#01 Lost in Translation: Culture Shocks, University, and Driving Mishaps in Australia

@koalaconservationreserve on Phillip Island

Howdy ya’ll!

It’s been a couple of months since I’ve promised you that I will be keeping you up to date via a blog. And I have tried to, and I kept failing! I was just feeling too much pressure about whether I should write in German or English, whether I should talk about my day and trips or make it more controversial and just talk about my opinions and perceptions more broadly. After meeting with my culturally bipolar Sri Lankan/ Aussie friend Rangi and receiving some encouragement from her, I have decided to finally face the task of sitting down and concentrating long enough to gather all my thoughts and come up with something at least mildly interesting to read.

So I’ve been in Australia for two months now and it has been a wild ride so far. Overall I will say: I fucking love Australia. It felt very overwhelming at first, but once I was able to pass the initial state of a culture shock I started enjoying every bit of living here. I’ve concluded for myself that part of the reason why I like it here so much is because of how crazy everything is here, specifically when you compare it to Germany/ Austria. It feels very freeing to be living in a country that has a less uptight culture I guess? People here are very chatty which I’m still trying to get used to. It was really confusing to me at first that Aussies use „How are you?“ as a way to greet you and you’re not actually supposed to say how you’re actually doing. You just say „fine, thank you, how are you?“ and then the person will say „I’m great, thanks. What would you like to have?“ and only then will you get to order what you want.  It feels like a silly little ritual. And this felt weird to me due to two reasons: a) it is kinda feels like a waste of time and, b) no one actually wants to know how you’re doing (what if I’m having a really shit day - will you listen to me complaining about this?). It kinda feels socially unacceptable to be feeling anything else but „good“ because this is the default answer here. Anyways, I got used to it and I don’t feel as awkward about it as I did at first. Coming to Australia made me realize how „German“ I am even though I don’t really feel very German back home. For instance, Aussies are world champions in having smalltalk and also just telling you a bunch of random facts about themselves even if they only met you five minutes ago. I once had a barista tell me his entire life story after I’ve ordered my large oat-cap and how he studied engineering in RMIT, worked for years in CBD in some good paying boring office job and how he absolutely hated it and now he bought this café from the old owner and bla bla bla, this conversation was very one-sided. This was my first day in Australia and I definitely felt socially drained after having this five minute conversation. „Why can I not drink my coffee in peace?“ - I thought. Now, I LOVE having random interactions with random people, the whole environment feels like it’s taking all the heavy chains you have to put on when living in German-speaking countries in order to appear similar to them and not stand-out. This whole development is hilarious from my perspective considering I had to go through the opposite cultural adjustment when I first immigrated to Germany. I remember specifically that people perceived me as too loud, too bubbly, too chatty, too open and I worked hard to learn to tone it down and become more „German“. And now that I am living in Australia, people here perceive me as being too closed off and too chill? That’s life I guess.

