Tag Archives: Life

Germany

Work-Life Balance

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One of the reasons I left Asia for Europe was for a better work-life balance, but I admit to uncertainty over what that actually meant. I knew I was looking for something, but I couldn’t articulate precisely what it was. Nevertheless, stating this as a reason for moving in job interviews always led to vigorous nods. Clearly, the work-life balance in Europe was better – but what would that actually look like?

I have often found it hard to judge the amount of “work” I do in the different contexts in which I have taught, not only in terms of the country or age group of students, but also in terms of my career experience. I remember individual lessons taking hours to plan when I was a new teacher, a time commitment that decreased sharply with each lesson under my belt, but twelve years in, I still consistently find that marking a single essay takes about fifteen minutes. As it has been throughout my career, sometimes it is necessary to work late or at home, and sometimes this is a choice. I am juggling arguably more hats now than ever before, but also finding myself less bogged down by minutiae. And after a dozen years in this profession, I continue getting to school early enough to have 40 minutes of prep time before the students arrive – time to drink my coffee, read over my notes, clear my head, and time just in case.

So while I cannot say that my work habits have changed in this search for a better work-life balance, I have sensed a difference in how time is treated. Working in Singapore, the (un)spoken expectation was that people were busy all the time, including on the weekends. In Germany, despite how busy one might be during the week, weekends are a different time and they are meant to be enjoyed. This is not only clear from conversations with colleagues, but also through interactions with students. Rather than asking me if I’ll be available via email over school holidays, my current students ask if they can email me as questions arise and hurry to clarify that they are not expecting answers. I was profoundly touched the first time a student said, “It’s your holiday, too.”

Recently I’ve been talking with a friend about how people in German and American cultures spend leisure time. My American friends often refer to “being productive” or “adulting” (a term I loathe) and my German friends tend to speak in snapshots of specific moments rather than painting a general picture. Unlike when I lived in New York and felt under constant (and unaffordable) pressure to always do something, preferably something new, living in Germany has taught me that all days have something to enjoy, whether they are work days or weekend days. After all, the park is always pretty, even when cycling to work in the rain.

Something I’ve really noticed, however, might have more to do with living in a small town than living in Europe, though I’ve not lived in small towns elsewhere and this is my first time living in Europe. My work-life balance is doubtless better because it only takes me seven minutes to get to work by bike. A trip to the grocery store after school puts me in reach of all other stores I might want to visit, and I’m only five minutes from home. The minimization of commuting time is doubtless significant and provides much more flexibility during the day than I have previously experienced. I do miss certain aspects of life in a big city, but not enough to want to move back to one.

Before moving to Germany, I had a highly romanticized vision of living in Europe in mind: Sitting in the town square and drinking coffee, strolling along cobblestone streets, travelling by train and staring out the window at a green, rolling landscape. After over a year and a half here, I’ve learned that the picture wasn’t too far from accurate: We have cobblestone streets and four town squares, and I have spent time in all of them, sometimes with a coffee; travelling by train is indeed an opportunity to experience a lovely landscape, but also an exercise in patience with delays and missed connections; our park has featured much more in my life that I would have thought before moving here, and just as much as I knew it would upon seeing it for the first time.

While there are certain measurable differences in my daily life now compared to living in Asia, I think there is mostly a different feeling. The expectation of society is not that one works all the time, and the amount of work one does is not a measure of worth, whether self-imposed or through public pressure. This change in attitude has given me space to breathe, to rest, to relax. This is deemed normal, expected, and an important aspect of one’s life rather than a luxury or “waste of time”. There’s balance rather than constant motion, moderation rather than extremity. And perhaps this is what my interviewers with their vigorous nods knew about living in Europe – that I would not find just a work-life balance, but rather a different way of looking at life itself.

Schwarzwald (Black Forest) – February 2023
On My Mind

Beautiful and Dangerous

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Upon receiving a job offer in Germany, I began my ongoing labour of learning the German language. Unlike learning Mandarin when living in Singapore, learning German seemed possible and, based on what I learned during my interview, necessary to integrate into German society. As a Westerner in Asia, I was almost always on the outside. It would be nice to feel differently in Germany.

After multiple free trials for language-learning programs and software before deciding on a subscription, I signed up to receive a free German word via email each day. After two years, I know most of the words before they arrive in my inbox but I find the sample sentences helpful. Exposure to proper grammar and complex thought is always welcome.

Recently, der Blitz, lightening, was my German word of the day. The sample sentence read: Das Aufleuchten von Blitzen kann schön sein, ist aber sehr gefährlich. Flashes of lightening can be beautiful but are very dangerous.

I liked the combination of beautiful and dangerous, and thought immediately of my favourite ways to be in nature – mountains to climb, ski, and hike; paths through the forest to cycle; the ocean to feel myself weightless. Beautiful and dangerous.

To fall in love is beautiful, and it is worth noting that the phrase contains the word “fall”. Falling can be dangerous. And maybe this is why so many people chase this feeling. People make all kinds of risky choices because the feelings that come from them are beautiful, and perhaps it is the beauty mixed with danger that creates allure. We call these people “thrill seekers” and it is precisely this they are after. To chase a dream is beautiful. The journey itself might be as dangerous as the outcome, whether or not that dream is realized.

I would say that danger alone does not constitute a reason to shy away from what is beautiful. The question is simply the extent to which one can safely go before finding oneself in too deep, up too high, or too far off the path. The question is how to manage the risk.

