Well everybody, I’m sure you’ve been watching your calendar closely and have seen that it has been one week since I arrived back home to Canada!!

I haven’t posted anything about coming home and that sort of thing, and so I thought now would be a good time to do so!

I left Vienna at 10am on friday (July 8th) to get to Frankfurt about an hour later. From there I had passport control, etc. and eventually boarded a plane for 9.5 hours from Frankfurt to Calgary.

I left Frankfurt at 2pm local time, and got to Calgary at 4pm local time.

So that’s annoying.

My luggage was super delayed coming out of the plane, which made me really nervous. About half of the luggage came out together, and people picked it up and left, leaving about 1/3 of us behind to wait for our luggage for about 20 minutes. I was feeling pretty anxious because I was told by the airline that my luggage would be checked all the way from Vienna to Calgary, but maybe it was a mistake, or something. Plus I knew my mother was waiting for me on the other side and was also probably nervous that I hadn’t come out yet. A guy seemed to be really stressed waiting for his bags, so he walked into a corner of the luggage pickup place and began doing very aggressive pushups, so that’s healthy?

Eventually though my luggage did come, and I walked out of the doors to see both my parents, front and center, with their phones out to take pictures of me as I walked out. I was both touched and embarrassed, so that seems about right!

The rest of the day was kind of a blur – I didn’t really register much. I eventually fell asleep after being awake for over 24 hours, which was a huge relief, and woke up pretty late the next day.

Pretty much for the last week I’ve been at home, with a few exceptions: I went to the mall with my mom to help her shop for vacation, to go to church, to take my parents to the airport, and I went out thursday night to stampede with  a couple friends.

Culture shock is a very real thing, people. Here are some examples:

• my parent’s cars are ginormous. You can’t drive a car that size in Austria, because it wouldn’t fit on the road! I had anxiety driving home from the airport in such a big vehicle!
• the landscape is VERY different! North American architecture and landscape is very different to European. Cities are developed differently, and so just looking at Calgary and the city was disorienting. Driving past shops and things is different because the buildings and parking and all that is different.
• it took several days for me to feel comfortable in my parent’s house. For the last few months, I haven’t stayed anywhere more than 3 nights, usually 2, before returning back to Steyr or moving on to a new place. So Sunday night I was feeling antsy like I should start packing or planning or something, because I’m not used to staying in a place other than Steyr for longer periods of time.
• Along the same lines as the car thing, my parent’s fridge is HUGE! They have so much food! And its a standard fridge size for here, but in Steyr my fridge was tiny, and I shared it with 2 other people. So that through me off for sure!
• I know this is weird, but the toilet paper square size is different in North America and it confused me for about 2 seconds and that’s embarrassing.
• There’s a different feel to living in Calgary once again. Steyr was a city, but a pretty small one – about 40,000 people. Compared to Calgary’s 1 million+ people, its tiny. But it was very compact and homely and a strong sense of community. Living in a big city like Calgary makes me feel a little isolated and far away. In Steyr, I could get to pretty much anywhere just by walking, and the farthest I would have to walk is about 20-25 minutes. Now I have to drive 20-25 minutes to get anywhere worth going in Calgary. It’s just a different mentality.
• The culture here is also very different. Its kind of hard to explain, but in many ways I still feel like a foreigner in my own city, which is a confusing thing to experience. Because I’m not supposed to be foreign – I’m supposed to fit in and belong here. But I don’t quite yet.

There’s more, I’m sure, but off the top of my head, those stand out.

I’m sure, as with everything else, all I need is time. Going to the Stampede with my friends kinda threw me for a loop a little – that’s one way to get acquainted with your own culture REALLY QUICKLY. I felt a little overwhelmed all night, but I’m glad I went anyways – baptism by fire, if you will.

And yeah, sometimes I feel sad, and spend time going through old pictures from Europe and miss my friends and all the adventures. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. But I needed to come back to Canada, and I’m glad to be here now. I now have the opportunity to make new memories and go on new adventures here in Canada. Who knows what the future will hold for me next?

 

Some people have asked me what I will do with this website now that this is all over. The short answer is “I don’t know, but I’m keeping it”. Because there’s always new adventures to write about and new stories to tell. And I want to keep this for as long as possible, because it was my diary during all this time, and you don’t throw out a diary when it gets full. You just move on to another one.

So don’t give up on me yet – just because I’m not living in Europe anymore doesn’t mean I won’t be writing every again. Keep an eye out for me!

I’ll keep on wandering.

 

emma.k