Friday, Febrary 20th, 2009

Rural Stress

Most tourists usually travel off to their holiday destination during summertime. Right? During that period it’s not only summer in their homeland but also here so to them it seems that the weather here is always beautiful. I can keep claiming that here it’s winter too, just like in their homeland, but of course not a soul believes me, so I keep my mouth shut about it. Well, spring is arriving, the weather is beautiful, a blackbird is singing in our garden, the cats are catching lots of birds, I can hang out the washings again and we even already got a visit from an early frelon (large wasp type). Spring is here, lovely delicious.

However, any immigrant who lives here knows how muggy the winters in the south of France can be. It looks like this: it is cold, foggy, rainy, everyone has the flu and wherever you walk, there is mud. Wearing nice clothes is totally useless, if one has the money for it at all, because it’s too cold to wear that terrific Zara-pull with gilded holes, and anyway, there’s not a single soul to notice it.

I must admit that in the last few months there have been many moments when I looked back to the stress of the old morning rush with trains chock-a-block with people and miles of traffic jams. And if this lasts long enough then there will be a time that you as an emigrant get homesick, whether you love your homeland or not.

The advantage of another country is that you don’t know the restrictions so that you can fantasize everything is possible that didn’t work out in your own rotten country. The advantages is that you do things that you otherwise never would’ve done, like er, emigrate, for example. But if you live a few years in that country than it becomes a country with tedious and nice things. There are lots more fun things, so don’t be afraid that I will return to my old country, o no, the party is not yet over. But I can say that immigration isn’t at all what I had imagined.

And if you look forward to that first day of spring in the deafening boringness of the South French winters an unexpected email arrives from a former client asking you to provide a training which will allow you to restore your negative balance and broken ego in a mere week.

Believe it or not, I must admit that I cannot wait to go to the Netherlands, bring on the danger of flooding, the youth that has gone completely astray, traffic jam landscapes, row houses, business parks and so on. I am going back for a week and enjoy the stress. What a party, and after that, I can face life here again, refreshed.

* the da homeland poll is linked with the one from the dutch readers, the results of the poll are shown in Dutch, the responces are the same as shown here above. Click here to see the results and comments machinetranslated into English.

posted by Maartje Heymans at 12:00  |  send a comment

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