January 11,2009 on Amsterdam News: Ice Skating, where can you ice skate, the canals are frozen how many ice skates were sold, the minister broke an arm skating, the 11 city tour( ice skating around different cities) oh and by the way there is a conflict in Gaza!
This is one of those defining moments when you clearly understand that you are in another culture, in another country in another reality. Colombia has more news every day than two years in New Zeland and when I saw ice skating news apart from laughing I enjoyed the fact that I was for the first time in many months away from conflict and political issues from my country. That is exactly how you know you have crossed the barrier of development and underdevelopment. When you hear news and the news change of intensity, change of importance and changes priorities. I was in Netherlands for over a month, I was in a developed country, I was living the dream of many people to go to Europe but was it an aspiration still for me?
I have been going to Netherlands for the past six years and I have always been in the comfortable arena of an international group,staying in hotels, eating in nice restaurants and enjoying the culture staying with some friends in their home but always as an observer and never as someone who now for sentimental reasons has to adapt quickly to another culture. But do I really have to adapt to it?
Suddenly my level of English which has helped me in my volunteer job for many years around the world wasn`t good enough to stablish realationships further than a hi, hello and how long are you staying in Netherlands. Making friends suddenly is not easy because inspite people constantly tell you that you can survive in Netherlands with only English if you want to establish real links it takes time and hardly can be done with the scarce 50 words or more I know in Dutch. Is learning Dutch or choosing to stay quiet for hours seing people around you laugh and have fun and you having no clue at all at what they are talking.
This visit included encounters such as the guard in the door of a public international building who inspite my efforts of saying a name in the difficult Dutch pronunciation and showing the name, and even doing mimics to establish communication I was sent off with a: " You are the one who should know Dutch and learn how to say things!"And even had a bus driver who inspite he was late, it was freezing outside and all the circumstances showed him guilty didn`t want to be flexible enough to let me in the bus and I would have to wait for over an hour more if it wasn`t for the nice boy who gave me a chair! This is the moment when Europe stops being glamorous. This is the moment when is your reality and not a holiday and you start seing things as they are.
I see a continent which inspite has agreements as amazing as the European Union still makes it difficult to move around even if you are national of one of the countries. No discounts apply away from the border of the country you are born, trains don`t work exactly the same across the nations, conditions such as a safe road in the middle of an orange alarm of snow change from one side of the path to the other and there is a long road to go for a continent that promotes freedom, openess and multiculturalism to be ready for foreigners, imigrants and other cultures.
It all lies in those two questions: Do I have to adapt and Is still a dream for me? Yes. Of course I have to adjust. I have to do it in order to understand more the man I love and be able to raise if we we ever have our children with our two worlds wonderfully mixed. I do have to accomodate but at the same time I kept having this feeling that actually Europe and specially The Netherlands is closing more and more to foreigners and even though some of us are willing to habituate oneself as much as possible in this society it will become harder and harder.
And a dream for me? What can I say. I love the museums, transportation, travel, the amazing and beautiful cities, how sometimes people can be wonderfully flexible like the culture I come from and even ice skating. How free time, family and not competition is part of society. How culture is around and so many things even the silence you sometimes hear when you are in a small town, hardly possible in a country like Colombia that has 40 million people. I loved the Efteling, Frankfurt,The Ardennes, being in a house with 18 people playing games. I loved New Year in Nieuwmarkt in Amsterdam, walking around in a sunny but freezing Tilburg, Rotterdam, Den Hague, Delft and its lights and even there is much more to discover in Utrecht. I loved going around small towns in Belgium, walking in Paris and knowing Lille and Remagen. Still is hard. Going from the observer to the companion of a wonderful man who comes from a completly different culture than mine is not easy.
Still there is more to come. I will start soon dealing with color..and color will become an issue for me for the first time. I will deal with the fact that people will see us a mixed couple and not as a couple in love. I will be not only having a multicultural relation but far away from all the things I love. Culture adaption seems forever but I am very willing to continue it. Still takes lots of you and people who are taking or willing to take all the risks to be with the person they love, or to fulfill their dreams to make their families life easier, or those who want to study abroad deserve to be seen as brave people. Those are the lessons from this trip. Ice Skating and Gaza, culture and language, adapting and not adapting.
So I am happily starting to have lunch with a colleague I had met in a Jane Austen event and I was ready to talk about Jane Austen's books, the regency time and much more when she comes with the questions: so how come you read...and in fact...in Colombia are there bookstores, WiFi...?
