E18: Still Sick (Day 367)

Good morning. It’s November 22nd.

I woke up — I was just talking the other day about how it started snowing when I got here last year, and there was no snow in the forecast, but lo and behold: snow on the ground. Got it last night. Not just a sprinkling — probably an inch out there. It’s pretty cool. I just like it.

I didn’t record anything yesterday. Feeling crummy. I still have this chest cold — not nearly as bad as what whacked me last year when that fellow accidentally spittled in my mouth. Long story. But it’s not so bad. I was just in lazy, hide-under-the-duvet mode. Got some work done though. Editing on several fronts. A few calls. But yeah.

I was thinking about the whole allure of expatriation versus the reality of it. If you’re expatriating alone — not moving with a partner or for a partner — it’s a completely different thing. If you moved to another country because you fell in love with a Slovakian woman or man and landed in Bratislava, you’d have a built-in social network and someone else’s social calendar to imprint on. Right into the mix.

The first time I moved to Hungary in 2002, it was a pretty soft landing. I moved with my friend Blaine. He got here maybe six weeks before I did, had already found an apartment, had things mostly lined up. When I landed, I put my stuff down in my room, living with my buddy, he already had a couple friends. Within the first few weeks it was summertime, carrot bars, outdoor activities, and by the end of the summer I’d made a handful of friends. There was always something going on.

This last time around I moved here and had a handful of friends — but within the first two weeks, the two people I would’ve called first to hang out weren’t around. One was out of town, one was working on a production. So there was really no one to pick up the phone and call. Hey, let’s go grab coffee. It’s a strange feeling, waking up and realizing there’s nothing with deep familiarity or deep relationship or deep anything.

A friend of mine was writing about it and talked about how long it takes to form community when you expatriate. That’s really true. When I moved to LA in 2011, I was holed up out in the Santa Monica mountains and didn’t get into the mix, didn’t have much of a social life for the first five years I was there. Almost no community. One of the things that just started making me go a little crazy. Then I moved into the city in 2016 — that’s when my community started to take shape. But even then, it took a year or so to feel like I had my people. New friendships. And that was in a place where I was running around constantly, in the mix through work, knowing the city well.

So if you’re going somewhere where you’re starting from scratch, knowing one or two people, without the language, without professional community — it takes a lot longer. What I’ve developed here in a year is wonderful, and I’m really grateful for it. But the depth I developed after a year in LA, by a great degree, is deeper than what I’ve built here. And I don’t mind the glacial pace. But it takes a long time.

So when people dream of — Trump gets elected and people are like, oh god, I just want to go live in Europe, I want to go somewhere else — yeah, I understand the escapism. But if you don’t have a strong connection to the place you’re going and a deep desire to pick away at it, and a deep desire to learn the language, it’s just going to take that existential loneliness to a much stronger level.

And one thing a lot of people in expat communities do to compensate — [my brain just offered “consecrate” and “constipate” instead of “compensate.” Neither relevant, but here we are] — is find other expats to hang out with. That becomes their social circle. No language barrier. They’ve got their people. Personally, I’d rather take a bullet to the head than have my only community in Budapest be other English-speaking American and British expats. Nothing against them individually. But that is not the cultural experience I’m here for.

And I think it sets you apart in the eyes of the locals. I’m at the point now where in most casual situations I can hold my own in a simple conversation, handle the small talk in Hungarian. And I can’t say it enough — the way locals receive you changes completely once they see you’re learning. They say, wow, you speak really well. Yeah, well — we’ve just tested the limits of my conversational abilities without you knowing it. But even to get that far. It’s one of the genuinely rewarding things. Why deprive yourself of that experience?

Anyway. It snowed this morning. I’ve got this chest cold. I was supposed to have lunch today with my human rights lawyer friend, and it really bums me out to cancel. But if I’m coughing this much just sitting here talking, I definitely don’t want to be doing that in public. I hate getting a coughing jag in public. There’s nothing worse.

Maybe I’ll record more later. I’m going to be stuck in the flat anyway. Maybe I’ll go for a little snowy walk — though the snow will probably melt by lunchtime.

Signing off for now. Okay, bye.