Segment 13- Disappointments and Trilingual Challenges
This past week was our last week of the semester: last week with our wonderful class and teacher, an exam and the anticipation of a two-week-long semester break. But, the week started with heart-breaking news. My dad and stepmom had been planning for months to come visit during the semester break. We had finally made AirBnB arrangements, I had been researching day trips and planning an itinerary of my favorite things in Paris, we had made plans with my dear French family, and I had been looking forward to having time with them, conversations and making memories, and such. My dad had called the week before to warn me about how badly Omicron has been spreading in their county in Kansas and that they were likely going to have to cancel the trip. BAM! Straight to my heart. I know this is our reality right now, but it still gets me. It feels like there are two choices for how to live in this time of COVID: keeping you head down until who knows when, living near family and not planning for two many things that could break your heart; or sticking your neck out to try and keep living large, trying new things and progressing, but taking risks that often end in useless exports of energy or disappointment and heartbreak. Emotional stagnation vs. Emotional rollercoaster. I did a year of the former and now I am in my year of the latter. Both have been hard in very different ways. Both can feel like prisons. Both have unbelievable upsides and growth. Both I am thankful for.
BUT. Suddenly, I was face to face with two weeks of “vacation” and the prospect of feeling alone and depressed by the hole that should have been filled with time spent with my close people. I couldn’t just put my nose back on the grindstone and sing my way through this. First of all, that is not how singing works: you only get a few hours of voice a day and emotions play a huge role in how the instrument is able to function. Thus, how voice lessons can often spiral into counseling sessions. My rebellious, angry side wanted to plan an alternate trip to a beach somewhere exotic. My rational self didn’t think that was a great idea. My heart said, go to Vienna- there are people there who love you and you need to feel loved right now.
Since I left Vienna in 2016, when my mom was dying, I have only had one opportunity to return, and it was only for a couple of days in January 2020. This city is so near and dear to my heart and represents so many things to me: discovering independence by necessity, learning a second language, supporting myself solely on music-related income, discovering a culture of music and people different than my own, and, importantly, the last period in my life when my life and family felt whole, before my mom’s death. When I returned in 2020, I was flooded with emotion. I cried when I stepped into my old apartment. I sat and just felt for hours in the Leopold Museum Cafe. It was a surreal experience, like any time you return to a place you spent a significant portion of your life.
Several weeks ago, within a week and a half, I got four unsolicited invitations to “Come to Vienna!” from folks from whom I wasn’t expecting these invitations. I was mulling it over and looking at dates of my availability, when the final invitation came in from my Austrian host-mom, Gabi, and that was it. At that point, I knew the Paris time was in jeopardy, so when it was officially called off, I jumped right on the opportunity to go to Vienna. The flights were very affordable (who wants to travel at this glorious time of year anyway?), I knew I had a place to stay, I needed to be somewhere other than my glamorous, Parisian dorm room, anyway, AND, importantly, I knew it was about time to start reintroducing German into my brain inundated with French.
After pinning down my travel plans for Vienna, I got an invitation to come audition at an opera house in Germany. I made arrangements for trains and booked a hotel room near the opera house (usually, I always go with AirBnBs, but there weren’t any that were speaking to me). We had our final French exam on Thursday and then Friday, we decided to go to a museum as a class for a fun farewell outing. As I am walking to the museum Friday morning, I look at my phone and see I have missed three calls from a German number. Worrying that it might be the opera house (I get a lot of spam on my phone, but mostly from American numbers… says a lot about American privacy priorities…), I googled the number and found that it was associated with the hotel. Had it been the opera house, I would have had to have prepared myself mentally for that conversation, but as it was the hotel, I just called them right back. As the phone rang, I thought, “Oh yeah, German… uh… Hallo. Dieses Nummer hat mich dreimal telefoniert…” yadada, so on and so forth, trying to prepare something to say that would fill in the gaps of words I had forgotten or that French had taken the place of in my mind. They answer. I give my prepared statement. And it's all off script from there: there was an issue with the booking website. The room isn’t actually available… and other stuff that I couldn’t quite catch (foreign languages on the phone are extra hard). I start responding. Then I hear French spilling out of my mouth. I stop and mumble something to make it clear that I know I am speaking the wrong language and eventually repeat back to the man in actual German that I will find another place to stay. My brain was all fuzzy for the start of French class after that…
It is on my to-do list this week to start bringing my German back. I have a book to read and I will probably try to find some movies to watch, etc. I have to be able to chat with my Austrian host family in German, after all! I was shocked the other week when I was responding to Gabi’s email, how many words I knew I should know but just could not remember, or how for how many words, the French translation had slid into first place for the order of which word comes first after English. This was a battle initially upon arrival in Paris because mostly German words occupied those places. But now the tables have turned.
Yesterday, the German hotel called me again and explained to me something about getting my refund. I was starting to understand when the gentleman on the other line slipped into flawless French to explain more clearly to me. I was shocked. He switched into French, not English! (further proof that my accents may not sound convincing, but they do sound confusing, which, sadly, feels better than sounding too American). But I am also stubborn, and as if to prove that my German was perfectly suitable (also just because my brain was trying to adjust to the pace of change), I repeated to him what I needed to do to get my refund, in German.
That afternoon, I was searching for stationary near Montparnasse and in the second Papeterie, I entered, said my bonjour and found the bonjour of the shopkeeper to be a bit different. As I was reflecting on this, I heard her start talking on the phone in very thickly dialected German, which I assumed had to be an Austrian dialect because of how much I could understand. I worked up my courage and as I went up to the counter I asked her, in German, where she was from. She seemed taken aback (since my German was clearly not native and we were in Paris), but answered that she was from Austria (nailed it!). I explained that I had lived in Vienna for two years, which she didn’t seem to find very interesting, but then I said that I had actually lived in Oberösterreich for part of that time, and her ears perked up. “That explains why you recognized it!” she said and asked exactly where I had lived. I stumbled between German and French as I asked for a specific type of card, which she fished out for me, helping remind me of German words as I would accidentally say petite instead of kleine and so on. Funnily enough, as I was leaving, she remarked how the women who came into the shop behind me were also German speakers!
It is a strange problem, this confusion between languages, but what a gift that I am able to achieve high enough levels in either to communicate with people and what a shock for people to switch to languages with me that aren’t English!
Now, we will see how these trips go :-)
Marie in Paris
