked when I did it for them; and people are constantly on their cell phones, it’s almost as bad as Italy over here now. The one breakfast I had with my brother while here was spent watching him talk on his cell phone. I think it’s all about the “greener grass”, allow me to elaborate: cell phones have allowed us to know what’s going on wherever anyone else with a cell phone is at any given time, so now we are left wondering if it’s more fun wherever the other person is and we worry that we’re missing out on that fun by being wherever we are. So in essence, cell phones are keeping us from living in the moment.
At my going away party four years ago, half the party ended up at the complex’s pool, while the other half was dancing in my apartment. I would be dancing in my apartment and see the people by the pool laughing and think, wow, it looks like much more fun over there, so I’d run over to the pool, then I would be sitting there not paying attention to the conversation because I’d be looking over at my apartment and seeing all the people dancing and thinking that that looks like more fun. Finally, I realized I wasn’t enjoying where I was because I wanted to know what was going on in the other place, so I made a decision that from then on, I was going to live in the moment and enjoy wherever I happened to be as much as I could.
Okay, enough babble, I need to check my carry-ons again to make sure there aren’t any liquids in there. Later!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Yeah, it’s pretty “dog eat dog” around these parts. I make sure if someone does actually hold the door for me, I thank them. Sometimes I actually worry about being nice to people because they might take it as a sign of weakness. I have actually heard of that before. It’s horrible!
i hope you remembered removing the toothpaste from your carry-on.
Hope you got home safely! I am flying to New York next month, and for the first time I am somewhat apprehensive.
No, scared silly is probably a closer description.
I made it safely and the toothpaste was carefully stowed in the bags I checked. I would be worried about flying to New York too. When I got on my flight to Berlin, they didn’t even look at my passport, just grabbed my boarding pass and said, “Have a nice flight!”