So...When Do I Get to Go Home?: The Traveler's Emotional Roller Coaster

Posted by Suzanne Swartz Mar 28, 2009

The German language has some great travel-related words: Wanderlust, Heimweh, Schadenfreude...oh, wait. That last one's only applicable when you're watching some poor guy loaded down with suitcases at the airport miss his flight, and you think, "Tee hee, I'm glad that's not me."

Anyway. Heimweh (pronounced "hi-mvay") is a curious concept because it's a weird combination of homesickness and nostalgia. It happens to most people who spend an extended period of time in a foreign country, and really, there's no shame in it.

Potential symptoms of Heimweh include:

• talking about people and places from home more than you probably intended to, with particular emphasis on what you are looking forward to when you return
• buying product brands you also have in your home country, for familiarity's sake
• becoming irritated by some aspects of the foreign culture you're living in
• feeling really, really excited about the day you're supposed to hop on a plane and go home...a couple months before it is actually going to happen
• getting a silly, dreamy grin on your face when a Viennese street performer starts up a saxophone rendition of Sinatra's "New York, New York" on the main shopping thoroughfare Mariahilferstrasse...yeah.

Believe me, if I did not experience any of the above signs, even to the smallest degree, while I lived overseas, I would have stayed in Europe pretty much indefinitely.

Granted, it's important to have an appreciation for home while you're away, and of course it's totally normal to miss the people you care about. But when that appreciation for home starts to overshadow appreciation for where you actually are, when homesickness and nostalgia start to distract you from your everyday surroundings, it's a sure sign of Heimweh.