When I arrived at Dulles Airport in June, after six months of near constant isolation in Vienna, I walked off the jet bridge into a room full of families sprawled out on seats, in tank tops and tennis shoes, having loud conversations. My first thought was, why are there bags on these seats? Who allowed their kids to take up two chairs? Do they not notice others standing, who could sit if people organized themselves a bit more?
This was the beginning of culture shock, or reverse culture shock. The confidence/lack of awareness with which people moved through the space, loudly talking on phones or waiting in lines, shook me. Don’t they know there are other people in this space? Aren’t they embarrassed to be taking up so much of it, physically and aurally?
I spent a lot of time on freeways this summer. My trip to SoCal took me from San Diego, up to Costa Mesa, and out to Palm Springs. Danny and I drove from Denver to Las Vegas for the American Wagner Project. During that program, I drove to Palm Springs for a funeral. I flew to meet my dad in North Carolina and we drove up to Maine and back to Denver via Chicago and Omaha.
All in, I drove from San Diego to Maine. End to end. Subways and Love’s Truck Stops and lots of municipal rest stops. Peeing Across America: The Steph DePrez Story
I got to see a lot of wonderful people, which is, of course, the point. That was the best gift I could have received this summer. Even though I feel like an under socialized, cardboard grief banshee when I talk about my life, I was received like a normal person everywhere we pulled up, and that’s all anyone can ask for.
Danny is starting a new adventure with a new love. My dad and I are trying to figure out what to do with our lives. Ziggy turned out to be a great off-leash dog. Destroying Tennis Balls Across America: Memoirs of a My Time as a Golden Retriever
The point is, I saw a lot of America. ‘Murka. Land of the free. Home of the endless corn fields. Every time it rained, my dad would declare, “Happy corn!”
America is a wild beast. Stretching over three thousand miles from end to end, we cover a continent. We’re isolated, so we don’t have to deal with pesky neighbors. (Austria shares a border with eight countries.) This means we aren’t forced to cooperate in the same way as most countries must. It also means we get to bask in ourselves and be as weird as we want.
This is what is wild about the United States: you can visit vastly different climates, cities, and ways of life without leaving. We are a literal continent of options. You can be in the middle of nowhere or the center of everything, in the South, Midwest, or PNW without a passport. I passed through gas station after gas station of fellow bleary-eyed road warriors, fat, thin, brown, white, poor, rich, all of us picking our way out of the pandemic, all of us American.
The freedom of movement afforded us by our nationality is remarkable and under-announced. What a gift, to be able to sip coffee at a local shop in four different time zones. What a gift, to drive for seven hours through sparsely populated Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Nevada and feel one’s own smallness. What a gift, to have the option of sleeping among the trees of Maine or the hills of North Carolina or the beaches of California. What a gift.
If you ever lose your sense of wonder, drive through the West. It will return.
I have found myself with a nomadic life in my late twenties/early thirties, and that is also a gift.
This is the fourth year in a row I’ve come to Europe late in the summer. In 2018, I graduated from UCLA with my mom’s cancer under control. I finished the Professional Choral Institute at the Aspen Music Festival and came here with a suitcase. I did a Goethe Institut intensive in Vienna and spent three weeks taking lessons and looking for work as an English teacher. Then my parents called to tell me my mom had a major tumor in her back and they might be doing surgery but they weren’t sure. Twenty four hours later, I was on a plane.
In 2019, I did a three week opera in Berlin, and then took a bus directly to Vienna as a United States Teaching Assistant with Fulbright Austria. Brilliant plan. Visa and a job. Two world-class voice teachers lined up. Nothing to lose.
In 2020, I fought my way back into the country by appearing, on paper, to have never left. My mom was dead. My residency permit was extended with a few very don’t-ask-don’t-tell emails with Austrian Immigration, who were equally confused about how to coordinate my entry in Corona Zeit, and were content to let me in as long as I bought retroactive health insurance to cover the time of my absence. I appeased the bureaucracy and was issued a border pass tied to my flight, which I had to pick up, in person, at the Austrian Embassy in Los Angeles. Three covid tests later, I got in.
