Hallo und Liebe Grüsse aus Ost-Berlin!
Well ... it has only taken me 7 or 8 months to finally join all of you, but I promise I have been reading the updates as everyone has been starting successful post-grad lives and I have felt honored to be included on the list, for sure. I guess the reason that I was so hesitant up until now to post anything is because, despite my best-laid plans, I have been rather embarrassed about my life after Middlebury.
Despite doing my best to find some sort of semi-permanent gainful employment, it all fell flat. On the long car-ride down I-87 with my mother after graduation, I burst into tears somewhere just south of Albany. It lasted only for a few minutes, and my mom sort of took it naturally in stride, assuming I was sad about leaving behind my friends or something. In reality, I was terrified about what I would do with no safety net, no one to pat my hand and tell me that it's okay (or even great!) to have absolutely no clue what you want to do with your life, no reassuring professor's offices full of books organized by subject and freshly brewed tea and cultural artifacts. There is nothing reassuring or comforting about South Jersey really. No one ever leaves New Jersey. It is a Bermuda Triangle. It's like the island on Lost. It is a place that sucks you in and all of a sudden you realize that you married someone from your high school and that you've stopped going into the city and have two kids and drive a Chevy Suburban you say "wudder" and "youz guys" that you have become completely content with spending the rest of your life in New Jersey. Forever.
This postcard is just so true ...
Okay, maybe that's a little dramatic, but that's what scared the crap out of me! I was pretty sure I had ruined my life, picked the wrong subjects to study, wasted the last four years and would never find a job or be able to afford a cute apartment with a dog and a cute kitchen and lots of adorable stuff from Ikea ... you know, the Twenty-Something American Dream. The next evening, after resting up and taking stock of my options, I camped out on my couch with a bottle of red wine and my laptop and began trolling craigslist for some sort of a job. After two hours of semi-drunkenly applying for various positions in and around Philadelphia, I made an important decision that I had been toying with for months. I was getting out of my mom's house, getting out of South Jersey and getting out of the continental United States altogether. I decided to move back to Berlin. I don't know why it took me so long to accept that it was the only thing I really wanted to do, but once I figured it out I stopped panicking and started planning. I had spent two semesters there already, had more friends in Berlin than anywhere else really, still kept in touch with most of them on a regular basis, and was the happiest there that I've ever been. I wrote some emails, got some advice and stopped worrying about growing old living in my mother's attic.
So over the last 9 months I worked for a little while as a telemarketer for the Pennsylvania Ballet (nightmarish), I interned as a snarky blogger all summer up until mid-fall (philebrity.com), and I mostly worked 50-some odd hours a week as a diner waitress at the Crystal Lake Diner in scenic Westmont, NJ. In my case, the only way to get out of South Jersey was to fully embrace everything wondrous and awful about it by running around, serving fried food and pancakes (with scrapple, natch) and calling everyone "hon" and "babe". I even started to enjoy my job as a diner waitress, envisioning myself as the narrator of a League-Of-Their-Own-type movie full of salty older waitresses with hearts of gold waiting under the surface. Needless to say, handling copious amounts of blue cheese dressing and coated french fries every day is slightly less glamorous than all that.
Me, in uniform obviously.
But I saved up all my pennies, took a TESOL certification course in November, continued saving up pennies, deftly handled the mental breakdown which ensued once I sat down with all of my student loan paperwork, tutored high school students in German (which is surprisingly lucrative, although the demand isn't too high), saved even more pennies!, bought a plane ticket, found an apartment, a few job leads, and as of Friday afternoon it's become official. I have successfully moved to Berlin, and am currently gainfully employed as an English Trainer as well as a freelance writer (more on that as things line up). I guess it was silly to feel insecure about My Brief Career As A Diner Waitress (which is high on my list for autobiography titles), but it seemed to me that literally EVERYONE else that I knew was doing something that was a) intellectually stimulating, b) wildly interesting and/or romantic, c) good for the greater community/world, or d) highly profitable. I seemed to be the only one who was doing what I did in high school - waiting tables and making ends meet. I felt sheepish telling people about it, and additionally, when I said that I was planning to move to Berlin permanently, most people seemed a bit incredulous. But now that I'm here, I realize it was silly to be ashamed of being a sassy diner waitress for a few months, and the good news is that Berlin has definitely welcomed me back with open arms.
The mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit, famously said "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy" - Berlin is poor, but sexy. Berliners live rather minimally, rents are relatively cheap, roommates are plentiful, and there are literally hundreds of places to go and things to do all the time that generally cost next-to-nothing. The city is full of students and tiny coffee shops and cold war buildings and clubs that stay open for days at a time. Berliners have a way of living cheaply, but with style, spending as much time as possible out of doors, riding bikes everywhere and casually drinking beer in public (aka everywhere). There's really nowhere else that I feel more at home than a bustling city full of inexpensive fun and no public consumption laws.
So in conclusion, hopefully in a matter of months my life will be much like this:
Okay so Liza Minelli as Sally Bowles is sort of kind of my inspiration. Not a big deal, right?
Much love from East Berlin, hopefully the rest of you are doing well and please contact me if you too decide to dump your boyfriend, pack up your life and scare your parents by moving to Europe. I am full of advice on the subject.
Alles liebe,
Rachael
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