Expat Interviews > Cherie Schorning > Part 2 > Part 3
Interview with Cherie Schorning - Part 1
An American in Germany
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Cherie Schorning and friend. Photo courtesy Cherie Schorning. |
Cherie Calletta Schorning was born and raised in the US state of New Jersey. She has lived in Japan and Germany and has traveled extensively. Cherie has taught college-level English and English as a Foreign Language. She has also worked as an information technology specialist. Having recently returned from over three years in the Frankfurt area, she and her husband were living in Charlotte, North Carolina at the time of this interview.
Interview
GW&M: You recently returned from a stay of 3-1/2 years, living and working in Germany. Now that you’re back in the USA, have you had any problems re-adjusting to “the American way of life”?
Schorning: The first thing we both noticed when we got back to the States was the incredible homogeneity of American culture—the chain department stores, the chain restaurants, the chain everything! I don’t have such a great sense of direction in the first place, and trying to figure out just where I was while in the parking lots of one of these strip malls was pretty funny. “Where are we now? - Next to Bojangles and Eckert Drugs. - But next to which Bojangles and which Eckert Drugs?” We don’t notice these things until we’ve lived in a different environment, but American culture is so mass-produced! During our first few days back, I had a worse case of reverse culture-shock than my husband did. He just takes everything in stride, but I tend to be much more sensitive.
And where sense of direction is concerned, my husband is a real bloodhound. Within a few days he’d gotten a good sense of where things were in Charlotte. After half a year, I’m still studying maps and panicking. Oh, and we both miss German BREAD! We’re both on the verge of taking fiber pills, because American bread, even what they call “whole-wheat,” doesn’t even come close to the fiber content of German bread.
GW&M: Having had some time to reflect on it, what cultural differences now seem most prominent in your mind? What are some of the things you miss or do not miss about Germany?
Schorning: One thing I miss very much about Germany is the prevalence of the small, individualized shops, and the professionalism of the German merchants, particularly that among pharmacists. The Apotheken are more like the smaller, old-time pharmacies we used to have here many years ago: if you weren’t too terribly ill, you might go to the pharmacist first, before you saw the doctor, and the pharmacist might recommend something for whatever ailed you. The pharmacist and the assistants in the stores also remembered your name. <*smile*> This sort of shop was privately-owned, not a chain. It sold medicine, not medicine and hairdryers and soda pop and potato chips and paperback romances. These are the pharmacies you still find in Germany, and they are wonderful.
Now, it may well be that an American pharmacist working in one of these big chain stores might just be perfectly able and willing to recommend something for my cold, as my German pharmacist did. I don’t know, because I never tried that in the US. I just don’t get a sense of the same level of personal concern and professionalism here in the American chain stores as I did in the small, privately-owned German pharmacies. Just having the staff greet you by name, and smile at you when you walk into a pharmacy is a great tonic in itself. [For more on this topic, see the GW chapter on Health and Fitness.]
With all these big impersonal chain stores we have in the States, we’ve lost that important personal touch, and that’s not just in our pharmacies — it’s all a part of the tendency toward mass culture and mass production. In some ways it may be more efficient, but I question whether increased efficiency was worth the sacrifice of the personal touch we’ve lost.
When I went into the pharmacy in Germany, I knew that these people recognized me, cared about me, and even remembered whatever was wrong with me the last time I'd come in. But in the big American chain stores, you feel so anonymous, just a little cog in this great American mass-production machine, which has deemed it perfectly proper to sell potato chips and soda along with medicine—since it's evidently profitable to do things that way. It saddens me a great deal.
Also, what we might call “alternative medicine” here is far more developed in Germany. There’s a much greater respect for homeopathy and for herbal preparations there, and also a clearer recognition for the role of the human spirit in disease and healing. We here in the States are just 'discovering' St. John’s Wort, for instance. Some studies I’ve seen now are indicating that it may have benefits very similar to Prozac when treating seasonal winter depression—but with far fewer side-effects.
Now the Germans have been taking this herb for generations, as a “folk” remedy. (This is not at all surprising to me, given their weather!) So from what I can see, alternative medicine and herbal medicine as a science, not as a pseudo-science, are far more developed in Germany than it is here.
For instance, I was pleasantly surprised to see copies of the “Bach Flower Remedies” translated into German, in my pharmacy back in Kelkheim, for instance. The books were on display right in the front window of a perfectly respectable, perfectly conventional hometown pharmacy! In case you’re not familiar with it, the Bach Flower Remedy is the sort of thing that in America is relegated to the “New Age” sections of most (chain, of course) bookstores. It’s considered a bit flaky, kooky and offbeat—the sort of thing that I don't imagine would be taken seriously by anyone I know in the American medical profession. I’m not so hung upon the Bach Flower Remedy per se, but the broad display of these books in a perfectly respectable German pharmacy in a smallish town not known for being at all avant-garde is to me an illustration of this difference between 'conventional' German medicine and our own. Another impression I had about German medicine is that their tendency is to be far less invasive than our own; they seem reluctant to interfere with the body’s natural processes whenever possible, as if they took the Hippocratic injunction “First, do no harm” more seriously than we do.
