1. Friends who will notice and comment on your use of “repatriating” rather than the less worldly “coming home.”
2. Friends who will ask you to name out loud, while simultaneously counting along on their fingers, all the countries you’ve visited.
3. Friends who want you to explain the difference between the EU, Eurozone, and Schengen Area to them. If they occasionally mix them up and give you an opportunity to re-explain with strangers present, even better!
4. Friends who will carefully repeat after you each time you reveal the correct pronunciations of European cities: Pair-ee, Pra-ha, Buda-pesht, Krak-oof. Furthermore, they will remember these pronunciations forever and profusely thank you for it in future conversations.
5. Friends who will maintain steady and respectful eye contact whenever you begin a sentence with “That reminds me of this one time in…”
6. Friends who will accept the sweeping generalizations you will make about Australians, Brits, Italians, and Danes based on your inebriated exchange with the four gentlemen from your hostel who waited in the Berghain line with you (none of you got in, but your friends aren’t ones to pry).
7. Friends who will volunteer to accompany you to any sort of non-hamburger joint that serves alcohol. Ideally, they will also ask you how the meal and drink you’ve ordered compares to their counterparts in the Old World.
8. Friends who will jump in a car with you, excited that you will soon begin lamenting the lack of widespread public transportation in the US and proceed to rank the cities you visited in order of metro station cleanliness.
9. Friends who would like your take on the unethical nature of budget airlines but won’t ask you about the three dozen Ryanair flights you’ve taken in the past twelve months.
10. Friends who aren’t interested in how many non-expat friends you made as an expat. They just assume you climbed to the top of the social ladder of the small Eastern European country you deigned to occupy for a year.
11. Friends who will ask you to reenact your conversations with locals in your host country about, among other things, the January 2019 US government shutdown, Colin Kaepernick and the NFL, and which Democratic presidential candidates you’ve already deemed problematic, so you can demonstrate to American white people how woke you remained in the presence of non-American white people.
12. Friends who will comment, with all sincerity, “So pretty! Did you take this photo?” every time you post a moody #TBT shot of the Vltava River from Letna Park, circa February 2018.
13. Friends who will notice all the “European flavour” – coffee table books, photo coasters, framed maps, a shelf full of tasteful Russian nesting dolls – you’ve introduced to your new downtown Des Moines digs.
