Nine months in, and I’ve lost it. Culturally, I’m in No-Man’s-Land. I still haven’t got a clue who people in this country are, which hasn’t bothered me much, but which I might have to do something about if I want to integrate myself more. It feels kind of liberating though, to be all detached. I lost all my relevant current knowledge of Germany ages ago (keeping up to date with politics and things like that via news websites, but the rest I have to figure out from conversations with family and friends). I’ve no idea what’s going on on a more basic level. Popular culture. What people talk about, and how. New words used by adults and children. So far, I’ve felt quite up to date with the UK, but I can see that that’s an illusion. My husband came back from London with a pile of magazines, including Heat and Hello, which I’d eagerly anticipated, only to find that I had no idea who anybody was. Not that the magazines were fundamentally different. Well, Hello seemed to not have changed at all and had the same people in it that it always used to (which was comforting), but the new faces I had never seen before. And Heat… is a pile of cr** anyway, but I expected to flick through it and not feel so detached. Come on? Is all British culture has to offer these days stupid music wannabe talent shows (without any talent)? I shuddered just looking at the pictures. And hope there’ll be something more interesting when (if?) we move back.
Transcontinental Overload 