The Vancouver 2010 Olympics opened on Friday, and I have to admit, watching the opening ceremonies has been making me pretty homesick. I wish I could be there amongst all the excitement. I’d wanted to visit, but the tickets cost a lot and since I’m mid-school right now it’s not a very convenient time to go.
All this is also bringing up some other stuff though that I have thought about for a couple of months now, but haven’t really told anyone. I’m not even really sure how I feel myself about this, but I sometimes wonder if I really want to stay in Berlin long-term. I used to want to make this place my home, and in a way I really feel like it’s become that kind of place for me, but there are some other things that also make me feel otherwise. For one, no matter what I do, I always feel like I’m a foreigner, and that I’m seen as a foreigner. I hold a German passport, but I’m still a foreigner because I have an accent. This really irritates me. I come from Canada, where it’s a mix of people and culture and no matter where you come from, you can fit in. Differences are celebrated and welcomed. I have great friends here, including Germans, but it’s not the same somehow. Maybe if I were born somewhere else and lived in Canada, I’d feel the same…who knows.
Also, I’m not doing any of the things that I wanted to when I came here. All the reasons that I say I love it here, I never do. It’s easy to get around Europe, but I never travel…when I say this to friends from back home, they go on and on and on about how cheap it is to travel here, but NOTHING is cheap when you don’t have an income. My standard of living (and therefore cost) has also gone up a lot since I moved here. I own an apartment, which has all sorts of associated costs. That’s a really big one. I’ve always wanted to have my own place but I also always wanted to travel and I didn’t necessarily want to do it when I was older and tied down with a career. I moved here because I wanted to travel while I was young, but instead of going on one big backpacking trip (I’ve never been attracted to the backpacking thing), I could go on weekends and see Europe. I’ve seen a few things, but I have still only been to a handful of European countries. Friends travel all the time and I really feel like I’m missing out, especially when I hear “You HAVEN’T been to Italy/London/Spain/Etc????” No, I haven’t. I really want to though. I also hardly ever take advantage of what Berlin has to offer. There are so many amazing things to do here but I only manage to do any of them every few months. This is a BIG reason that I came here and why I want to stay here, but I haven’t gotten into it enough either. Maybe I have to push myself and just go. Or maybe I don’t even value the things that I thought I did as much as I thought. I actually have no idea.
Part of me wonders if I should move back to Canada. Looking back though, when I’ve been back I haven’t wanted to stay and I’ve always been happy to come back here. Maybe my trip in June will make me appreciate Berlin more. Maybe if I left more in general, I’d appreciate Berlin more. I think it’s hard to appreciate where you are if you never see anything else.
In a way, I don’t want to move. All my stuff is here, and that sounds like a silly reason to stay, but I’m comfortable and I’ve never really had that before. Moving things and having house sales and renting out my apartment just feels so daunting and overwhelming that I don’t really want to do it unless I had a really, really good job offer or found someone I couldn’t live without. But does that mean I shouldn’t consider career options outside of Berlin? Should I focus on continuing to build my life here or should I just keep my options open and see if it takes me somewhere else after all? Maybe I’m just having jitters because I’ve been here almost 5 years and that’s a good period of time to start reassessing life.
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