Being An Expat
You look back over time with something akin to nostalgia. Walking to the train station, hands plunged deep into pockets of a black winter coat, streetlights blinking through the damp mist. City lights reflected in dark canals. Noise spilling like overflowing Hoegaarden out of smoky pubs, a siren call out of the wintery gloom. Wintery gloom that lasted most of the year ……..
You see you and your husband and your dog. That glorious traveling mutt that was your closest friend and companion from continent to continent, sea to snow, and every foreign field in between ….. and it was you and he and it on all those travels, and it was you and he and it against the world, and you remember it as uncomplicated and carefree and adventurous. A simple time that spanned childhood and life. Life as we know it now. Now with kids and work and school and agendas taking many forms. Now he with his long hours and it a tattoo on your ankle and a photo on the mantlepiece with a little red collar draped over the frame. You go back in the moments when you’re fragile and tired and afraid and you miss the days when it was just you and him and it in a foreign land.
There are a lot of things I don’t think about though and don’t miss when I do. It’s not necessarily easy being an Expat.
Castles in Luxembourg
There are things I wish I had known before we left South Africa for the Netherlands and things I’m glad I didn’t. We knew nothing about Amsterdam outside of the rumors of red light districts and ‘coffee’ shops (just don’t go in and expect a latte !); and the cliched stories of the boy holding back the advancing sea with his finger plugging a hole in a dyke and Anne Frank hiding two years during the Nazi witch hunt of the Jews in a secret annex of a house on Prinsengracht. Back in the 17th century Amsterdam was the commercial and cultural capital of Europe. Dutch Artists, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals and van Goyen are credited with launching the Era of Realism in paintings. Amsterdam remains a cultural wonder and melting pot. High end designer boutiques line ancient cobble stoned roads hardly wide enough for a horse-drawn wagon on the way to the cheese market. If a car is carelessly parked, or broken down, or heaven forbid a moving truck has got itself stuck -then you have a problem ! (Incidentally a phrase the Dutch use often!) Louboutin-heeled ladies lounge in ubiquitous sidewalk cafes beside gypsies and stragglers and Nigerian drug dealers. Horns honk continuously, tram cars squeal from one stop to the next : from Oude Kerk (the Old Church in the middle of the Red Light District) through Dam Square with the Royal Palace and tourists and millions of pigeons; past the trendy Jordaan to Rembrandtplein and Leidseplein with their night clubs, art scene and live performers……. And everywhere there’s bikes and dogs and dogs in bikes and running beside them, and walking to one of the many city parks, and sitting under the tables of one of the many city cafes. Amsterdam is a great place to have a dog. We did not know this.
Amsterdam outside Central Station
So we rented a place in a small town near the Dutch flower fields called Hillegom and lived on Haven (the harbor). I wish we had known how dog-friendly Amsterdam is. We would probably have lived in the city as opposed to commuting in and living in a small town, as pretty as it was.
Cold. So cold. Cold like we, in sunny South Africa, had never experienced. Bone-chilling, mind-numbing cold ….. and we were not prepared. Of course we knew it was going to be cold, but at minus 15 degrees Celsius and the coldest winter in the past decade – you have got to be kidding !! I had bought a black wool coat at a thrift store in Johannesburg and my mom had knitted a red and white striped sweater for the dog. Ha ! It was pitiful preparation.
As mind-numbing as the cold was, the loneliness was soul-destroying. Husband commuted to Amsterdam, the hours were long, the daylight hours were short, and I was young enough not to have found comfort in my own company.
I desperately wanted to work – my whole sense of identity being that of a successful international finance manager who had previously traveled around Europe and Africa raising millions of dollars on the international financial markets to fund economic development projects in sub-Saharan Africa. Young and ambitious and confident I just assumed I would walk into a job with one of the banks I had had dealings with in my ‘old life’ – but I did not have a Work Permit and I was apparently not worth jumping through all the red tape and bureaucratic hoops to secure one. My ego took a huge pummeling. Identity lost, emotionally numb, chilled to the bone and alone: that was my introduction to Expat life.
It was the little things that made it all a little more bearable after a while. The first Crocus that poked its head through the frozen ground in the park was a cause for celebration. Watching a funeral procession pass through the town square, the coffin carried on a horse-drawn cart, clop-clop over the cobblestones. It is an image that has stayed with me over the years, an illustration of life in a European town clearer than any invitation extended in a language I would not have understood anyway.
I took up running – the dog and I against the elements along the ubiquitous canals, farm lands and furrows. A welcome escape from our cheaply furnished rental row house that cost too much money and smelled of musty dog and mildew most of the time. We found neighborhood restaurants where the dog would lie beneath the table. We started exploring our surroundings, going further and further afield till we covered most of Europe from World War 1 trenches to the Sistene Chappel and castles, rivers, monasteries and mountains in-between. The dog’s travels can be found on : www.dogwilltravel.com. Europe lives inside us regardless of our ancestral DNA. I am more centered and at peace with myself for these places.
We made friends, Expats like us that helped navigate the intricacies, hostilities and absurdities of a foreign culture. Together we ate ribs at Cafe de Clos, discovered Rembrandt at the Rijksmuseum and cycled in Vondelpark.
And the little things molded and meshed and soothed and suddenly we emerged through the cold, damp mist as fully fledged children of the world.
Swiss Alps
