Where is my home?

I hate being jealous. This doesn't occur to me very often.

For instance, the other day I met a boy, who originates from North America. He was quite surprised, when I told him I never wanted to go back in my country. At leas not permanently. At least not to settle there.

I am jealous, because he doesn't understand that. He cannot imagine a reality where people leave their home country, move somewhere else, settle and never go back. Where people immigrate. Forever.

The sad truth is that I will probably become one of those "deserters".
Despite all effort to find something that's worth going back for, I ran out of ideas. My mother will have to forgive those cold words.

Bulgaria is not a place that one calls home, it is not a place where people feel safe, it is not a place that I can go back to. It is most certainly not my place.

The 'home', where social interaction is minimized to a scandal about a parking spot, where the most praised thing is money, where no personal or moral values exist, where I can barely find somebody with whom I can exchange ideas or thoughts, where every level of social hierarchy is corrupted, was my home. But anymore.

Nothing is transparent. Everything is blurred and ugly.

In Germany I found something, that I never knew before : the simple freedom to be me, to do what I love and not to be judged for doing so.
It is not the social system that is so different, but the people, whose values and understandings go beyond that of my own 'kind'.

I am not saying that Germany is my new homeland , "meine neue Heimat", as they call it. I am not saying that I will stay here forever or that this is my dreamland. What I am trying to say is that the opportunities I have had here and the people I have met are irreplaceable . I have change enormously. Although I had always considered myself a citizen of the world and never a citizen of Bulgaria, I came to the point,where I realized that I wasn't open to many things, ideas, ideals.

I still find myself criticizing the consumers' way of thinking or the useless formalities in Germany, but I appreciate even more my unquestionable freedom to be the person that I want to be and to aspire for the things I never thought were possible.

Being here gave me a new look on things, new eyes to understand, new perceptions to feel the world.

And again, I make my way through prejudges and stereotypes that come along with the name "Bulgaria". Its long and dark arm tries to catch me even here. But I will slice it with the sword of knowledge. Then I will be free.