One where I whine a lot because I'm homesick....
September 22, 2007 at 15:44 Lately I’ve found myself increasingly homesick, just longing to be back in America. Every frustration I have with my life in Belgium is magnified these days.
I find myself ranting over issues I’d accepted as part and parcel of my expat experience. Road construction always has the potential to create traffic nightmares, but now it's worse than ever. The main road serving my village and many neighborhoods is closed down in both directions. When you get within a mile or two of my house, you’re now forced to take a five-mile detour down narrow streets clogged with parked cars and speed bumps and wacky traffic patterns that see two-way streets brought down to one lane, with cars backed up in each direction waiting for a turn to go through.
Today the kids had a packed schedule, and I had to take this detour THREE times, sometimes spending 30 minutes to go that extra five miles. Because of the detour, I can no longer catch a bus home from the Metro station. The closest drop off to my house is almost two miles from it. This makes heading into the city an even bigger ordeal than it already is. With the road closed and the school bus having to navigate all this, the kids are getting home from school 30 minutes later in the afternoon now, and we're told to expect this until DECEMBER.
I hate the lack of alternate routes here, how narrow the streets are and how people with perfectly good driveways park in the street and block traffic. I hate that drivers constantly pass in no passing zones and create their own lanes and engage in all sorts of annoying and dangerous road behaviors, even in residential neighborhoods where you wouldn’t expect to encounter aggressive drivers. Don’t get me started on the complicated system that governs right of way. Even after two and a half years, I’m still not used to how people drive. I feel grounded in the worst way. Driving is so frustrating, that I hate every minute I spend in the car and refuse to drive many places.
I miss being able to buy what I need, when I need it, close to home. I’m tired of stores that are closed on Sundays and that open late and lock their doors early, that don’t have parking lots, or are located in places that are so hard to get to.
I’m tired of dealing with two different currencies and multiple bank accounts. E gets paid in dollars and we’re always juggling when and how to convert dollars to euros. The exchange rate has been horrible so we have less buying power than ever, E can only do his currency exchanges on Tuesdays and Thursdays at his workplace and he has to carefully plan when to transfer funds because he’s limited on the frequency and size of his transactions. I can’t easily get cash, and I’m just sick of all the hassles associated with finances here. I want to be able to write checks again!!!
We’re fortunate to be able to use a military mail system that allows us to send and receive mail to and from America and pay normal U.S. postage rates, not international or air rates. This is an enormous advantage because I can subscribe to U.S. magazines and order goods from many American companies and not pay exorbitant shipping costs. The down side of this privilege is that all of our mail arrives at a special post office located in the compound where E works. He can pick up the mail. I can’t. When he travels a lot, as he is doing now, our mail languishes at the post office for a week or two, which is hard to take when you’re waiting for a package or a magazine to arrive.
I miss being able to go out for an American breakfast on the weekends.
I miss grabbing a bagel and a large decaf vanilla hazelnut coffee at Einstein’s.
I miss being able to attend concerts, plays, movies, lectures, and classes.
I miss hearing English everywhere.
I miss going to video stores and renting movies.
I miss Halloween.
I miss my girlfriends.
And my family.
And being in the same time zone as most of the people I love.
Tonight I’ve had enough of expat life, and I just want to go home.
September 22, 2007
Reader Comments (36)
From what I have seen in a lot of expats, they love their time here but when they have the actual date to go home, they kind of become like a horse going to the barn. Their focus becomes on getting settled in the US rather than living here. Who can blame them? I sure was focused on Belgium when I was packing up in the States to head over here.
This too shall pass.
I love that image of the horse going into the barn...yeah, that's where I am. I can smell the hay and just want to get to my stall...
Other days, however, none of the many and rich attractions of living in Europe can compete with a night out with my long-time girlfriends at home, watching my honorary grandbaby, Lillian, grow up, walking the northern coastline of Lake Michigan, and enjoying those little American rituals like eating fresh-picked corn on the cob and spending Saturday afternoons in the fall living and dying with the U of Michigan Wolverines.
It's okay to whine, V-Grrrl. Longing for our home is part of being human.
Yes, I find V-Grrl and the people who visit her blog intruiging. It is filled with people who think differently than I do. I am fascinated by that. Those people are much easier to find on a blog than in real life, since I tend to be drawn to those who think similarly. I am interested in how people think and why, why they make the decisions they make and how they live with those decisions, what motivates them, what makes them get out of bed in the morning. This blog gives me a tremendous amount of insight and I have learned and continue to learn a great deal. Just because I don't agree with someone doeesn't mean I don't think there isn't something to be gained from the conversation.
And, I take the comment about being a pain in the arse as a compliment. It is a skill that can be quite useful, when used properly. I admit, I am still working the appropriate times to use my skill.
My goodness, I like that one!
I think I'm the Whino and you're the Wino. We make a great couple. *Snort*
By the way, I'm a long time French expat living in the States, and came to your blog via Elizabeth's entries on blogging frustrations.
First of all, what you experience is quite normal... and especially so if you are being paid in Dollars!!! The exchange rate is brutal and compounds the problem, I'm sure.
But look at it like this; at least you have Internet access now and that is a huge help. You can get in touch with the whole world, stream any radio station from the US from your computer. When I came to the States we didn't any of that that; all we had was the phone (expensive and scarce calls, trust me!) and snail mail, and let's just say it, it was hell at times to be so disconnected. Nobody here speaks French so the feeling of isolation could be quite severe at times.
I don't know if that'll make you feel any better, but it took me a good 10 years until I stopped being homesick for Paris. What I missed the most was the ability to walk everywhere and get by without a car (well, among other things), but having to do without walking everywhere was excruciatingly hard for me.
