THE REPATRIATION (SUMMER 1997)

(As originally written for LFL)

I stepped out of the T station into Copley Square on July 20, a gorgeous sunwashed day. My favorite spot in Boston. I looked at the familiar landmarks. I looked at the people. I was home. I was exhilarated. It couldn't last, of course, but I burst with joy at the moment.

Of course, it didn't last.

Back in the great America. Huge cappuccinos. Endless choices at Wal- Mart (the ne plus ultra culture-shock location of the USA), which produces anxiety in many returned expats but which I just enjoyed as a resource; frankly, I reveled in the cheap prices of contact lens saline. I have experienced a certain disconnected, limbo-ish feeling, which I understand is common among returned expats. It's related to another common emotion among Americans who go abroad (not to mention emigrants of all stripes): we're simultaneously repelled by and attracted to our own culture, both in our homeland and in our adopted country. The result feels rather like being caught between two places, not really feeling that you truly belong in either. In Slovenia, I often translated the street signs in my head; over here, I sometimes translate the English signs into their Slovene equivalent.

At my rented Catskills cottage, I grinned inwardly when I heard it would take NYNEX just a day to switch the house account to my name, remembering the three-month wait for a phone line in my semi-detached flat in Rakova Jelsa.

I have to take my laundry into the 'mat in Woodstock 15 minutes away, and there's no a/c. But the hot water is scalding, and endless if you want it, unlike the 30-second bursts of hot water from the milk-can-sized heater under my Slovenian kitchen sink. The decor sucks ('70s paneled Colonial), but after all, it's not mine. The TV is black-and-white but wired to cable, and reception is definitely better than on Srebrniceva, but I believe that commercial television in the USA seems even worse now than when I left, if such a thing is possible. I was also appalled at the constant stream of murders-and-beatings news from the New York City TV stations. (I also miss the Slovene subtitles, which at least offered me the possibility of back-door education within an otherwise inane sitcom.)

So.

I still don't know how successful I've been in communicating what it felt like to live in Slovenia, or make sense out of all my experiences in the seemingly disconnected mishmash of events that add up to a person's life. Whenever I encountered stereotypical attitudes about Americans over there (born of ignorance and perhaps resentment and envy, or is it a feeling of superiority?) I wished I could somehow instantly communicate to them, I-am-not-a-generic-American-Stereotype, I-am-an-individual. When I had a chance to get to know them, and show I had a genuine interest in their language and culture, and the stereotypes would usually dissolve. Back in the bosom of my motherland, though, sometimes I find myself applying that same Euro-stereotype of Americans to my countrymen and -women -- at least those I don't know. Seeing other ways of life does tend to remove the comforting blinders when it comes to your own culture.

I learned at least one thing from this mess: How to travel, at least in theory. Once you physically set off on a journey, the trip acquires its own innate logic. When you travel, apply the rules of Zen tourism (thanks to Tatjana, my Ljubljanchan adviser on life, for the inspiration): Carry no camera (it makes you look like a tourist) and no Handycam (even more so), only a sketchpad and some pencils, and most importantly, the little camera inside your skull taking everything in. Don't be judgmental; just experience the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feel of a place. I remember a conversation I had with an acquaintance named Kurt, a few months back on one of those expat nights at the A3 bar. Kurt is a cheerful, thirtyish Aussie fellow in import-export, engaged to marry a Slovene lady. Wasn't he homesick, I asked; didn't he miss very far-off Australia?

"The first time I was away, I was very homesick," he told me. "Then I went back, and I saw that all my friends were still doing the same things they always had been...nothing had changed.

"After that, I came back to Slovenia and it was fine."

And that fall I made my own return to Slovenia, and Irena met me at the airport, and we loaded my baggage into her car and drove into town. I soon settled into a new apartment, with a terrace facing a quiet courtyard, and the regulation busybody housewife neighbors (the gods of chance also eventually blessed me with two talented young female students next door, who passed endless hours practicing piano and singing angelically; it became the soundtrack to my life for the next three years).

And the main emotion I felt was a profound and overwhelming sense of relief. Finally, I was able to rest. I was home.