I think that German medicine may be in many ways ahead of the American because of a greater willingness on the part of the Germans to acknowledge the roles played by the spirit and the emotions in health, and a much deeper awareness of man’s connection to all the rest of nature, as evidenced by their greater reliance on homeopathy and natural medicine such as herbals. Whether or not this attitude on the connection between healing and nature may spring from the historical German obsession with nature and forests is perhaps something you might think about for your next book on Germany! <*big grin*>
GW&M: Cherie, we last talked when we met in person for the first time at a meeting of online friends which was held at a restaurant in Frankfurt. We had never met before that, other than online. Everyone there was present only because of previous e-mail and forum contact. I thought it was a very interesting experience, because it confirmed my belief that the Internet can bring people together rather than isolate them, as some cybercritics keep claiming. While in Germany, you were quite involved in electronic networking. What are your thoughts about that? Did you find it helpful personally?
Schorning: The Internet is definitely bringing people together...and it is isolating them at the same time. Both claims are true. But it’s important to remember that the Internet is only a tool, and how people use that tool is what determines the results. Electronic communities can be extremely helpful to a new expatriate. They can be a wonderful source of 'insider tips' and practical information about the host country from other expats who’ve encountered the same questions and challenges.
On a system which has a multi-user, multi-function capability like CompuServe, AOL, and some of the newer Internet sites, a question can be posted on a public electronic “bulletin board.” This means that a question or comment will be seen and then answered by several people, which allows one to hear variety of perspectives. Depending upon which online neighborhood you visit, responses will be of varying utility, quality, and cordiality...but generally you’ll hear more than one perspective.
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So—in theory at least—there’s a lot of practical knowledge and expertise available from other users on these systems. Then there’s the social dimension of electronic communities. It’s possible to make contact with people very quickly, some of whom may even live in your city. Using online communities I met quite a few wonderful people who lived in my area, both expats and natives. And of course, when you do move again, you needn’t lose touch with these people—you can continue the contact over the Internet.
A few months ago I left Germany and moved to North Carolina, but I’m maintaining some of these contacts in much the same way I had while I was in Germany. When you arrange the first face-to-face [“F2F” in online parlance] meeting, it’s best if it’s done in a group and/or in a public place like a restaurant. The meeting you’ve described in Frankfurt is an example of what I mean: a group of online acquaintances from CompuServe’s European Forum organize a monthly dinner in a public restaurant. New people are always encouraged to join, but the meetings take place among a group and in a public location.
Online communities can be an invaluable way to network, and 99% of the online people I’ve met F2F through an initial online contact have turned out to be absolutely delightful. However, one must always bear in mind that when you go online, you are dealing with total strangers, and the “real” person often turns out to be something rather different from the “online” persona. You know that “persona” means “mask”...well, it’s very easy to put on an online mask. Sometimes the “real” person surprises you pleasantly, but the reverse can also be true, of course.
People’s emotions online are almost always right on the surface—they’re raw and unprotected by whatever social shells may be there in F2F. You sometimes find perfectly reasonable, cordial, sane, and well-educated professionals embroiling themselves in the most dreadful “flame wars.” It often happens in public newsgroups and bulletin board discussions that someone gets his or her feelings deeply hurt by comments from others. Of course, in some instances—and some of the newsgroups are famous for this sort of thing—the “flame” is intentional, but at other times the problem was caused by a misapprehension, an innocent and reasonable communication that simply misfired.
Having said that, however, with a little common sense and some ordinary caution, I would say that the virtues of online communities far outweigh the disadvantages. Online communities can be a lifesaver for the “trailing expat spouses” who find themselves at home and therefore isolated while living abroad. Going online can be a great way to lessen the isolation an expatriate feels.
But again, an important caveat to this is that one shouldn’t allow the online community become your only community. It’s very easy to fall into that trap, no matter who you are, how old you may be, how much or how little computer knowledge you may have. I know a few sweet elderly folks who barely know a hard drive from a diskette, but who are hard-core Net addicts. It’s not only techno-savvy college kids who become addicted to the Internet, not by a long shot.
The Internet is a tool, a very useful and interesting tool, but it should never become the hub of your social life. That way lies madness and even more isolation. Use it as a tool, but don’t abuse it. The Internet is no different from alcohol, actually; some people handle it well, while others become terribly addicted.
I think online communities can be a wonderful thing for expats, but we need to consider their potential drawbacks as well. Online communication is very different from face-to-face communication; it’s a whole different animal and it plays by a different set of rules, rules we’re all still trying to learn. I keep hoping for some bright young academic spark to write a dissertation or two on this subject of online communication. Maybe someone already has.
In the next installment Cherie discusses aspects of being the “trailing spouse” or “useless caboose,” and making the transition from one culture to another. Did once living in Japan help her adjust to Germany?
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