Yet as I party, drink and cocktail shake my way through my time here, living the expat dream with my little misfit expat family, there's one niggle which consistently remains at the back of my mind. It's a feeling that I don't think can be defined by homesickness. Amsterdam treats me like the perfect boyfriend should, doting on me day in day out and always keeping a grin on my chops. He's home to me now and as we've grown together I finally feel like I've learnt all those little important details about him; the things that wind him up, the things he does to grind my gears. In fact, I've never been more comfortable in a city away from home, yet there is still this longing, this desperate yearning in me, which seeks the familiar. As a friend of mine put it, it's the pining for being able to walk into a cafe and order a cup of tea without having to fight your way through another language or even just simply and shamefully admit that you don't speak that language, which of course, is not even a big deal to the Dutch with their endless talents in English, but there's still this element of shame, an element of discomfort I can't put my finger on. I came across this word 'hireath' - a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for lost places of your past - I'm not yearning for a place but a feeling, the feelings and moments of my past which of course look better through rose-tinted glasses because I was in my comfort zone. And if I was to return to my very first post about arriving in Amsterdam, I know I'll come across myself claiming that life begins outside of your comfort zone. I guess it's just one of those catch 22 phenomenons which I've now accepted are going to become more and more apparent as we all become grown ups. Anyway, I'm a firm believer that home is not a place, it's the people you surround yourself with in that place, so as long as folk stop leaving Amsterdam for Australia, I know I'm going to be just swell.
On a less sombre note, I now give you a condensed update of some of the key moments and experiences that have occurred since the last time I poured my stream of consciousness into my keyboard:
- I got a boyfriend. A real, Dutch one. I'm still learning how to care for him - how often to feed him, the idea that he might not like English tea with milk forced down his throat, etc. - but he's stuck around for now so I think it's going great
- I finished that damn mythical thesis I was always ranting on about and in turn, I graduated from my Master's. Albeit with a ceremony performed entirely in Dutch, through which I had to sit with a headset live translating the speeches on stage - which I'm genuinely hoping were way more clear and inspirational in a native language, otherwise the VU really needs to work on it's guest speakers
- I went to a surf camp in Mimizan where I spent the whole week walking around in a bikini with a surfboard under one arm and a wet suit thrown over the other shoulder pretending to be a surfer and hiding the fact the my beach hair was created with ghd's
- On the same trip, I drove a French car on the French side of the road and mildly freaked out
- I had my first Sinterklaas experience, including surprise making and Dutch poem writing. It was literally Christmas come early. (Note to self: Hang onto Dutch boyfriend and have two Christmas's a year without ever having to fight about whose family each should be spent with..)
- I got (read: stole) a cat! And she lives with me in my little crooked apartment next to Dam square, slap bang in the middle of Amsterdam
- I learnt how to say in Dutch that 'I understand but I'm too shy to talk in Dutch' and the amount of tips received from Netherlands folk increased significantly
- I learnt how to solo repair a tear in the inner tube of my bike wheel
- This summer I went to a festival which had a Knuffel Kerk - a small room you could climb into where the walls and ceiling were covered in cuddly toys
It's a weird one I know, but since when weren't my blogs just an extended rambling of my thoughts and distresses. Anyway, all is good below sea-level, for all those interested. Although I may have just finished my last packet of Jaffa Cakes throughout the writing of this post, if anyone would be so obliged..
