In thirteen days it will be 5 months since I moved to Stuttgart. Where did the time go? (Answer, quarantine).
As it looks like I will be neither returning home, nor making great career strides in the foreseeable future, I am trying to distract myself by focussing on integrating. Fitting in. I had already keenly absorbed the traditions of Sunday bakery trips, Tatort, and weekend walks, but after five months (five whole months?!) it was time to go a step further.
First up in this effort was to buy some more snow-appropriate footwear than my Converse. Sounds easy right? Well, the process started easily enough a month ago - I chose some shoes, I ordered them. Job done? Think again. DHL then decided that my flat didn’t exist, queue shoes taking a grand tour of Germany before returning to the shop from whence they came. I only discovered this when I got a full refund in my bank account one morning!
Second attempt, shoes now discounted by 15 euros, so it’s not all bad. Chose the same shoes, ordered them, chose Hermes as my courier not DHL. Except it turned out Hermes didn’t like my address either. Luckily, Hermes let me choose an alternative mode of delivery before taking my shoes on a second round-trip of my new homeland. I selected one of my local ‘Paketshops’ and eagerly awaited the arrival of my shoes. By this point it was three weeks since I ordered the shoes, and a week since any snow had been seen, but I was determined for this story to have a happy ending.
Three days in a row my shoes tantalisingly made it onto a delivery truck, only to return to the Hermes depot. Day four (today), I get a message: your package has been delivered. No location given. Could I remember which Paketshop I had chosen? No. There are four within 1.5km of my flat, so I set off to try and retrieve my long-awaited package. Paketshop 1 I got told off for using the wrong verb for collect (Note: sammeln = collecting as in stamps and coins.; abholen = collecting as in picking up objects and people). They also did not have my parcel. Paketshop 2 showed me every parcel in the shop, none of which were bigger than a hefty paperback. Paketshop 3 I hit the jackpot.
So now I have some lovely, snow-appropriate footwear, and no snow. Luckily I’m off to Luzern next week for a course, and I shall be actively seeking out snow at my earliest convenience.
Integration part 2: work on my German. I ordered a couple of books from Dussmann and… well, read the shoe-story but exchange shoe for books and you get the picture. (I have had several parcels successfully delivered since moving here by Hermes and DHL so I don’t know why they’ve suddenly taken against me, but… I’m not about to ring their customer service and find out!)
Integration part 3: expand my social circle beyond the two (incredible) people I already know here who I always speak English with. The first step was finding a new home with some housemates, and after a couple of viewings I am relieved to have found somewhere lovely to live from the end of March. There’s even a cat!
My second step was finding some way of being on a team, in spite of Covid. Committing to a job over here is a bit challenging right now, as I still have bits of work in the UK pencilled in at random intervals until the autumn, alongside my online work and teaching. So I decided to go down the volunteering route, and am now very excited to be a volunteer with UNICEF Stuttgart and (hopefully) also at a local Covid-test centre before long. My first UNICEF meeting was this evening, and I can honestly say it feels like one of the best decisions I’ve made since moving here. It was such a joy to be in a virtual room with people who live nearby, with a similar interest in charitable work, and to be chatting in German for a solid 90 minutes. I finally felt like one day I might just fit in. At a time when EU/UK relations are tense, and every time I open my mouth I feel like my accent is screaming I’m ENGLISH!!! nothing could be more important.