This cultural experience thing is not only true in the private context but also in the university context. You are expected to chat to your professors quite a lot which I still don’t really understand why it’s in any way relevant to my grades? For instance, one of the subjects I am taking is „The Buddhist Universe: An Introduction.“ It’s a really fascinating and cool subject and it is part of the anthropological school at the university. Basically we study about the history of Buddhism, all the „branches“ that developed since THE Buddha first walked this earth (quick lesson: Theravada Buddhism is the oldest existing school - more common in Sri Lanka, Thailand etc., while Mahayana Buddhism developed later on and is more common in China, Japan etc., and both of these branches have different understandings of how to reach enlightenment and thus how to reach nirvana. Mahayana Buddhism is also known as the ‚great vehicle’ because it suggests a „faster“ way to reach nirvana - which is a transcendent state with no suffering, desire and even a sense of self. It is kind of their version of heaven? But it feels wrong to say it considering the Buddhist cosmology is so complex.), but also how Buddhism relates to different fields such as AI, nature, feminism and so on. It is all very complicated and I can’t say that I am grasping this subject too well. The best part are the tutorials we have - we get to see old (or even ancient) objects, examine them and, based on our knowledge we have to guess their purpose, country of origin and which century it is from. So all in all a great subject! Most importantly, our professor is to die for. She is very typically Australian, she speaks with a funny accent and I don’t get half of the references/ jokes she makes. She is married to a Japanese man and speaks fluent Japanese by the sound of things - every time we have a lecture she will randomly say something in Japanese as if it’s common sense to know what the hell it means. That’s another thing about Aussies: I get the sense that their baseline level of energy is just 10-times higher than the baseline level of any German person. Aussies are the definition of „high on life“ and as much as I love this about them, I just can’t get on their level. To put it differently, it seems as though Australians are purely fueled by coffee. Anyways, my point with this story is that it is expected of you to interact quite a lot with your professors - in a funny, casual and not always subject-related way which is new for me. For instance, I had to submit an annotated bibliography for this subject and I wasn’t quite happy with my result - I scored 77/100, but considering the highest grade was 83/100, I suppose I did alright. Nonetheless, I found this grade quite surprising, especially considering all of her feedback was overly positive, so from my perspective, I couldn’t quite figure out what was wrong with it. Another thing was that we didn’t have any outline of what we will be graded on, i.e. a page with the marking criteria. She just discussed verbally with us what she expects for this assignment which I find a bit odd and unusual, but that’s apparently more typical for Arts subjects. To quote another Aussie friend of mine, these types of subjects grade your assignments „based on vibes“. When I was talking to another girl from this subject, she gave me the tip to go to the professor and have a personal meeting with her and talk to her because apparently, if she gets to know me better it will make a difference in the grade I will receive. And this really surprised me, because why the fuck should it matter for her to know me as a person? Shouldn’t I just be an anonymous number that no one cares about and just be graded based on objective facts? But I suppose it is more difficult to achieve that when there is no clear outline. So to conclude, your personality kinda matters in the university context and if you are not extroverted enough and you don’t make it a priority to stand out in class at all times, your grade will suffer under that. Which again, I find that a bit odd, but I suppose it is just the cultural difference and also the difference in priorities that are being set in the academic context. Most importantly, I think that professors here can AFFORD to care about what type of person you are, because they are simply paid better and have more resources provided by the university as opposed to our free, state-dependent, underfunded universities.

Just to give you an example, earlier I had a lecture in said subject. Afterwards, I wanted to go up to the professor and ask her a question about my upcoming presentation. Well, too bad that the two guys from the subject who keep sucking up to her, got earlier to her desk than I did. This resulted in them talking for 10 minutes about Japanese football (by all due respect, who even keeps up with Japanese football?), the mountain region near Hiroshima and how great Oxford University is. I was just standing there like a loser trying to get a word in and reaaaally failing at it. And then everyone just walked out and I didn’t get a chance to ask her anything. Probably gonna cry myself to sleep over this interaction.

In terms of the cultural differences that I’ve encountered here, there is actually a theory aiming to explain just that. I’ve recently heard in one of my psyc lectures how the extent to which a country is more homogenous or heterogenous influences the way these cultures (or nations) express emotions. So to break this down, what it means in essence is, that nations that are more diverse (i.e., heterogenous) such as Australia, the US and Canada have a higher emotional expressivity, such as smiling more or generally being more emotionally expressive (as opposed to Germans for instance). And the explanation for this phenomenon is that countries which experience a lot of immigration from different countries had to rely more on their emotional expression to communicate with one another (because there is no clear set of cultural rules or the same language being spoken, there is more diversity and thus one way to bridge the differences amongst the many groups is via a higher emotional expression). So this would explain why I perceive Australians to be so energetic and chit-chatty and „high on life“. If anyone is interested to read more about this, the study is by Rychlowska, Miyamoto & Matsumoto et al. (2015; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25902500/).

So that’s my main brain dump for today although there is one more thing that I have to get off my chest. Last week I was in Sydney for five days and it’s definitely one of the rather bad trips I ever had. I don’t want to say that it was the „worst trip“ because that feels dramatic, but it’s definitely up there. Even writing this I feel a bit conflicted because I am still quite confused at how things went down, but overall it is safe to say that things could have went better.

Okay, so what exactly happened? It was mid-semester break last week so obviously I wanted to get away from rainy (and still quite cold) Melbourne. Most of my other friends that are on exchange here went to the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane or Noosa. I am very keen on going to Queensland as well, but I was thinking that it probably makes more sense going there after my semester and just traveling from Cairns down to Brisbane at once (thus seeing Whitsundays, Magnetic Island and hopefully also Noosa if it somehow works out in this time frame). I guess I thought it would make sense to do it all at once, but now I regret not joining my other friends.