In the mountains, we travel together, with maps, with gear, with knowledge. Cyclists carry tools and extra tubes. Children learn to always swim with a buddy. Many people have Plan B in mind in case Plan A doesn’t work out, though some might say that having a Plan B means we haven’t totally committed to Plan A. I read once that if the answer isn’t 100% yes, it’s no. Can the answer be 100% yes after we’ve let the tiny voice have its say, or does the existence of the tiny voice mean “no”? In the case of relationships, do we build walls to keep parts of ourselves safe? Where is this line between beautiful and dangerous?

Das Aufleuchten von Blitzen kann schön sein, ist aber sehr gefährlich. Flashes of lightening can be beautiful but are very dangerous.

Here, there is no line. The beauty and the danger exist together, and living lies in navigating between them. If the line were clear, obvious, demarcated, there would be no journey to living at all.

Schalkau, Germany – September 2021
On My Mind

What I Didn’t Know

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I’m surprised at how much I miss it.

I’m surprised at how often it is on my mind, on the tip of my tongue, a marker of how and where I spend my time.

I’m surprised at my own mentions of it (and a little embarrassed) and surprised by how much of it has shaped me.

I didn’t expect it to be everywhere.

I should have known better.

I don’t know how you can just switch things off, he said.
I shrugged. Survival mechanism.

And it is.

I’ve lived a lot.

If I had to guess, I’d say the letters started when I was in middle school and experiencing the first of what I consider my two most significant life transitions. I don’t know if I came up with the idea on my own or if the social worker suggested it, but I have always thought better on paper.

I have written dozens of letters that I will never send, letters that remain hidden away inside dozens of diaries in a box in my parents’ basement. (I’ve always said that one day I’ll burn everything.)

I’ve been thinking back a lot, back to things I should have done with the letters that I wrote. Back to things I wish I’d never lived, never known, never learned, or not in the ways that I did.

I realize now that I could have been angry, had every right to be angry, and making the choice not to be has made me who I am. The funny thing is that I didn’t know it was a choice. What was it again? Oh yes, survival mechanism.

Although it was rather darker and stormier than that.

So I ran.

I ran to, I ran back, I ran away. But you can only run so far and so fast and sooner or later, well, you’re only human, after all.

I don’t think I’m unique in having a complicated relationship with the word “home”. I’ve written about this at length and can summarize with the conclusion that has sustained me for a long time: Home is people, not places.

In this way, there are many places where I might feel at home because there are many places where I have people. In some senses, I’ve gotten used to missing them, both the people and the places. But being used to something doesn’t mean being comfortable with it; doesn’t mean being at peace with it; doesn’t mean it isn’t jarring or surprising, or soft or gentle.

Missing my homes, my people, is all of these things, and it happens all the time.

Having walked this road before, I should have known better. But even if I had, there was nothing else I would have done.

I don’t miss the weather but I miss parts of it: convenience, predictability, ease.

I miss running to the store just under the road at all hours, windows and balcony door open because I could see my apartment from there and I’d be back in a minute.

I miss bike rides on the beach and stopping, soaked, under the palm trees to drink teh halia that was sickly sweet, but not as sweet as the teh halia at the Indian place where they knew my order, chided me for not eating enough, and were worried when I didn’t turn up for a while.

I miss watching the sunset over the nearest temple (remember when they rebuilt it?) while sitting with a group of friends at plastic tables, bottles of beer and empty plates of hawker food all around us.

I miss seeing the clouds fade from their early morning footprints in the sky, miss the turquoise house on the corner as I ride up the canal on the way to school.

I miss familiar faces in the climbing gym, making jokes in the mirror at dance, running into people who I knew in places where I didn’t expect them to be.

I miss meeting friends on train platforms, wandering through neighbourhoods in search of cafés, taking photos, always stopping for something to eat.

I miss our department office full of choice words and laughter, colleagues who became friends. I miss knowing people well enough to know when someone was having a good day or a bad day or when something was, for whatever reason, just going on.

I miss the rhythm of days that were always too long, with rarely enough time to do what had to be done. I miss the camaraderie that, year after year, we built and maintained because that’s what you do when you’ve been somewhere for a while.

I miss tapping on a door, asking for a minute, spending ten or twenty.

I miss knowing where I was and who I was and how it felt to know this about myself.

I spent a long time looking.

Before the school year ended in June and before I left Singapore in July, I knew I was ready to go. And I knew that I wasn’t ready to leave. I missed the Singapore I had known before the pandemic, and I still miss it. But now I miss everything else, too, and everyone.

I didn’t know how much a part of me that world had become, or the people who were and are part of that world.

I didn’t know how much I learned there, how much I grew into myself, how important those years were for the person writing this right now.

Of course, I couldn’t have known.

Maybe if we did know, life would stagnate and we’d grow complacent, unwilling to make waves because they can hurt. Survival mechanism? Maybe.

Maybe, if we did know, we’d never change anything at all.

Most of my letters over the years have been fueled by frightening, intense emotion, but that’s not the case right now. That’s why this isn’t a letter.

Instead it’s a story, a story of the mess my life was and how I tried to rebuild it. It’s a journey in the way that walking a little slower, listening a little harder, loving a little deeper is a journey. A journey of the body, and also of the mind. And in this journey, in the knowing of people and places, perhaps we can also come to know ourselves.

I didn’t expect to miss this home as fully as I do, but that tells me something about myself that I think is worth knowing. And I am grateful for having learned it.