Greetings to friends back in Garmisch, Germany, who I will miss as I start a new phase in life back in the USA! Jen, per your suggestion, I will attempt to document a few of my experiences for your amusement, shock, or abject horror. The following is the beginning of a log of this one person's culture shock. . .or an account of one ex-expat's attempt to reintegrate into US culture after spending most of the past eight years abroad in Germany.
As the economy back home in the US sank deeper into recession, as 2 million jobs vanished nationwide (500,000 in November alone), and as unemployment levels approached 7% at the end of 2008, I decided that one couldn't choose a better time to leave a comfortable and secure (if mind numbing) job in financial services, to seek new opportunities back home in America. And so. . ."Behold demon Mullet Master of Compliance!" said I to the steel-haired banking overlord, "Your bible has no power over me and your evil shall forever be contained in Air Force retirement purgatory!" And with that, the steel-haired demon let out a terrific and bone-chilling shriek that opened up the ground, drawing into it the demon and it's Gray Volvo Chariot of Mediocrity, back to the depths from which it had been spawned. The spell was then broken and I was free to go. Goodbye Garmisch!
I made it to Asheville, NC with no problems. I am now looking forward to four weeks at my parents' house, catching up with family and some old friends from school, and preparing for the Next Great American Epic Job/School Search 2008-2009? My German immigrant cat, Attila, actually seems to be enjoying staying in the bedroom where I now sleep. He seems aware that the only alternative to his confinement would be to engage in territorial Mortal Kombat with the 400 or so other cats that live in and around my parents' house. As it is, he has sufficient windows to watch the world out of, so he hasn't made any attempts to escape. His only hope to rebuild the prominent stature he once enjoyed in Germany will be to find other German cats with which to form alliances, and to eventually build a New World crime syndicate based on catnip and weapons trafficking, racketeering, and feline prostitution rings. I wish him the best.
The other day I got my first real dose of American greatness, witnessing the height in human evolution and all the things that make one proud to be an American. I visited (one of) the local Super Wal-Mart store(s) here with my mom. It is a sprawling 46-acre complex of concrete, steel and plastics, with all the one-stop shopping and eating opportunities that one could ask for (so long as your only asking for McDonalds or this weird, dribbly chain restaurant called "Cheddars"). When I first left Asheville eight years ago, the future Super Wal-Mart site was occupied by a large, abandoned textiles bleachery plant that had been considered unusable, uninhabitable and undevelopable except at a huge projected cleanup expense, due to it's alarming levels of soil toxicity and perhaps also the open tanks of toxic waste that seem to have been misplaced there for decades. Whoops! The site had remained abandoned and off-limits throughout my growing up as a sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland, a huge and creepy symbol of the unfettered and unregulated 20th century industry, hulking menacingly in sight from the I-240 Bypass. Then a few years back, Wal-Mart managed to clean up the site, I believe, by physically removing the contaminated soil. I'm not sure exactly where they put the toxic soil, probably on a new K-Mart parking lot somewhere. Anyway. . .
Among the many impressive specimens of the height in human cultural evolution that can be found at this Super Wal-Mart store, I saw a 35-year old woman who was so fat that she had to shop for her Ho Hos and Wonderbread with the aid of an electric scooter. She wore one of those Blue Tooth earpieces, as a lot of people here seem to be doing nowadays. I don't know if she was expecting an important call from the Secretary of Defense at any minute and therefore needed her hands free, or if her arms were simply too heavy to lift a cell phone. I suspect the latter.
We then visited Aldi, which came as a comforting sight to me, after having shopped there often in Germany. While there, we purchased some fine European beer. It was abrand of Pilsner called "Bavaria", proudly claiming on the label to be brewed in Holland. God Bless America!! It's good to be home. More later. . .
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