ben ben benko blog

Sretna Nova Godina or Happy New Year or A Wake Up Call

I’ve never understood what the big deal is about New Year’s Eve. I like the idea of a fresh start, a promise of a clean slate to fill with a better year, but I just don’t get the hype and the expectation of the party to end all parties. I’m not trying to be a pessimist, but personally I’d prefer the company of a few close friends in the comfort of my own home to some huge blow out party any day.

Since I’ve been in Croatia, my attitude has pretty much been to just go with the flow. This isn’t too far off from the norm for me, but the point is that when a friend, A, suggested we go to the party that a bar he likes was throwing for New Year’s Eve, I said sure. To be honest I had no expectations. As I said I don’t really understand the New Year hype so I choose not to expect much so I won’t be disappointed (famous last words).

Around 9:30 after about 45 minutes of outfit drama H and I headed out into the cold rain. We met up with A and a few others at his place and had a little champagne and cake. The night seemed to be off to a nice start. So the 5 of us headed out to pick up a few more friends and then headed to the bar a little before 11:00.

Within five minutes of stepping through the door all I could think was, “Okay, how long am I going to have to stay here before I won’t look like a totally uptight no-fun party pooper when I leave?” Now, this place actually seemed like it would have been a pretty cool bar/restaurant/lounge to hang out in on a normal night, but this night was not a normal night. It was NEW YEAR’S EVE! The place was packed wall to wall. The coat room was full by the time we got there so we had to carry our coats around. The little bits of space left between the hundreds of men in polyester suits and women in stilettos and sequined tops were totally filled with thick smoke. After the initial freak out in my brain and the crowd claustrophobia that’s hard to avoid when 95% of the room is taller than you, I tried to set my mind to having fun anyway, but my heart just wasn’t in it.

There was the occasional R-E-S-P-E-C-T or Proud Mary or 3 year old J-Lo hit that got me going on the dance floor, but as soon as midnight hit the DJ switched over to Croatian rock. An hour after that rock had turned to folk and I reached my limit. The smoke was burning my eyes, the people were getting drunker and pushier by the minute, the floor was getting covered in broken glass and everyone was screaming all of the lyrics to their favorite 10 year old Croatian hits. I kept insisting that we should stay and that H should have fun and not worry about me, but my protests wore thin pretty quickly and we decided it was time to go since I was not only raining on my parade but his as well.

As we headed for our coats, we were stopped by an old neighbor of H’s who introduced us to his American friend. All of a sudden I started having fun. She was friendly and fun and spoke good Croatian but seemed glad to speak a little American. Since we were on our way out anyway, we didn’t end up staying to chat for that long, but I felt like I could have stayed another hour or two just chatting and comparing notes on the life of a 20 something American in Croatia, living with a Croatian.

Without realizing it, I had turned into the kind of American who just wants to be around other Americans so they can compare every detail of the new culture to the one they know and complain about every little inconvenience that has popped up along the way. To be honest, I know in my heart that that’s not who I am. Of course, I am constantly comparing America to Croatia but find me someone who doesn’t try to draw parallels between what they know and what they are discovering. It’s human nature. The thing that caught me off guard was how much I craved interaction with someone who really knows exactly what I’m going through. I know plenty of people who have lived in other countries, people who have struggled with foreign relatives, foreign languages, and foreign cultures. What I don’t know is anyone here and now who knows what it’s like to grow up in America, marry someone Croatian and move to Croatia.

So far I’ve been saying that everything is going really well. I’m enjoying Croatia. I’m enjoying exploring Zagreb and Croatian culture. I’m enjoying getting to know friends and family here better. I’m enjoying not working and spending time with H. All of those things are still true, and on the whole I’m happy here or at least content. But meeting that one American right when I was at the end of my rope with Croatian music, and smoke, people pushing past me saying excuse me in a foreign language, made me realize how deep down a part of me really does feel alone here and isolated.

Somehow I had convinced myself that I was great at embracing all of the challenges a foreign country had to offer. After all I still consider my last stint in a foreign country as one of the most wonderful, life changing, enlightening times in my life. What I’m learning is that I’m not that strong by default. I don’t throw myself into new things. I’m cautious, tentative even. I’m introverted and I lack an essential type of self confidence that would allow me to just plow through and go out and get what I want and say stupid things to strangers and get lost and be forced to find my way home. So I’ve decided, this is no way to go about my life here whether I like it or not. I’m not going to beat myself up over the pitfalls of the first month. It’s taken me a month to get all of this straightened out and that’s okay with me. But this is where it ends. I’m sure I will have relapses from time to time, and words are always easier than actions, but on the whole I’m not going to let these shortcomings hang me up. There’s no way to change these things about myself and find people to compare notes with and have fun with, without plowing into life here head first. I can either sit here everyday and just be content or I can go out and make mistakes and make friends and learn from my blunders and feel exhilarated by my successes. This year my New Year’s resolution isn’t so much a resolution but instead a mantra: NO FEAR. NO FEAR. NO FEAR.

posted by Liz @ 11:41 PM