Before I went to Vienna, Austria as a missionary for 2 years I had already spent extended periods in Europe in various capacities. There's a reason I'm laying this out, but I'll explain that later (maybe not in this post, though). I want you to see, though, that I was very well adjusted during these times in Europe, with no homesickness and no evident culture shock.
Part of the requirements to graduate with a European Studies degree in my program was to spend a quarter in an academic program in Europe. I ended out extending that on both ends of the study programs (fall quarter and winter interim, as separate programs back-to-back). So I ended out being in Europe 4 months that first time.
On that trip to Europe, I started out in Nantes, France as a delegate in the first sister-city exchange between Seattle and Nantes. I got there all by myself, for the first time ever outside North America, including a hitch because the travel agent didn't account for the differences in timing for switching to standard time in the fall. So I flew in to London, took the boat/train to Paris, and that is where the timing mistake came in. I navigated that mix up and when I arrives at Nantes in the middle of the night there was someone to meet me. I had a very nice time on that tour and, although I was the youngest member of the delegation, there was often another French gal about my age who came on the excursions.
One aside here: the president of the Seattle organization was a physicist who often worked with my dad. As I understand it, those who worked directly with government contract programs at Boeing's aerospace division would be shuffled around as contracts ended, proposals were being written, and the like. So sometimes in this process Mr. Noyes worked under my father. He and his wife were both very nice, but he died a few years after that trip. One thing he said struck me, although at the time I didn't really understand it. He said that I should have studied Italian instead of Russian. He was referring to my heritage, how I got interested in Russian. Eventually I began to think that he knew that there would be trouble for me working with anything to do with Russia.
After that 10 days ended I took the train to Belgium, where I met the other students who were just arriving from the States. A lot of our time was spent studying, but we had 3-day weekends that we could use to take short trips with. I organized a trip to Compiegne, France with a few of us. We went to Napoleon's winter palace, saw movies in French, and otherwise had a very nice time. Another weekend an Italian gal in our group and I went to Amsterdam together and we went on a windmill tour and a few other things, too. It was sort of tight timewise, but me and another student went to Stockholm where we stayed with my friend from high school. I especially enjoyed the outdoor museum of old buildings, like a historic settlement.
From there the group took a tour of Europe all together that took us to Paris, Madrid, Rome, Venice, Austria, Munich and then to the second half of the quarter in a small town south of Frankfurt am Main. All along the way we had assignments to do to report on things we saw and did. While in Germany my father came to visit after a business trip in Sweden; he had Thanksgiving with us.
After that the quarter ended and most of the people went back to the States and a new bunch came to join the rest of us who were going on to Moscow. In Moscow, besides doing the things with the group, I bought tickets for a bunch of us to go to the Bolshoi Ballet, I and a Belgian member of our group went to a large public bath house where we didn't have a clue what to do, but a lady there, another bather, sort of took us under her wings and guided us through the ritual there. We had fun and did something sort of out of the way, not perhaps the usual tourist thing. I also along with that same gal visited the Siberian Seven, as I mentioned in an earlier post. In reading my journal about that, I'd forgotton, but I played chess with one of the Siberian Seven (and lost undoubtedly!). I also remember them saying they hadn't had ice cream in a long time, while they were cooped up there in the embassy apartment. I was sort of in a rush and hurriedly grabbed what reminded me of the little ice cream cups in the States, but it wasn't until I actually got to the embassy that I found out instead I'd gotten a spreadable cheese! Well, they liked that too, be we got a good laugh from my silly mistake.
Even when K. and I had problems leaving the USSR I didn't panic or anything; I took everything in stride. We were both emotionally exhausted and undernourished, so sort of vegged out the first few days after leaving the country. But after Pula, we went to Venice, then Avignon, France (where at one time there were 3 popes and the 3rd one was in Avignon and you can still see his palace, and also the bridge of musical fame "Sur la ponte d'Avignon, on l'y danse, on l'y danse...."). Then we headed north via Dover, where we were surreptitiously let in to the grounds of a royal palace on New Year's Day when they were otherwise closed, and the grounds keeper knew more about the soap opera "Dallas" than either K. or I did. Then on to London where we both caught our planes home.
This was my first time abroad and I had a lot of unusual situations, but I had fun, did things involving the locals and took a lot of initiative. I can't see how you could say I had culture shock at any time in those 4 months. You'll need to remember this for later.
A couple years later I was again in Europe, this time for 6 months. I started out on a short-term mission trip, where we were stationed out of Vienna. There were two group who worked in the refugee camps, and I was on one of those groups, so alternate weeks I would either be at the refugee camp or on another assignment. It was actually while there when I was assigned to bring something to another mission, that turned out later to be the organization that I would be working with for 2 years.
Because of the nature of our work, sort of clandestine concerning trips to the East, and because we were always moving around, at the refugee camp, at home base or on trips to the East, we didn't really have much contact with the locals. But I think I fit in as much as anyone else. I was sent to Poland to work at a summer camp one week. I was also part of a team to Czechoslovakia, which usually only the veteran members went to, but I got chosen because of my language abilities and the mission involving setting up meetings, so communication was important. I also went to Hungary. Going in to those "closed" countries (some more "closed" than others), we had to know how to carry ourselves, how to deal with border patrol, and the like. In Czechoslovakia he had a hard time finding the campground we were supposed to stay at the first night. Each country was a bit different, but usually you had to stay somewhere official in the first 24 or 48 hours in order to get a stamp in your passport or if not you could have trouble when leaving the country. So it was imperative that we find the campground and it was out in the middle of nowhere with no signs identifying streets. We actually asked a police officer who helped us. Then when we arrived I had to use my language ability (I wasn't and still am not equally fluent in all of these languages, but I have some knowledge of German, French and Russian). So I started in English, which he clearly didn't understand. Then I tried German, but that didn't get much reaction either. So then I tried French which was as useless as English. So then I very apologetically asked if it were at all possible if he would mind possibly speaking in Russian. I think he understood perfectly, but he just stiffened up and we had to revert to German. I think he had a dislike for the USSR, but he was undoubtedly forced to study it in school. At least we were given a camp spot and got the required stamps in our passports.
