My Re-assimilation

The last morning at the Hofgarten, just before our bus arrived.
So long German frisbee friends.

http://biosciencesbonn.blogspot.com/2013/01/adventure-time.html
This is my final blog, revisiting my original post. It certainly is something being back. After living in Europe for the longest semester ever, I made it back home. The adventure was seemingly over, and time for another typical college summer. I didn't know what my summer had in store. I was excited for it, but also surprised by how it's turned out so far.

I was also surprised by how many bags I returned with,
having bought the brown one the day before the flight,
and the blue from Italy.

As I was riding back to Austin from Dallas, I started mulling over things in my mind. Like how did I survive without my phone for a semester. Calling friends and family and setting up times to reconnect. I stayed in Austin, and immediately ate at Plucker's for some good ol' fried chicken and sweet tea. Priorities. But I wasn't sure what was gonna happen. Searching for a job and research, I drove to Tennessee to support my friends from my last summer job.

A shot of LSU's campus
The warm climate, Cajun food and
southern humidity was a nice change

As I returned from Tennessee, I stopped by LSU (because it was on the way?) and had some good ol' Southern comfort food as well. Currently, I'm taking summer classes and doing research with a program from Texas A&M. Day to day I experience the differences, I experience Germany again and again.

My favorite response to "So, how was Germany?" is definitely a somber "It was alright." It usually gets my friends going, and gets their attention too. But while I'm just joking around with them, it also has some awkward ring of truth. I feel like I never really left Germany, nor did Germany leave me. So for me to describe it as being over, doesn't make much sense. It's more than just a 5 month period of my life.

In my political science class, State and Local Government, a few times Germany came up in my mind. Out of this 300 somewhat classroom of students, has anyone been abroad? How was the public transportation? As we learned about state and local taxation, I couldn't help but think about Germany. A class conversation was started about income tax. Texas A&M has very stubborn conservatives, defying progressive taxes, and strong liberals, vocally arguing for compassion. 

All the while I'm thinking of the 40% income tax my host family paid for those 5 months - and still pays as I'm gone - the 2000 euros that my host brother received for unemployment as he searched for a job with his economics degree. Just like all these students looking for a job right after college, my German host brother graduated, and ended up with an unpaid internship for lack of a better option - some would say the unemployment benefits from higher taxation were a good thing, as anyone had ever met Rue knows. To have an explicit idea of what unemployment looks like - good or bad - and of how people can survive with higher taxes is eye-opening during these kinds of political discussions.

This new perspective comes to me on the daily.  After my psychology class as I read the textbook and two supplemental books, it reminds me of the poster I have of Sigmund Freud from his old house in Vienna, pinned to my wall. The biochemistry professor that traveled to Germany I see once a week in the hallway walking to research, and the pharmacology professor's face on the front page journal I walk by, the same face that joined us in Germany. The 4th of July fireworks that paled in comparison to the "Rhein en Flamen" firework show set to Beethoven, on the outskirt of Beethoven's hometown. The research I partake in every day on the algebraic modelling of Patent Ductus Arteriosus, and the incredibly coincidental and integrated benefit of both the cardiopulmonary-physiology and computer programming (operated from my own laptop) I learned in Germany. The student lecture presentation I created for a congenital heart defect with a classmate one Sunday at our host families dinner table, and how we just mentioned the possibility of that procedure being used as a reference for our research paper as we start to write it.

It's like I can't get away from it. It's like I don't want to, nor does it need to. It's not something that even could be taken away, nor could it be forgotten.

Today, at a taco shop, I was drinking my long-missed sweet tea and enjoying my paradoxical neurology book (and no doubt thinking about Freud again). An older man walked in with a little bit of a limp, and talked to the manager as he waited for his tacos. Their delightful conversation ended soon, and the older man makes his way out to his handicapped parking spot. Driving away in his big old truck, the manager talks to the cashier and lauds the older gentleman that just left for his achievements, personality and attitude towards life.

To think I had been in that Ottobock factory, that building in Duderstadt, where that older man's prosthetic C-Leg was designed and created. That I had held that man's leg in my hands as I spoke to another amputee that helped design it and wears it. He droves away in his American Dodge Ram Truck, with a little piece of Germany pushing the pedals. 

And that's when it hit me.