Thursday Thoughts: Culture Shock

Any time you move to a new place, you'll experience at least a little culture shock. The less alike your homeland and the new place, the more culture shock you're liable to face. However, previous experience living in new places mitigates a lot of the hassle of adjusting, or at least, it has for me.

My first real experience with culture shock was when I went to live in Germany in high school, although truthfully, it wasn't much. I already spoke German fairly well and northern German culture isn't so far removed from Northwestern US culture. Yes, there are a lot of country-specific things, like the course schedule at school, but those are not difficult adjustments, so I didn't experience tons of culture shock. Honestly, I had more reverse culture shock on my return hone. That German bread. I missed it.

But later, I moved to China to teach English. I don't speak Chinese. And the Chinese culture is a few more steps away from the American culture than Germany is. That was a much bigger adjustment. Moving to Slovakia wasn't too difficult after living in China and serving in the Air Force (actually, nothing has been terribly difficult after being in the military), but it wasn't as easy as living in Germany because I didn't speak Slovak and was pretty much on my own.

I've only been in Croatia for a week and a half, but I believe my past experiences have made this move much easier than it would have been, were it my first or even second experience living overseas. However, there are always bumps in the road, no matter how experienced the driver (pretty lame analogy, but I'm going to keep it).

Here are the bumps I've experienced so far:

1. I experimented with Bolt, a local rideshare company like Uber, and I misunderstood how the pricing worked. Thankfully, I had enough cash on me to pay my driver, but for a minute there, I wasn't sure.

2. I've also experimented with the bus system by taking the bus to and from Pula. I used an app my landlords showed me to figure out timing and stops, and to buy my tickets electronically. When you do that, you get an email with two PDFs: the ticket itself, and a receipt. For some reason, both documents have a QR code at the bottom. I recently went to Pula to pick up a couple things I couldn't get in Medulin, and when I tried to get on the bus back home, my QR code wouldn't scan. I finally had to step off the bus so it could continue on its route, and without about ten seconds realized my mistake: I had been trying to scan the receipt QR code instead of the ticket. sigh I had to wait 50 minutes for the next bus.

3. Getting my credentials. Well. I got my citizenship, but I need an ID card. I went to the municipal police station in Pula to get it, but they didn't have my citizenship on record. They sent me to another government building on the other side of Old Town, and they didn't have it either. They gave me a phone number to call in a month to see if it was in the system yet before coming back. I can stay in the country for 90 days as a tourist anyway, so there's plenty of time, but it's odd to know you're a citizen but not be able to get proof of it at a regional office.

On the other hand, I made a delightful, accidental discovery my second day here. I went an had lunch at one of the few restaurants still open (there will be even fewer when the shoulder season ends), and picked something that sounded good - an Istrian pasta served with arugula, prosciutto, and a cherry tomato. Sounds good, right? And it was. But here's the thing. The sauce? White cheese sauce. The noodles? Actually long dumplings. I had basically ordered Spaetzle (a German dish, though the dumpling-noodles are typically shorter and/or thinner than these were) with fresh vegetables, lol. So for my first meal, without trying to, I found Istria's mac 'n' cheese. Good times.

Next time you make yourself some mac 'n' cheese, or have trouble with public transit or government offices, I hope you think of this blog post and that it helps you smile. :)