After the summer mission ended I went to Hamburg to visit a couple, of which the wife was the sister of someone in my church back home. The pastor was a Russian Baptist pastor who did missionary work there in Hamburg. One thing I remember especially is going with him down to the border where truckers would be all lined up to cross a border and seeing his work with them there. Also, I had my hair short at the time (very convenient for travelling) and wore jeans a lot, but short hair and women wearing pants was actually offensive to the traditional Russian Baptist ethic, so I started wearing a dress more.
From there I went to West Berlin where I was going to study German for 2 months at the Goethe Institut (the German spelling leaves off the "e" at the end). I was very busy in Berlin! In fact, it's really amazing that I even passed the Grund Stuff II final exam, except that I have enough knack for language and I was using German a lot. I volunteered two afternoons a week at a residence for mentally handicapped people. I helped out in the dining area for the workers. I was invited once to a special lecture they had from a visiting missionary, and got to know one gal at their 6-month Bible school who was from Tashkent originally. Also, they helped me get more detailed information about an event and a seminary in East Germany.
I also got involved with the young people at a "Frei Evangelische" church. They had a coffee house every Friday evening which I often went to, and I also went to a concert with them once. A nice couple from the church invited me to dinner, and the pastor even invited me to a meeting with him so he could get to know me and extend an offer of help should I need it during my stay in Berlin.
In addition to that I got to know some students at a Lutheran seminary in E. Berlin, so I went there fairly often, too. They took me to see a Jewish cemetery and also a history museum, where the exhibit was about Martin Luther as it was the 500th anniversary of his birth. I went to a "Herbstfest" dinner at their seminary, brought them a fancy cake (which I almost ruined by dropping) from a bakery in the west, and also tried to bring in a couple books, but my passport was getting a lot of stamps in it by that time, so the guard caught them and confiscated them from me, although I could pick them up on my way back out of the country.
I think I forgot to mention that I stopped for a couple days in Holland, but I'd met a young man there who evidently had taken an interest in me. He came to visit me on a weekend that I wanted to go to a Baptist youth retreat in East Berlin. So one day we did that, but the border crossing really shook him up as he'd never been in Eastern Europe.
I also had a good friend from German class who was a Kurd in exile from his country and separated from his family. And there was an American Lutheran pastor in our class and I went to his Bible study a couple times. One of the most interesting things about the class was the make up of it. As you can see, we had Kurds and American, and also Poles. One of the Polish students was head of Solidarity for West Berlin.
I also went on a Martin Luther tour in East Germany, where I met an Australian girl who I corresponded with for quite a while - one of the ones I was supposed to delete from sending my prayer letters to when I was on my 2-year stint in Vienna. And I also went to a monthly youth meeting in Dresden, where I got to know the pastor by coming to his parsonage instead of the cathedral where the meeting was, so I rode with him in his car. Then after that I went to Karl-Marx-Stadt where I was supposed to meet up with a nurse that someone from the summer before had met in a camp. We'd corresponded, but when I got there I couldn't find her at the place we were supposed to meet up. And then I had trouble too because I thought I got my passport stamped but the police station had put the wrong stamp in, so back in Berlin heading across the Traene Palast (Palace of Tears - the informal name for one of the border crossings to West Berlin) I got pulled out of line because of this. At least I was able to convince them that it was an honest mistake because I did have a hotel voucher and I did have a stamp, albeit the wrong one, so I tried to do the right thing. But if I hadn't been on my toes there, I suppose it could have been a bit of a mess.
After that I went to England to do some volunteer work in a center there that specialized in religion in Communist countries. They had me do a variety of things there, including scanning Soviet newspapers for relevant news items, translating letters from the Soviet Union, and researching and writing half of a publication they were working on. Someone else there covered the Orthodox faith, and I covered everything else, including Baptists, Seventh Day Adventist, Muslims, Etc.
I returned home to the States after that.
I should say that I really was doing all these things, especially on the second trip to Europe, as preparation, I thought, for working full-time in that field, in missions to Eastern Europe. So I really took this seriously, with learning about the countries and the religious situations there, getting hands-on experience, learning languages, etc. I was dead serious that this was my calling and I was giving everything for it. But I also did a lot State-side to prepare myself too. So you can maybe understand the devastation when it all fell apart and why I went along with things when most people would have just walked away.
So there you have it. 1981-2 - 4 months in Europe; 1983 - 6 months in Europe; 1987-1989 - 2 years in Europe.
During 1981 and 1983 I think you'd be pretty hard pressed to find anything that even slightly smacked of culture shock or homesickness. Out of all of this, I can just think of one time, and it was in Berlin when the shower wasn't working where I was leasing a room, and I hadn't been told yet that it was fixed, but I forgot and took a shower. Then the landlady blew up at me and I was devastated about it and thought for sure she was going to throw me on the streets because she was so angry. But then when I returned home it was like nothing had happened. Then others in class told me that they'd had experiences like that too there, that this wasn't atypical of German behavior. I don't know about that because I only experienced that this one time, but at least it reassured me to hear that.
That's enough for tonight, I think. This really isn't the only thing I do all day. I've felt very crumby all day though. Even though my fever came down after taking the Aleve I still don't feel well. But I did laundry and went grocery shopping as well taking care of other little things around home.
Thanks for listening. Goodnight.
~ Meg
