Taiwanese on the U-Bahn

It's interesting how your brain filters out "noise" that you receive from the environment. I've read that if the brain actively processes all the sounds and smells and images that it's constantly bombarded with, it would explode from all the electric signals the neurons are firing at each other. Okay I made up that bit about the explosion, but it makes sense doesn't it?

Today, I hopped onto the U-Bahn to return home after having lunch at the Hackescher Markt stop. The U-Bahn was fairly busy, and the "noise" from my environment was German--simply because I don't understand it. All of a sudden, I heard something that vaguely sounded like Mandarin. I turned around and saw an Asian family and proceeded to eavesdrop. I was too far to understand what they were saying, but I was sure they were speaking Mandarin and Taiwanese. When the U-Bahn stopped at the next station, I moved away from the door as people boarded and unboarded. As the U-Bahn started moving again, I was close enough to them to initiate a conversation.

Ning eh hiao gong dai-wan-weh?

They looked at me, a bit surprised, and started being really talkative. I learned that they are originally from KaoHsiung in southern Taiwan, but the man has been working here in Berlin for 30 years. It seemed that the rest of the family was just visiting. In our short conversation that lasted two stops, the grandmother also managed to give me several life lessons. There was also a young boy who had his head in his mother's lap, who looked up at me once in a while and was generally unimpressed with seeing another Taiwanese on the U-Bahn.

I feel pretty at ease in Berlin after only two days, but hearing English reminds me  of home. Home in the broad sense of growing up in the states, an experience that includes school, friends, and the language I think and count in. Hearing Taiwanese in a foreign place evokes a different sense of home, the family sense that is almost completely disjointed from my experiences outside of home. It reminds me of my parents and aunts and grandparents, and I'm sure the life lessons from the grandmother contributed to that feeling too.