Going (read: studying) abroad can be a process-and-a-half. Even before your plane touches the asphalt of the runway and you let go of that breath that you hadn’t been aware that you were holding, so much has already happened to bring you to that moment. Filling out forms and applications, attending pre-trip meetings and orientations, booking tickets, packing furiously after procrastinating (reader, that was me), saying goodbye to family and friends, checking off boxes of things to do, finishing out your semester (if you’re doing a Maymester as I did), and even finalizing your plans for after your return.

There’s so much pervading our minds that we sometimes forget to prepare our hearts for all that we are about to experience in a space that might be completely outside of our norms and our everyday lives. This is something, I believe, that contributes to the phenomena of culture shock that so many of us experience when going abroad.

The type of heart preparation that I mean is opening it, cracking it, taking the lid off of it, etc. Letting it–and, by extension, your whole self–become a conduit of, for, and towards curiosity and the curious. Without curiosity, we cannot be prepared to gracefully and humanely handle those moments when we, somehow, miss our train stop and don’t realize until we find ourselves above ground on the other side of the city (true story!), when we encounter that sweet older gentleman who doesn’t speak a lick of English and has the thickest Bavarian accent you’ve ever encountered (and your own Deutsch is more than a bit stilted), when your flight from München to Amsterdam is almost cancelled because, of course, the airport chose that day to do maintenance on the runways, or, truly, any time that our best-laid plans go awry.

A curious heart is the one that is ever running through the field of life, its feet scarcely fashioning an indent on the earth; the one that can smile and weep freely and in equal measure at the great and small things; the one with an ear to the ground and an eye to the sky. It allows you to be porous, to give freely of yourself and be receptive to those doing the same in turn. You become both affective and effective. You find yourself doing things that you never thought you would do with people you never thought you would know or meet–wondering around Au on a Sunday evening (when everything is closed in Deutschland) aimlessly when, suddenly, the clouds break open and, naturally, this is the one time you don’t have your trusty Regenschirm (“umbrella”) with you.

You take shelter under a tree, but it’s not doing nearly enough, and you, getting wetter by the second, know that something must be done. And, all of a sudden, the famed Mariahilfkirche (“Mariahilf Church”) seems to appear out of thin air before you. You see people filing in and realize that it is Vespers, the time for the evening service of the Latin liturgical rite. You find yourself at a crossroads: 1) you are not Catholic, but 2) you are rather soaking wet and would rather not catch pneumonia, and 3) you’ve always been curious about the vaunted solemnity of an evening religious service, regardless of denomination. It’s a split second decision that you make. And you can’t quite describe your experience. To say it was numinous seems contrived, but it would be false to say that it wasn’t a transformative, lasting experience, one that you wouldn’t trade for love nor money. And a kind parishioner gave you an umbrella to boot.

Things like this don’t happen if we are not willing to open ourselves and our hearts to new experiences. In English, the polysemantic fields of the word “experience” exist under that word alone. In Deutsch, however, there are two separate words for it: Erfahrung and Erlebnis. The domain of the former is in practical matters–of experience that one might have from time in school or in a certain job. The latter is in the realm of the emotional, the affective, and the transformative–watching the sun rise from a mountain peak, the serendipitously soothing feeling of sand under our feet and fingernails, or something as mundane as the smell of freshly brewed coffee and Bröt from your local Bäckerei Ziegler.

When we have certain Erlebnisse, we are taken out of our daily lives and grow as a result. But they require us to be curious, to be sensitive, and to be open to the people and spaces around us. We need only open our hearts and keep them so, in order to have the chance to partake of so much that the world can offer us, what it wants to offer us, and what we can offer it.

This sounds rather preachy and self-help bookish, so I’m going to cut myself off here! But, seriously, I’m wishing everyone an absolutely fabulous summer wherever they are, filled to bursting with moments that urge you to open your heart and, in some way, take you out of your own life, however briefly.

Tschüss aus Neuperlach Süd <3