Demolition of the post-college Europe Fantasy

I’ve known Dave since I was 1 or 2, and have always stayed in touch with him. He spent this past year in Germany doing research/taking classes in pursuit of his engineering career. He’s home for 6 weeks, and then heads back to Germany for a 3-year PhD program.

His coming-home party had been scheduled for this past Saturday, but on Wednesday I received a surprise phone call from him saying that he had just flown into JFK, and that he wanted to meet for a drink. We met at a place on the Lower East Side a block away from St. Mark’s. I forget the name, but if you’ve ever gone out on the LES you’ve probably been there: really cheap drinks (drafts for $3-5), an outdoor courtyard decorated with vines and strings of white lights, and two disgusting co-ed bathrooms. You know the place.

Anyway I was surprised at a couple of things: one, that Dave was still lucid after having been awake for nearly 24 hours (and by the time we parted ways that night, he’d been awake for more than 26); and two, that he was so happy to be home.

I remember when I came back to the US after my year-long excursion to the UK that my first feeling was sadness, which was only gradually replaced by a growing sense of a return to normalcy. For Dave, the relief was immediately palpable. Every so often, no matter the topic, he would turn to me, or lean back and look towards the sky, and say how glad he was to be back.

Those feelings stood in contrast to what I remembered of the time he returned from Switzerland a couple of years ago after a 6 month study abroad experience. That experience had been his first European excursion, and he had been bitten by the travel bug. Ever since, he would tell everyone who was willing to listen how much he wanted to travel, and how many countries he wanted to visit.

He had signed up for the German exchange program as a result of the newly acquired travel bug, and many of his friends back home thought that he might settle over there permanently. Even more, he told everyone a couple of months ago that he had decided to pursue his PhD in Germany in a 3 year course, rather than the longer American version.

The Dave that returned from Germany last week, though, was very different than the Dave that had returned from Switzerland two years earlier. He was relieved and happy to be home, as opposed to being immediately eager to go back. I think that his relief can be partially explained by the fact that he had not come back to the US at all since he left last July. He missed Thanksgiving, his birthday, Christmas, and New Years.

But I think the most important difference between post-German Dave and post-Switzerland Dave has more to do with the difference between studying abroad during college and working abroad, post-college. My roommate from college moved to Spain for a year immediately following graduation and his experience there was, at best, mixed. I’ve heard of another college acquaintance who worked in France for the year, and was similarly disappointed.

For me, studying abroad in college was something akin to paradise. Not only do you get all the perks of being an undergraduate student (small workload, huge amounts of free time, immediate access to similarly unburdened peers), you also find yourself in Europe, home of budget airlines and 1000 year old ruins. There is a feeling of incredible freedom as you jet-set across the continent, taking in all the famous sites you’ve read about but never seen. It’s only natural, once that year or semester is over, to want to go back.

Although I initially thought that Dave's decision to go to Germany, and to stay there, was a desire to replicate his study abroad experience, Dave himself told me otherwise. He said his decision to do his PhD in Germany had as much to do with pragmatism as with a love of Europe. It was faster in Germany, easier to get research funds, and he could hone his German language skills. Of course, he said, there are wonderful things about Europe: the travel, the efficiency, the proximity to everywhere else. But, contrary to popular opinion, Europe is a real place and not a fantasy world. There are things you love, and things you hate.

On the one hand, that’s disappointing to a lot of people (including me). Even a year-long jaunt to Europe can’t save me from reality! On the other hand, though, maybe the underlying message isn’t so depressing: in the end, home is always home.