But, of course, I wasn't homesick every day, and in the meantime I also developed quite an attachment to the US. Therein lies all the difficulty, I believe, for expats like us all over the world. Sooner than you think, you end up finding yourself a little bit in the middle of two cultures and you don't know quite where you fit anymore.
But enough about me.
You mention driving. I just got here so I don't know much about your experience in Europe, or if you know that already, but to get a driver's license in Europe, you have to take a number of mandatory lessons, and the vehicle code is a book about 1.5 inch thick, not at all like the US... Understand, though, that because the roads and narrows streets are the way they are (unlike the US expressways), you better be sure that people over there *really* know how to drive because there is really *no room* for mistakes, none whatsoever.
The right of way is simple; basically "anything to the right of you has the right of way" (that's the rule of Priorité à Droite, and then you adapt that rule to all the exceptions, i.e., priority à droite SAUF ceci ou cela) Yeah, I know... it's FAR MORE complicated over there and your frustration is quite normal.
And so is missing home now and then. Just hang in there, it'll probably pass before you know it :) Just be aware, though, that many of the things you remember about the US might be changing as we speak and when you get back you might have a surprise or two :)
Allez, take it easy :)
These are all facts.
[You can check my data on Google]
Belgium has the second highest suicide rate in Europe. No one knows why.
Belgium had one of the highest road fatality rates in Europe. You have 100% more chance getting killed on a Belgian road compared to neighboring Holland.
Invasive roadwork in my hometown (Antwerp, pop 1 million, 30 miles north of Brussels)
have been going on since early 2000, making parts of the town still unreachable, forcing businesses to close. It will take 5 more years to end the current mess.
When friends come to visit me, they have to be willing to pay 2 EUR an hour ($ 2.80) to park, on the streets, even at night.
The 4 lane old outbound road from Antwerp to Brussels (=/= highway) has recently been reduced to one lane in a small suburb called Mortsel, because the radical Green party Mayor hates cars.
The inhabitants can now enjoy empty bicycle lanes twice as wide as the road, causing gridlock and suffocating the inhabitants in car exhaust fumes. This fine example has been widely imitated, nationwide.
Corruption in Southern French speaking Belgium equals mob-style southern Italy.
On royalty: "my queen" is Italian and hardly speaks Dutch, after living 40 years in Belgium. The devout Catholic Belgian king Albert has an illegitimate daughter. His son recently faced a Belgian court.
Belgium has been on the verge of a national break-up for the past 50 years, along the Dutch/French divide. Belgium currently has no government, 100 days after the elections.
Insignificant traffic violations carry exorbitant fines.
Asking for "Customer service" generally only provokes laughter.
No one knows one single word of the Belgian national anthem, just like the future prime minister of this quaint European kingdom showed on national TV (he sang the French one)
Belgians are Catholic, but only at weddings and funerals. Religion has become a non-issue for most natives, although personal religious symbols are everywhere, especially Muslim symbols in Brussels and Antwerp.
Belgian gays and lesbians can marry, adopt children and have very elaborate legal rights.
But in a recent poll +50% of the population felt is was OK to be gay, as long as you kept it indoors.
I'm 'tolerated', not accepted.
In order to provide a quick fix to countless years of ignored immigration issues, Belgium once offered full citizenship to almost every resident who crossed the border, as if it were a toy in a box of cereals. Even if you only spoke Chinese.
Parts of central Brussels look like the slums in some third world country.
It rains on average 201 days a year in Belgium.
No one will ever pack your groceries, as Belgian unemployment benefits are almost as high as minimum wage.
Every Belgian has national health insurance, but you have to pay upfront.
Virtually all Dutch-speaking natives (60% of the Belgian pop.) in northern Belgium also speak English, but in the "bilingual" capital Brussels 95% of the pop only speaks French.
Speaking my own language (Dutch) in Brussels often equals being treated like someone with a STD.
There's no mail on Saturday.
European banks stopped issuing checks last century.
We all have to carry high-tech chip-card state-issued IDs if we leave our house. If we don't, we can go to jail when stopped by police (just ask Di over at womanwondering).
No one will ever say "have a nice day", in any language.
We have no diners.
We're surrounded by large, arrogant nations (France, Germany, England) who think Belgians only drink beer and eat chocolate.
When I'm on my way to the grocery store near my home in Antwerp, Chinese tourists treat me like I'm an employee in a Disney theme park.
You know, although I did not add anything to the discussion, I now feel that I must have drifted out of my comfort zone and I wanna go home. And you know what the real bad part of it all actually is:
I'm no expat, I was born here.
And I'm stuck here, still determined to turn my small world into a better place.
But first, I desperately need some wine, preferably red, and French :-)
YOU are the best thing under the gorgeous Belgian sky. You made me laugh at the end of a trying day involving missed events, lost keys, and that FREAKIN DETOUR FROM HELL. Sending you a great big Italian-American hug.
Anyone who has to leave Paris and live elsewhere has the right to weep inconsolably every day for YEARS, and at frequent intervals afterwards. : ) Paris is beautiful, romantic, inspiring--even when they're burning cars in the street. ; )
And yes, one thing I love about this corner of Europe is all the sidewalks and the opportunity to walk everywhere.
Thanks for coming by and sharing your thoughts.
Thanks for this post. I'll be staying in Bruges from Oct-Feb this year (with my 9 and 1 year old kids as well as husband and in-laws!) and it is good to hear some of the less rosy things. People rarely mention that stuff.
-Cyndi