Your own country is at least as different. And other places need not feel all that foreign.

XiaoHe (my girlfriend) and I, after  a first shock over all the non-Asian faces here, have been finding that  it doesn’t matter much where you are, everyday life is everyday life. Living on campus in Xiangtan may have made things quite a bit easier, since there is no need (except to go to a mall or bigger supermarket) to fight through Chinese traffic. Even last summer in Shanghai, however, though I can get annoyed about people pushig themselves into the subway without regard for propriety and convenience, things weren’t annoying me as much as they do some.

I wish I could give great advice on how to learn to handle cultural differences with  equanimity, but I can only repeat my girlfriend’s words: just adapt to the situation.

How much fun it is to consider different cases, though: Europeans would say that they are more ‘cultured’ than Americans, but the queues in American stores tend to put us to shame. We’d complain about the Chinese pushing, and then you get Europeans taking off their shoes and putting their bare feet on the seat opposite on the Austrian regional train.

There definintely are differences. Your rights are certainly better protected in Europe, and definitely much clearer. At the same time, as long as you don’t care too much about what people say about you (advantage: foreigners) or don’t have to have a run-in with the powers-that-be, China feels just as free, if not much more dynamic and lively.
Europe, on the other hand, feels relaxed and laid-back, and sometimes really somewhat like an old person having become comfortable with how things are and afraid only of change for the worse. Then again, that too is a straw man, just like the China that is an oppressive monolith with an oppressed populace…

In the end, life has its ups and downs, and people have their good sides and bad ones, no matter where you turn. Whether you can handle it or not, need crowds like you or only yourself, want peace of mind and quiet or excitement and a challenge, it’s up to you.

Case in point: culture contact. Our case: my girlfriend and I have gone to my country of origin, Austria, for the summer. The first day caused a bit of a feeling of alienation – not surprisingly; the food can still be challenging (with a few surprises); but, there is aso quite enough that is enjoyable.

China-Austria relations can be a bit strange – and so are the images you are greeted by… On the one hand, this graffito:

On the other hand, der Trend, an Austrian business journal, wonders “is this the future?”:

Apart from people’s looks being different (of course), the main difference one notices is a superficial and all-too-obvious one: It’s true, there is so many fewer people, so much less life on the road, and simply so much less change in Europe, compared to China, things seem somnolent.
Arriving at the site of the Südbahnhof (Southern train station) of Vienna, which is currently being rebuilt into the Central train station and easily the biggest construction site in all of Austria, simply felt like being back home in China…

For a vacation, there has been rather too much running around this first week (except for my running training, as usual), but things have become comfortable enough. Not least, Austrian parents are a lot easier to handle than Chinese ones. (Admittedly, it’s not helping that my Chinese skills are still lacking terribly.) Even the feeling about the temperatures has come to be more in-line – mornings were actualy too cool for us at first, being used to Hunan’s near-constant 30 Celsius. Now, it simply is hot.

Next up, we are going to use the chance to head for Venice.
Bye-bye, use of German skills, hello, crowds of tourists!