"I didn’t know I was this geeky until I discovered the online world through my office’s 2400 baud modem back in ’93." Abroad mind
Regrets, I’ve had a few, but none so big as the one where I kick myself for not having lived and worked abroad in my lifetime.
I envy my cousin who was born in Africa, schooled in Indonesia and Denmark, and is living in France. Cosmopolitan beats nationalist in my book.
In my highschool days I would have loved to go on an exchange program to the USA, but that didn’t seem to be available to me at the time. When I was in college I worked in Northern Ireland for 6 weeks, but there weren’t any schemes for a longer stay. Later still, well, it just didn’t happen. Maybe I’m just not that adventurous.
Let’s face it, I should have moved to Ireland years ago. Before the goldrush. When houses were dirt cheap (seven, maybe ten thousand Euro would have got me a nice cottage back then. What a great investment that would have been.
I always said I wouldn’t fit in over there, but fuck me, I’m Ms Square Peg whereever I am including this place I call ‘home’. Still as round holes go, Amsterdam ain’t so bad.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this. It’s just a little frustrating at the moment not being able to hop on the DART to lend a hand.
Comments (4)
In my experience, if you did it once, the bug would just get worse. I’ve moved to Scotland from the U.S., and though I love Edinburgh, I keep feeling like I should uproot again and live somewhere else for a year or two. It’s quite frustrating!
I lived all my youth in Germany, than as an Au Apir two years in France (near ¨Paris) and then finally arrived in Brussles as a Au pair and then made a school to be able to stay. I live here now since 87
Its great in one way but after all this years I still miss Hannover as there are my friends and family
I’m from Dublin, moved to Scotland, then to the US, then back to Scotland, and now in the US again. If you want to do it, you *can* (probably – I know that’s presumptuous). Houses *are* stupidly expensive in Dublin, but rent is no more than any other city from what I’ve seen. I know that renting might not be sustainable, but hell, what IS? Take a few years there, maybe?
The more I go abroad (and I travel the world at topspeed), the more I think that it really doesn’t matter where you live, people are more or less the same everywhere. They want the same things (love, freedom, money) and are equally annoying, funny, happy and/or depressed everywhere, regardless even of the circumstances they live in (although real poverty does make a difference, then life becomes survival). The question is, what makes you feel ‘at home’, is it friends, language, family, cultural familiarity? Atmosphere, housing, food? As for me, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else, I have no sense of adventure that makes me want to go for the ‘unknown’, that probably is strangely familiar anyway. But be sure that if you do move to say, Dublin, I’ll be around for annoying amounts of time ;)