Anyways, me and some other people decided on going to Sydney, although even the initial planning was a bit difficult due to different ideas of how the trip should go down. At the end we were a group of five people including one of my closest friends here (who is Icelandic), one of her friends (also from Iceland) a French girl and a Spanish girl. The Frenchie was stressing me out a bit because we have quite the different personalities - she can’t seem to be able to chill if she doesn’t know what the plan is for every hour throughout the day, while I am more of a „go with the flow“ type of person. So I suppose this trip was set out for failure from the beginning. While we were in Sydney we planned two day trips: one day we were supposed to go see the Figure Eight Pools (gorgeous rock pool formations, you should look it up; https://secretsydney.com/figure-8-pools/) and one day to the blue mountains. In essence, the Figure Eight Pools was my idea and I was desperate to see it. It includes a hike that can be somewhat dangerous - you have to arrive there at low tide and make sure that conditions are right. So in order for you to be able to see the Figure Eight Pools, you have to walk over two rock platforms and that’s quite dodgy. The rocks are slippery and if you see waves hitting against these platforms, you shouldn’t go over anymore. There is a real danger of shocker waves in Australia and a few people have died on this hike which is why you should be prepared and know what you’re facing. And I’ve… explained this several times to the rest of the group. Anyways, this hike is located in the Royal National Park and it is about an hour drive from Sydney. So in order to get there, we needed a car which is why we rented one for two days. The Frenchie - let’s just call her Chloé (not her real name) - was the one to offer to drive the car and also reserve it. So far so good. The evening before the planned trip, we were supposed to go and pick up the car. Because I had to take an online test for one of my subjects I couldn’t join so my Icelandic friend went with Chloé to pick it up and help her. And apparently, it was quite the catastrophe. Chloé seemed to be an insecure driver and didn’t have a good feeling for the car. For instance, she kept driving over the white line of the road and thus she wasn’t really staying in her lane. She couldn’t keep the steering wheel stable and she was pressing the gas pedal quite strongly - basically she seemed like an unexperienced driver. Which was weird, because she told us that she drives quite a lot back home and that she is experienced. We didn’t really question it at first, because I assumed that anyone offering to drive a car in a foreign country (especially one that drives on the other side of the road compared to Europe) must feel confident in their driving skills. But then again, it was nighttime, everyone was tired and maybe she was just feeling exhausted and would drive better the next day. We didn’t want to be overbearing and tell her that someone else will drive, after all you expect adults to be able to assess their abilities and their limits.

Anyways, the next day she was supposed to pick us up at 8am from Sydney’s central station - easy meeting point. Me and my Icelandic friend arrive at the meeting point and wait for the others to pick us up. More than half an hour passes and they are still no where to be seen, which is quite weird considering we were a 15 minutes drive away from their hostel. Then an hour passes and they are still not there. Meanwhile, the other Icelandic guys texts my friend to tell her that the Frenchie bumped the car when exiting the parking lot and broke the side mirror. Also, she can’t seem to be able to drive in Sydney and keeps going the wrong way. Finally, they manage to arrive at the meeting point and my friend offers to drive the car, which the Frenchie (thankfully) accepts. Only problem is that we arrive at the hike 3 hours later and it is now high tide time, so we cannot walk over to the pools anymore. I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t disappointed and kinda pissed off. Like yes, of course things like that happen - but why would she offer to drive and actually actively insist on driving if she doesn’t have enough experience? Later on we would find out that she’s had her driver’s license only for a year (!!!) which I feel like she could have said earlier and most importantly, it wasn’t her who was driving so much back home, it was mostly her sister while she often sits in the car next to her sister. So at this point, after her erratic behavior before the trip even, I am quite annoyed at her. The Figure Eight Pools was the one thing I wanted to see and because of her I couldn’t see it. Also, she kept asking me several times if I am sure that we can’t walk over, even though I explained it several times to her and even asked some Aussies on our way down to the beach if it is safe to walk there. And yet, she kept being unable to understand the danger at which point I told her „honestly, if you want to walk over, be my guest but I won’t be doing that and I also don’t want to be responsible for you in case anything happens.“