It’s 2021, and at this point convincing a foreign government to let me in is old-hat. I stood at the ticket counter for American Airlines in Boston and walked them through the new travel requirements for the UK and Germany. I had a layover at Heathrow, which meant I had to be cleared for travel to both the UK and the EU. My agent pulled out a binder full of printed pages in plastic sleeves and opened to the “G’s.” Turns out they’re just as lost as the rest of us, trying to keep up with shifting requirements.
Their sheet had been printed out in June. This meant the poor agent was taking photos of my phone, showing the .DE embassy site allowing travel with full vaccination. At one point he took a picture of my phone’s Google results for “Can a US tourist travel to Germany?” (Yes.) He called his superior, who told him to allow me on the plane if he “felt it was correct.” So he handed me a boarding pass to London and said, “Well, hopefully we don’t have to fly you back!”
Awesome.
I have to take a moment to honor the record set for longest time spent by a human in a vehicle lingering in the passenger drop off area of an American airport. My aunt, waiting to assure my safe passage, sat in her SUV, on a Sunday afternoon, at Boston Logan, with her hazards on, flagrantly still, and dodged the dirty looks and shoo-ing arms and mouthed threats of airport security, FOR AN HOUR. An hour. She lingered in passenger drop off for an hour. We are gods.
In London I stood for two hours in a line with every international arrival, which, I found out by doing some pointed eavesdropping, was necessary because of “the situation in Afghanistan.” This entry required me to download not one but TWO apps, and upload covid test and vaccination information. I had to take a screenshot of my phone… with my phone… so, you know, I’ve really climbed every mountain at this point.
When I arrived in Germany, after showing the five legally erroneous but official-looking documents I’d printed out at a lounge in London, I was granted entry. #blessedandbooked
I woke up in a new bed, in a new apartment, in a new neighborhood, and felt like I was finally at peace. I’m staying at a friend’s flat because he’s a singer who got #werk and so, once again, I have finagled my way into an unnaturally lovely housing situation.
I got a coffee. I bought bags for the trash cans. I loaded up on groceries. I have not lived in Berlin before, only visited, and yet the air feels familiar. The cobblestone streets, the tram, the trees, the brands of milk are all just like Austria, and I am shocked by how I somehow feel more comfortable here than I did in three months of “being home” in the United States.
Perhaps it is the pace, and the solitude that I’ve unintentionally come to expect. I was frequently overwhelmed by people when I was home, moving from place to place. Perhaps if I were to have an apartment to myself and days I get to determine in Denver, I would feel the same.
I am unhinged by how normal and easy it feels to wake up, go on a run in the park, order food in German, shop at the grocery store and navigate the tram schedule. None of this feels foreign anymore. On some level, this makes my lil’ American heart sad. I want it to feel strange so that I can return home to un-strangeness. And yet, despite the people, being back in the US this summer was full of strangeness. Why do we eat so much? Why is food prepared this way? Why do we let cars be the boss of space? None of this is wrong, per say. Just different.
Everyone who leaves a suburb for the city, or goes to college out of state, or falls in love with someone outside of their neighborhood has to deal with twin hearts, and how to reconcile the shifting sense of home. I moved from Highlands Ranch to South Bend. Then to Palm Desert. Then to Los Angeles. People could argue that moving from Studio City to West Hollywood is, itself, a massive relocation. Denver to Vienna, and Vienna to Berlin is no different. There are running paths and grocery stores. People drink coffee and eat bread. People wear jeans. The subtle shifts in what people consume or how people dress become less drastic. Children. Churches. Chinese food.
My life is woven together by the things that remain the same, and those are my family and friends. My dad and brother and aunts and uncles. My cousins, scattered across the country and the globe. My friends from high school and college and grad school and every job and gig I’ve had. The women and men I commiserate with, who make me laugh. The families that welcome me. The mentors who push me. The students who video call me in the middle of the night. (Must we always start with video? Is it that necessary?) This is the juicy part of life. I don’t care so much where I get my mail, because what I’m living for remains vibrant and close, no matter where I am.