Living in a rural village

Hello community,

I am a 20 year old student, who lives in a small village of about 6000 population. I've never experienced, what it's like to live in a big city. The University I study at has got about 1800 students, it is a rather small university. It is about 60km / 40mi from my home, so I commute everyday by car. The small town where the university is located, has about 20k population, so it's yet a fairly small town.

This is not necessarily bad for me, but there is another critical problem, and the worst thing is that I can't do anything about it. The average birth rate is very low in my country. Not only the average is low, but in rural areas, the birth rate is mostly lower than average. So the average age increases, as there are less young people every year. More than half of the People are older than 40. There are villages, where more than one third of the Population is over 60. The more rural the area, the older the society, as young people tend to move into cities. I don't have much experience in life, but I think I can see my village slowly dying. I go for a walk regularly with my dog, and sometimes it's really terrifying, how calm the streets have become. Years ago I remember as a child, when we waited in Queue more than one hour just to get an ice cream in our famous ice Café. Even this ice Café, which used to be overloaded all summer, has become very calm. The playgrounds are abandoned most of the times. When you drive by the local school at noon, you can't see a crowd of pupils leaving the school, but a few pupils on empty sidewalks. There is no disco / club / bar or something for young people to hang out in the evening, but more than enough Restaurants for the old people. To go for a drink, you would have to drive to the neighbour town (30k Pop.) about 10km. But if you want to get drunk, you better get home before 7pm, because the puplic Transportation Ends, or you could call an expensive yellow cab. We used to have a Train Station, but it was closed due to low demand. I must not get drunk, because I always have to get home. I am bound to my car. Here in town we say: "After 7pm the sidewalks are folded up". It's because the roads are usualle empty at that time. Everyone watches TV, plays cards and reads books or surfs the (slow) Internet. No one invites the whole town and has a huge party with loud music. No adolescents doing nonsense and annoying the heck out of adults. At 10pm, you can literally lay down in the middle of a road intersection and sleep, as there is no car at all in the night. At night it is absolutely silent, sometimes you hear just a truck driving in the far distance, or you hear the central heating burning fuel in adjacent houses. When I walk through the streets, I rarely meet some friends, but most of the local friends are retired and thus not really friends, but we just know each other and chat about latest occurences. There is literally no person, who would be interesting for me to do something with, as they are all too old. Every young person I know immediately left the village after finishing school. Most of my friends in my age moved to various locations far away.

My residence has got some qualities, that most people seek when going on holidays, but I am literally tired of being on holiday, LOL. I am so tired of living in this village, but for me it is the best financial option, because I have a job in the neighbour town and I don't have to rent an Apartment, when I live at my parent's house. Commuting by car is much cheaper than living near the university. I got my driving license for more than two years, I've never experienced a traffic jam, yet I am more than 10 hours in the car in one week just driving to the university and there are another 10 hours in one week working as a pizza delivery guy.

I am suffering from these calm circumstances. I would love to get to know new people without having to drive to the next town. If you have lived in a village, you know that information travels faster than light in a village. Retired people are bored and talking all the time. If there is a rumour, it spreads like a torrent download. Everyone starts to seed Information they just got without knowing whether it is actually true. If there is a person walking on the sidewalk, suddenly there are faces on all windows wondering who this is and where he is going. We don't have to be afraid of burglars, because our neighbour will know. Even if anyone just thinks about committing a crime, our neighbour will know. If there was a burglar in our house, our neighbour would already have surveilled the whole area, even before the police would be able to accept a call. This creates social pressure. It is very easy to ruin your reputation in a small village. You cannot get a sexual partner in a village, because from one second to the other, everyone will talk about you and you don't want to be in focus of the whole town! I always hear people talking in the queue of the Supermarket about other people. They share information, which the affected person wouldn't want to be spreaded, regardless. The speculate, what other people do by watching the environment. I totally hate such behaviour. I hate people who always survey the whole town and spread rumours just because they are bored. They shouldn't care what other people, who they don't know, do.

Due to this conditions, I am in forced Hard Mode since ever. What should I do to quit Hard Mode? Few young people, many old people, overaged society, social pressure, Environment adapted to needs of old people, calm rural environment, all these problems are killing me.
I need an advice. What should I do? I would suggest, that I should go outside and get to know people, but how? My village is like a ghost town.

Sorry for my bad English, I live in Germany.

Best regards

 

Hi fight for life,

Thank you for your reply. Yes, you are right, I should look further in the future. In a couple of years, I will have finished my studies, if everything goes well. And I think it is very unlikely, that I will get a job near my current home. I think I should save some money and move away after I got my degree.