Who Am I?

Hi, my name is Aubrey. All my life, I’ve had one of each of my two feet planted in two different countries. I’m an American citizen, I was born here, spent my childhood here, went to school here. I speak fluent English (our unofficial “official” language). In fact, I liked it so much I decided to major in it in college. As a white, native English speaker, I never get clocked as being “foreign.” But the reality is, even though I enjoy the privileges of someone who doesn’t look it, my mother is an immigrant to this country (she spent her first 36 years in Switzerland), and I’m a dual citizen myself (though I just got my other passport a couple months ago).

I grew up celebrating Samichlaustag, eating Grittibänz and trying to say “Chuchichaeschtli” as fast as I could. I can’t speak (any of) the Swiss languages fluently, but some of my first words were Swiss-German, and although I’ve never stayed there longer than 6 weeks at a time, many of my summers were spent exploring my mother’s beautiful home country, stumbling through casual conversations with friends and family, and gobbling up as much Wähe as I could (and borrowing English language books from library).

Though I have never felt anything other than wholly, fully, authentically American, I also sometimes fail to remember (or explain, or explore) the fact that I am not just American (as so many of us aren’t). I have real cultural roots and emotional ties to a country different than the one I’ve spent the majority of the last 23 years living in. This year, I’m changing everything up. If all goes as planned, I’ll spent the good part of the next year abroad in Switzerland, living with close family friends, working on improving my fluency in both Swiss-German and Standard German, traveling a little, and hopefully, making some money in the process (though I haven’t quite figured that part out yet).

There are a lot of travel blogs out there. A lot, I’m sure, much much better and more interesting and more fine-tuned than mine. But, because I’m writer, in desperate need of a creative outlet, and because I thought it might be interesting for others (my friends and family, if no one else) to follow my journey — experiences, insights, and more — to come this upcoming year, I’ve decided to create this blog. I hope I can approach the topic of travel and living abroad in Europe from a unique and nuanced perspective that might be of use to others, as well as use this space as a personal sounding board to reflect on what I’ve seen, accomplished, and learned while I’m there.

To be clear, I’m not particularly interested in giving recommendations on the “best things to do/see” while you’re visiting my new home. It’s definitely not that kind of travel blog. I might throw in the occasional advice piece and give some tips on things that are directly relevant to my own experiences, and that I think others might find useful, like solo traveling as woman or living out of suitcase (which I’ll be doing for the next year, btw, more to come on that later).

But, what I’m much more passionate about is describing and exploring what it’s like to actually live there, if my perspective on the country as a whole shifts at all (and if so, how), how living there influences my sense of a cultural/political/linguistic identity, if I develop any new insights on my first home country of 23 years through seeing it from an outside perspective, and so on.

I’m sure, in the process, I’ll cover experiences like culture shock and homesickness from a more distinctly intimate point of view, but I also plan on questioning and dissecting more broader ideas of identity, language, culture, community, “home,” “belonging,” and others in whatever way they come to me or show up in my life and the lives of others around me.

The tone or voice or really just general angle or approach of this blog is yet to be determined, and a little harder to nail down for me, as I’ve never had quite so much creative freedom to do pretty much whatever I want. Even in my other personal/creative projects, my approach to writing tends to come out as a pretty mixed bag of dry humor, emotionally-fueled rants, philosophical morality questions, and academic-style analysis, with just a hint of political commentary. So, who knows what the heck this will be.

Since it’s my first real blog (that I’ve managed to set up, design, and actually post on), and since, as of now, it makes me no money or has no professional purpose, I plan on writing however feels right day to day. It may come off a little inconsistent or disorganized, but hopefully, if nothing else, it feels authentic, because that’s really something I’m striving for here.

Over time, I’d like to think that others will be able to benefit from what I’ve posted here, or at least get a kick out of what I’ve written, but for now, I write because I just have too much to say to not be documenting it somewhere. It’ll be something to get used to, this writing something and immediately sharing my thoughts with the whole Internet gig, since I normally write poems, stories, and journal entries that sit around for years before I get remotely close to sharing them with another human being. However, I think it will be good for me, and push me out of my comfort zone, just like this whole moving to a whole ‘nother country thing will too.

There are so many more things I know I’d like to (and need to) explain, but for now, I think this is enough to give you a general sense of who I am and what this blog might be. Wish me luck, here I go.