{"id":333,"date":"2013-07-24T23:12:40","date_gmt":"2013-07-24T23:12:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bittesuite.wordpress.com\/?p=333"},"modified":"2016-03-20T19:30:16","modified_gmt":"2016-03-20T19:30:16","slug":"333","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ryankeelerlives.com\/bittesuite\/333\/","title":{"rendered":"Homelandsick: Missing Things Always Happens, Even if Culture Shock Doesn&#8217;t"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>People miss things when they leave their country to live in another one. It&#8217;s a fact. I&#8217;m sure if you asked Science, it would agree with me, so you might as well not even waste your time.<\/p>\n<p>As I was saying: whether or not you experience proper culture shock (or more esoterically: the out-of-towner heeby jeebies), you will undoubtedly regret that parts of your old life aren&#8217;t parts of your new one. And what&#8217;s really cool is that, if you&#8217;re not living abroad right now, then you probably have no idea what those parts are. Total surprises, all of them. For me, at least. As an American (read: Texan) living in Munich, Germany, I can tell you what might make an American (read: Texan) sad about living in Munich, Germany.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not going to say &#8220;friends and family.&#8221; That&#8217;s because everyone misses friends and family. And &#8220;everyone&#8221; includes me. In fact, if any person has friends and family back home to miss, then they miss them without an atom of a doubt. That feeling is so universal that, when I ask a person what they miss about the old life and they start to say &#8220;Fr-,&#8221; I instantly pass out from boredom.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s talk about the interesting stuff, then. You know what I mean&#8211;the stuff we can live without but, dammit, just don&#8217;t want to. What I miss more than anything are the cost and availability of digital entertainment. There, I said it.<\/p>\n<p>I realized this for the first time back in April, when I tried to log into my Netflix account. &#8220;Welcome back, pal! Ready to watch TV shows and movies anytime, anywhere, for one low monthly price?&#8221; Netflix is always so happy to see people.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Am I ever!&#8221; I exclaimed, bubbling with enthusiasm.<\/p>\n<div style=\"float:right;border:1px black solid;padding:3px;width:300px;margin:5px 5px 0;\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ryankeelerlives.com\/bittesuite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/netflix.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-352\" style=\"margin:0;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ryankeelerlives.com\/bittesuite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/netflix.png?w=300\" alt=\"Netflix Tells Me to Get the Hell Out\" width=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ryankeelerlives.com\/bittesuite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/netflix.png 1350w, https:\/\/www.ryankeelerlives.com\/bittesuite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/netflix-300x130.png 300w, https:\/\/www.ryankeelerlives.com\/bittesuite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/netflix-768x332.png 768w, https:\/\/www.ryankeelerlives.com\/bittesuite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/netflix-1024x443.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.ryankeelerlives.com\/bittesuite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/netflix-1200x519.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin:0;border-top:1px dashed black;\">Netflix&#8217;s forehead turns bright read as it anxiously tells me to piss off.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>And then, &#8220;Wait a minute. Oh shit man, since when are you in Germany? Dammit, I shouldn&#8217;t even be talking to you right now. Get out of here before you get us both in trouble.&#8221;\u00a0Netflix&#8217;s forehead was bright red, presumably from rage against my audacity, so I discretely closed my browser window and tried to forget the whole thing ever happened.<\/p>\n<p>I realized it again immediately afterward, when I tried to log into my Hulu account. &#8220;Whoah, buddy,&#8221; said Hulu, &#8220;Where you think you are? America?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No, sir,&#8221; I sighed as I closed down my Web browser and crawled under my bed for a nap.<\/p>\n<p>Then I tried to listen to some music on YouTube. I believe I was trying to show Roxana how badass Volbeat still is. &#8220;Sorry!&#8221; answered YouTube, &#8220;We can&#8217;t show you that, now! Because Germany.&#8221; I decided to hang up the towel for awhile. After all, Munich has beer and parks. Sweet mother of God, does it have beer and parks.<\/p>\n<p>Last month, I regained my itch for music exploration, though. Spotify wouldn&#8217;t let me down. I was sure of that. It started here in Europe, after all.<\/p>\n<p>Spotify totally let me down. After 10 hours of listening, it sent its little text-window bouncer to greet me. &#8220;Time&#8217;s up pal. Pack it up and come back next month.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Good grief. Well, I guess I&#8217;ll have to do this the old fashioned way. Get over here, iTunes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Hey buddy, what&#8217;s up?&#8221; asked iTunes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Well, Germany won&#8217;t let me watch movies or listen to music. I&#8217;m kind of hoping you&#8217;ll help me out. What do you have available?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Oh my, everything! I&#8217;m the U.S. version, after all!&#8221; replied iTunes, elated as ever.<\/p>\n<p>In walked Roxana. &#8220;Hola, amor! What are you doing?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Looking at movies on iTunes. Hopefully something in Horror. Need that adrenaline, now. Want to watch something?&#8221; I asked.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Sure! Let me pay for this one, since I can use my German debit card.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; interjected iTunes. &#8220;She&#8217;s gonna pay?&#8221; Then iTunes sighed, &#8220;You&#8217;ll have to get in touch with my German friend. I&#8217;m not allowed to sell to other countries. Gotta have that American debit card!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Aw, you too, iTunes!? I switched my iTunes location to Germany.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Guten abend!&#8221; exclaimed iTunes&#8217;s German friend. &#8220;Was kann ich fuer Sie tun?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; I said, &#8220;we&#8217;d like to rent &#8216;Mama&#8217; please.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Ah so! Es tut mir leid, aber ich habe kein Film dass &#8216;Mama&#8217; heisst. Bitte fragen Sie meinen amerikanischen Fruend.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Dammit. Okay, well we can probably solve this problem using my debit card and the U.S. iTunes store. Let&#8217;s give that a shot.<\/p>\n<p>That one actually worked. We watched &#8220;Mama&#8221; that night. For $4.99 USD, more than half of what it costs to stream Netflix for a month. On the bright side, we could have watched the movie all we wanted before the 24-hour rental time limit expired.<\/p>\n<p>But &#8220;Mama&#8221; wasn&#8217;t even a good movie. So we only watched it once.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and they also don&#8217;t have &#8220;Game of Thrones&#8221; over here. Wound sufficiently salted.<\/p>\n<p><b>_______________________________________________________<\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>Update July 2014:\u00a0<\/strong>They totally have &#8220;Game of Thrones&#8221; here, now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>People miss things when they leave their country to live in another one. It&#8217;s a fact. I&#8217;m sure if you asked Science, it would agree with me, so you might as well not even waste your time. As I was saying: whether or not you experience proper culture shock (or more esoterically: the out-of-towner heeby &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ryankeelerlives.com\/bittesuite\/333\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Homelandsick: Missing Things Always Happens, Even if Culture Shock Doesn&#8217;t&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[31,34,40,41,65,76,83],"class_list":["post-333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-expat-life","tag-entertainment","tag-game-of-thrones","tag-homesick","tag-hulu","tag-netflix","tag-rant","tag-spotify"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ryankeelerlives.com\/bittesuite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ryankeelerlives.com\/bittesuite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ryankeelerlives.com\/bittesuite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ryankeelerlives.com\/bittesuite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ryankeelerlives.com\/bittesuite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ryankeelerlives.com\/bittesuite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1850,"href":"https:\/\/www.ryankeelerlives.com\/bittesuite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions\/1850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ryankeelerlives.com\/bittesuite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ryankeelerlives.com\/bittesuite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ryankeelerlives.com\/bittesuite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}