The Long Way Home

By: Meghan Blosser - Also see author's expat blog listing

In February of 2010, my husband and I (then 30 and 28, respectively) went out to dinner with two American couples who were supposed to help us decide if we wanted to move from the United States to Delft, the Netherlands. One member of each couple worked at the university that had offered my husband a post-doctoral position, and we sat down together in a restaurant on Delft’s lightly snow-covered medieval market square.

To our puzzlement, the conversation was a bit grim. Our four companions were all nearing the end of their overseas adventures, and aired to us their cynicism. Yes, they’d camped in the shadows of French castles and stood amid the fireworks on New Year’s Eve… but with complaints ranging from Dutch bureaucracy to the medical system to bank accounts and money transfers, they told us: we can’t wait to get back to the States.

Afterward in our hotel room we gazed over tiled rooftops and wondered: if we come here, in a couple years will we sound like that?

Less than five months later, I sat in a Dutch train station surrounded by a back-breaking load of luggage while Tim fetched the key to our new apartment. “It’s good!” he announced when he returned. “You’re going to like it.”

The circumstances of our move were these: We left Arlington, Massachusetts, in July 2010. We sold two cars. We gave away clothes. To our furniture we said: You are from Craigslist, and to Craigslist you must return. A small shipment of possessions went to the Netherlands by boat, paid for by the university that had hired my husband.

Tim had recently finished his PhD and at a conference, met a Dutch professor who said: “Why don’t you come work for me?” Ha-ha, our friends said. You’re not really thinking about that, are you?

But we were.

We’d been thinking about something like that for about a year. True: we never selected the Netherlands specifically, but we had the Europe bug. A few years’ stint - while we were still relatively young and free - offered the opportunity to see the world. Our friends were buying houses and minivans and filling them with babies and I was simply not there.

I had quit my full-time job a year before and gone into freelance work, which made me very portable (if not overly profitable). Looking back, I think the scarier decision was quitting my “normal” job—moreso than moving overseas.

Among my friends, I’ve become an advocate for pursuing dreams that seem impractical or infeasible. You know, like, moving to Europe. It’s possible, I insist, if you only take steps toward it. And so here are my suggestions on an international move—by no means limited to leaving the United States or going to Holland.

Know the reasons you make your move. Because even if you have a mostly positive experience, as we have, there are going to be days when everything goes wrong: When the paperwork gets denied. When the money is too tight. When you wind up in public tears over some language-based misunderstanding. When seeing a face on Skype isn’t good enough. And you’ll think, for a minute or a day or a week, that the move was a mistake. (From what I’ve observed, if you make the move with a partner - you will go through these feelings at opposite times.) When the low days hit, you need to know why you did it. And you need to go back to those reasons and trust them.

Do the things you went there to do. If you move to another country so that you can travel, live frugally at home and don’t stick around on the weekends. Especially if you consider your move temporary, make a budget and evaluate your priorities. If you move abroad to make friends or improve a language - make sure you’re putting yourself in places where you will meet people and practice speaking. Don’t just join the “American Expats of Wherever”—join a pick-up sport team, or a church, or whatever activity is popular.

Side effect? You’ll do the things you didn’t know you went there to do. I recently met a Swiss girl who lived alone in Ireland for a few years. To make friends, she joined a running club. She was a novice, but the running club was training for a marathon. Result? This girl ran 26.2 miles. And that’s such a characteristic experience of moving abroad: you will find strengths you didn’t know you had. So keep your international plan flexible to allow space for the opportunities you haven’t yet imagined.

Always make an effort to speak the local language. Our move has been drastically simplified by the Dutch population’s good grasp of English. Most people will switch to it when they hear me butchering Nederlands. (Or, they misunderstand and think I’m choking.) Yet it is a sore point here and in many countries if you expect people to know English. Particularly if you start barking it at them without at least the preliminaries of Bonjour, monsieur or Goedemiddag, mevrouw.

I am by no means good at Dutch. But if I hadn’t mastered at least some conventional phrases and basic vocabulary, I’d make my own life harder (never understanding an announcement in a train station) and plant myself on the fringe of the culture. My neighbors may know I’m “the American girl,” but they respect if I greet them in Dutch.

Go easy on yourself. People often said this to us when we were new, but it was a while before I could take the words to heart. I had to acknowledge: You won’t get it right all the time. You won’t be a shining beacon of internationalism every day. Your haircut will be horrifying because you couldn’t explain what you wanted. You will have no food because the grocery stores all closed at six. You will be daunted by such once-simple tasks as visiting the dentist, or buying feminine hygiene products. Your friends back home will not understand why it was such a big deal that you asked for coffee in another language, or successfully completed a simple form without help. Let this be OK - and when you know you got something right, celebrate it.

Consult other expats, but don’t do everything that they did. You will save yourself tedious legwork by asking other expats about their taxes, or their apartment agent, or where they find a certain product. Just balance any advice with your own grain of salt. It was an eye-opener for me to realize that all expats - even all American expats in Holland - were not like me. We have different personalities and tackle problems differently, and that’s OK. Relatedly, have no shame in consulting locals. I send Tim emails titled “Ask a Dutch Person” whenever I want to know what his officemates think about something. This has helped us translate legal documents, alerted us to a healthcare benefit we were entitled to, and explained social etiquette in unfamiliar situations.

Listen. This may go without saying, but people don’t think like you do. It can take a while to realize differences in cultural assumptions that lie beneath the surface. I was recently at a dinner party with Dutch friends I’ve known for two years, and when the conversation turned to politics of immigration, I was surprised by how our views differed. You have to get out of your own culture to realize (for better or worse) how steeped you were in a certain set of values, and how equally steeped others are in theirs.

Bring yourself. In our aim to pack light, I excised most “personal” things as unnecessary. This seemed wise at the time, but what it meant in practice was no family photos on the walls; an IKEA-generic apartment; and a very sad me that first Christmas when I remembered I couldn’t decorate with the ornaments that I love. A photo or two of your friends; a ball or two for the tree - these reminders of home will be worth making space for.

We’ve spent more than two years in our sunny Delft apartment, with its windows that look over a canal. We gained a healthier lifestyle, biking everywhere as the Dutch do and buying produce and fish at local markets. We gained new friends, Dutch and international. We’ve been to nine new countries. We’ve introduced Europe to family members who didn’t have a passport in 2010.

We’ve also had to navigate unexpected medical problems in a foreign healthcare system. We’ve done mountains of slow-moving paperwork. We’ve spent Christmases alone when all we can do is wave to everyone on Skype. I missed a funeral for someone I loved. These have been the hard things - but you sign on for the bad with the good.

I remember our question from that cold night when we first visited Delft. The answer is no, and I think we knew it then. And that’s why we said yes.

Will we be here forever? I don’t know, and I don’t think so. I love European life, but we never intended to be away from our families long-term. In a year, or two or five, I think we’ll be looking for jobs back in the U.S. - but all of that will unfold as it does. In the meantime, I’m concentrating on not taking this chapter for granted.

So make your move.

You will learn who you are. You will know that many things are possible. And you will encourage others:

You can do this, too.