Writing this right now feels strange because I don’t feel as though I am able to convey even half of the situations and the atmosphere during this trip. I feel like you had to be there to understand what a shitshow this was. Anyways, on our way back from the trip she was already eager to decide what we will do tomorrow - considering we still have the car and she is desperate to use it. I told her earlier that the weather forecast looks quite bad- it will be raining the entire day, there is a risk for a thunderstorm and the wind will be around 30 km/h. So I told her that personally, I don’t think these are hiking conditions and most importantly, we wouldn’t be able to see anything. Again, she didn’t seem to understand why I was against it and kept saying that we could do a short hike (only 45 minutes) instead. Again, I told her that I simply don’t want to go hiking in this type of weather at all, especially due to the reason that none of us is prepared for this type of weather conditions. Anyways, she was just being incredibly annoying and adamant that we HAVE to do a trip on this very day! So eventually, we ended up going on a trip to another place and frankly, it was such a waste of everyone’s time. Instead of staying in Sydney and going to a museum or the cinema or whatever, we were driving for an hour in the worst weather conditions, all so that we could see a lighthouse for maybe five minutes and then drive back all because she reaaaaally wanted to use the car (because we already paid for it). So fast-forward to the evening time of that very day, we have to bring the car back. The conditions were still rough, it was evening and still raining. When my Icelandic friend was parking the car, it was difficult to see anything and she was cautious because there was a tree behind the parking spot that we could drive into if we are not careful enough. So because she can’t see anything, I exist the car to signal to her how much more she can drive back. Chloé for some reason finds it necessary to jump out of the car, push me out of the way and start signaling as well, which I found quite weird. After we all got out of the car to look if the parking is okay, Chloé decides that it is her time to shine, grabs the keys from my friend’s hand and says „Let me do it!!!“. Then, she proceeds to drive the car out of the parking spot and then with full force (so basically when you step on the gas pedal fully and not slowly), she drives into the spot and nearly bumps into the tree. Literally. She missed it by a split second. And then she exits the car looking real proud of herself for parking the car so well. When we told her that she nearly drove it into the tree she just laughs and shrugs it off, as nothing has happened?!! Again, this description is just the tip of the iceberg. I could go way more into detail about this but I feel like it’s time to forget about this and move on. All I can say is that those two days with her were incredibly stressful, we are not in any way compatible and to be honest, I think like she has quite a lot of maturing to do. But let me mention the best part - the broken side mirror 300$ in total (!!) and we decided to split it (she hasn’t offered once to pay it herself or even apologize that she caused this) and on top of that, we had to pay 90$ in tolls. And especially the last part was very surprising, because it shouldn’t have been more than 20$ and I kept asking her how it can be that high, to which she avoiding answering. Well, turns out, when she was picking us up, she went over the Harbour Bridge in Sydney around THREE TIMES BACK AND FORTH which costs 4$ each way. So in total, each of us had to pay an extra of 80$ due to her mistakes which frankly, could have been avoided. I guess my conclusion would be that maybe I was having too much fun overall and a bad trip had to happen so that there would be some karma balance if you know what I mean.

Nonetheless, I still enjoyed seeing Sydney - it is a gorgeous city! The beaches there are just amazing, I did the Bondi to Bronte walk and it was absolutely stunning. I really enjoyed seeing the lifestyle there as well, everyone is so fit, constantly running or surfing and it is a really fun city to be in. Most notably, their weather is 10-times better than Melbourne weather (which is famously known to have four-seasons in a day). And yet, Melbourne feels like it has more character than Sydney. Controversial opinion, but I would say Melbourne is the Berlin of Australia.

If you made it so far, thanks for reading and I hope this was somewhat entertaining. I know grammar & co. could be better, but let me use this blog as a growing and learning experience!

Bussi Baba & yours truly,

Katja

P.S. if you fancy a book recommendation, read Jilya by Tracy Westerman. It is about the first Aboriginal woman to complete a PhD in clinical psychology in Australia and I was crying after reading the first 10 pages. It’s is painfully beautiful and you just have to read it! Here’s a link: https://www.amazon.com.au/Jilya-Indigenous-Pilbara-transformed-psychology/dp/0702268690#customerReviews.