Last week, we discussed how to use the design process to bring a potluck item to an Easter party. This week, we’re going to build on that and show how this design process helps us start with the ideal and move to the real in a more complex situation: our experience in Europe. Perhaps you remember our car trouble in Europe. At the time, this was a source of significant friction–but friction, in design, is often where the most interesting textures are created. Here is an excerpt from my notes about this experience, written 6 months into our time in Germany:
“Moving to Germany has been an adventure, but much different than I anticipated. Before we left the States, we mapped out different adventure strategies, such as focusing on travel vs. immersing ourselves in the local culture. It has ended up being a strange mixture. We’ve lived here almost 6 months. We have no car, our house isn’t quite “settled,” and we haven’t really traveled much. But we are comfortable riding the trains, navigating downtown, living it up with local cultural events, and our former community leader said we’ve become part of the community faster than any family he has seen—and there are a lot of families to observe, as our community is huge.
“German is not coming as it could, but that is an intentional choice. Living abroad has been an adjustment, especially learning to live without a car, and the fact that every German speaks English to some degree doesn’t make the need what I would have imagined. My college girls took German, but we put it on the backburner for now. German is sometimes so similar to English, however, that sometimes I understand, thinking they are speaking English. It’s rare, but it has happened. I pick up bits and pieces. I understood much more of the Spanish I heard in Peru, and the French in France even more so, so I feel like we’re about ready to add German back into the curriculum. It will get there. But without a community it will not get beyond the functional level, so that will have to do. Mastering German is not the adventure we selected.”
Before we moved to Germany, we designed hypothetical tour packages.When we moved to Europe and began having car trouble, it seems that our dreams for exploring Europe were never to be. How would we explore all of the castles if we couldn’t get to them? But, in honesty, though we wanted to see the castles, we had decided that our dream version of living in Europe would be to immerse ourselves in the local culture. In this, our car trouble was a tool rather than a hurdle.
1. Objective & Constraints
We determined our objective: immerse ourselves in the local culture. Part of this was connecting to the local music culture. Wherever we live, music has been the fastest way to connect to others in the community. We knew that would be an asset in Germany. Constraints: no car, physical bandwidth limitations, language struggles, time and energy limitations. We knew we couldn’t do it all in Europe.
2. Research & Brainstorm
We looked into the options. We found that members of the community could join the local university choir. There was also a local German American choir. We researched all of the options for classical concerts and performances. We found that tickets to some concerts included public transportation in the ticket price. We assessed the need for piano teaching and children's choirs in our American community. We found more constraints. Adults have to go through a lengthy legal process. Children do not have to go through such a process.
3. Selection & Planning
We decided to purchase season tickets to the Stuttgart Philharmonic, the full eighteen concerts. My husband had to go in person to the ticket office downtown three times. We found other concerts to attend, such as the Vienna Boys Choir, who were performing on the shores of Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. My husband was invited to accompany the German American choir. My daughter decided to audition for the Stuttgart Opera Children’s Choir. With music teaching, my children agreed to teach and I would simply supervise.
4. Prototyping
When we signed up for season tickets to the symphony, we were told that our tickets would be waiting for us at the box office. When we arrived, no tickets were waiting for us. The seats we had selected were occupied. We hadn’t even paid yet, but were given seats and attended the concert. We had intended to commit to the full season, but we could have walked away from this event and just paid for the one concert. The experience ended up being a prototype, and a failed one at that. The symphony itself was a big success. We had to decide if the frustrations with tickets outweighed the benefit of attending.
My husband didn’t commit to playing to the German American choir fully. His schedule was busy. He started out with just one rehearsal and one performance. I attended the rehearsal to gauge joining the choir myself. We started out with just a couple of piano students, only committing to one semester. My daughters taught a summer music camp. Short duration, commitments by the week.
5. Creation & Evaluation
The first season of the symphony was amazing. Excellent performances by world class musicians. Not all of the performances worked with our schedule, however. Some of the performances were better than others. And we only had two tickets. Sometimes we bought a couple more so our children could join us.
The second season we were more selective, attending only the best concerts. We bought four seats, so we could bring two children each time. We were not able to attend all of these concerts either, as we didn’t always know our May schedule the September before, when we selected concerts.
