By Adriana Cuevas
Translated by Herbert Meck
I have something to tell you. About 3 hours ago I boarded the train towards Frankfurt very spontaneously, since I got a few days off from work after all. Since it’s currently the end of the cold and rainy August 2021 and autumn is approaching, I was thinking about mulled wine. And here’s what I came up with:
A self-evident question is what we do on special holidays, for example, on February 14 for Valentine’s Day, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, birthday, on vacations, at the end of work, and undoubtedly on Christmas and New Year’s Eve. A fact for single immigrants is that we predominantly have no set plans for holidays.
My personal experience is one of discomfort when asked about this. You can sometimes know too many people that you are very lonely at the same time. I mostly don’t have any set plans, except for my university, or my education. My fixed plans revolve around my goals as a successful woman with a good education and a good steady job. The rest, like the arrangement of vacations, friendships and holidays is decided more or less spontaneously. Most of the time I am invited somewhere and then I can accept the invitation.
The advantage of this is that I feel a certain freedom of choice and can thus experience new events. So, since I rarely actually have anything safe or festive planned, I usually have to improvise and see that I can do something on the holidays.
Back home, my habits look like this; My family on my mother’s and father’s side is very big. If we celebrate anything, we are at least 30 participants, and then you have to add the close circles of friends. Therefore, I have always had people close to me to celebrate and sit together. That was very nice and gave me a certain security and stability.
It is very nice but at the same time very hard to get out of your comfort zone.