Additionally, we didn’t realize that when we signed up for the first season, we automatically were signing up for those seats indefinitely. The tickets had never arrived to us, and the new ticketmaster didn’t realized we were already signed up. In Germany, it’s legally binding and we owed several thousand euros to the city of Stuttgart! You would think this would have deterred us, but we realized every good thing comes with a cost. We called things like this “Americans living in Europe tax.” Fortunately, they made an exception for us and dropped the charges.
The third season, we ensured we were not automatically enrolled and we purchased tickets and attended concerts as they came along. This cost more per ticket, but we had more control over the planning. We felt it was completely worth the effort, even the difficulties. The Philharmonic was a highlight of our European experience.
As for joining choirs, my husband accompanied the choir and several additional choirs in the community, as his schedule allowed, for the duration of our time in Germany. I did not join that choir, but had the opportunity to sing with another German choir. Americans were invited, and there were two other Americans in the choir. I was the only member of the choir who didn’t speak German, however. By this time, we were nearing the end of our time in Germany, so I finally understood enough to get by–with a little help from whichever kind soprano singers sat next to me. All of the choir members spoke a little English. I understood how choir rehearsals operate, so transferring this knowledge helped me adapt, culturally. The choir members were patient with me and my “American sized” choir folder, which was shorter and wider than German folders, which made it more difficult to stand very close together and was a source of amusement to all.
My daughter’s audition was a phenomenal experience. She learned her song in German and auditioned, solo, for a group of directors. Afterwards our friend, an American who worked at the opera, gave us a personal, guided tour of the Opera House. I will never forget the magic of seeing the tall enclosures where the backdrops were stored, hearing the stories while sitting in the box seats created specifically for the royalty of the day, and walking past the backstage bustle of staff preparing racks of clothing and wigs. It was among the coolest experiences of our time in Europe. In the end, that children’s choir didn’t work out, but my daughter was able to join another German children's choir.
Piano teaching was successful. We started out with my older daughter as the head teacher, the next oldest as the apprentice. The older daughter left, and the next became the head teacher, with her brother as the apprentice. When that next daughter left, my oldest son was the head teacher and his younger brother was the apprentice. That’s a lot of talent growth in a few short years!
Here I am going to insert a bit about our public transportation experience. It wasn’t a consciously intentional part of our experience. It just sort of happened. We needed to get to and from these rehearsals, as well as grocery shop and go to the library. We did ease into the process and learn the ways, but it was more out of necessity. It became just the experience we were looking for.
Riding trains is the perfect way to discreetly observe, undisturbed. We learned to shop like the Germans–several times a week, since you couldn’t lug a whole week’s worth of groceries with you onto the bus. We learned the quiet, courteous ways of the Germans. A bus in Germany is not a place for small talk–which is really disappointing when you are trying to learn to speak German, but the art of fitting in discreetly is an underrated skill. This came in handy when we attended concerts and joined choirs.
6. Delivery & Communication
The performances. We all performed several times. We incorporated some of these songs into our daily family life. We learned my daughter’s songs and I taught the children mine. Because the songs are in German, we learned a lot of vocabulary and improved our pronunciation. We still review these songs once a week to keep them in our memories. We were also able to attend concerts with friends and family when they visited. Sharing our opportunities gives us a way to cement them into our experience.
Finally, as another side bonus, we did get a chance to use our German in an appropriate context–at the mechanic shop. While most Germans speak English, there was a smaller density of this skill at our local car dealer. By year three, the mechanics and I became good enough at expressing ourselves in Germ-English that we arrived at a comfortable conversation level–and I was often the one speaking (in German). It’s not so much the German words I knew, though that did help, but knowing the German ways allowed me to communicate. I’m sure the German mechanics knew a bit about Americans as well, at least enough to humor me in my odd way of communicating. We didn’t master German as a language, but we became quite proficient in German as a way of life.
The sad part of this tale is that our greatest problem with our cars could have been solved months before. The dealership thought we said that a certain fix had been performed when we had told them that it hadn’t. Multiple trips to the dealer, multiple rental cars and failed trips out of the country. But we would have missed out on all of the German cultural immersion. Life has an interesting way of giving us what we want when we are intentional. The experience may be much different than we originally planned–the rubbing may chafe–but that is the price we pay for an experience that completely transforms us.
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