Celebrating the ex-pat life
Posted January 16th, 2008 by Antonia MalchikDay before yesterday I received a call from an old friend named Bethany Bell, someone I hadn’t heard from in over five years. I’d been thinking about her just the day before, too, while idly watching BBC America’s nightly newscast and hearing her reporting from Jerusalem during George Bush’s visit there.
Over the last couple years, I’ve listened with idiotic pride (and sometimes worry) every time I heard Bethany’s voice coming over the BBC or NPR from an empty Austrian valley and the recent bombings in Lebanon. Because, you see, it always reminds me of sitting with Bethany in a coffehouse in Vienna, almost ten years ago now, when she was working thanklessly at Austrian Radio (ORF) to train herself for possible BBC entry, and I was loathing my first job at an English-language newspaper. She talked about her frustrations with the process of breaking into an industry, and the need to be somewhere where things are happening; and I talked about my feelings that me and journalism weren’t a great fit.
And we both talked a lot about Viennese life and the 15,000-strong ex-pat community that felt sometimes like going to a small high school. Vienna’s not a welcoming city — a beautiful one, yes, with a quality of life that is hard to beat, but not one where a foreigner ever feels truly at home. The ex-pats end up forming their own societies, introducing their own cultures, and going to one another’s potluck dinners.
Being an ex-pat is a subset of the traveler’s life that I value above all other experiences. There is no travel that can’t be outdone by spending a year or more acquainting yourself with local bus routes and finally cajoling a smile out of the woman behind the meat counter at the local supermarket.
Bethany called to congratulate us on the birth of our son, and to talk about how good it would be to see each other again. But her lovely British accent made me think less of what my life is now, and more about what it was and where it’s gone. The memory of sitting in one of those high-ceilinged coffeehouses with a friend on a Sunday afternoon brought back others: the eternally sour-faced woman my husband and I named Frau Grumpy, who worked the bread counter across the street from our apartment; the fact that I still sometimes reach for an actual wicker basket when going grocery shopping; and most of all, that tremendous giddiness you get from the luxury of living in a different culture, of soaking it in and seeing how it can change you. It made me think about the fact that living as an ex-pat is not just an experience to write about or to pack away with your photos in the face of uninterested friends in your home country, it’s something that becomes part of who you are and how you view the world.
Just on the heels of that memory, a friend who just spent a year teaching English near Kyoto sent me a link to a new webzine she writes for: Nothing to Declare, a site started by ex-pats living in Madrid and written by those intimate with the trials and joys of living as an ex-pat.
As the writers on those site have found, the friends you make as an ex-pat are like no others in your life. They’re the ones who can show up on your doorstep after five or ten or twenty years, and you can chatter away as if nothing has changed. They’re the ones who can call out of the blue and make you laugh. Because what you share is not an early childhood or drunken university days, but a deep-seated interest in the world and thirst to know it.
Related posts:
- Celebrating Jan Morris
- Celebrating St Andrew’s Day: music
- Music for St. Andrew’s Day: celebrating Scotland
- Life in Hell: Traveling for the Great Event
January 17th, 2008 at 2:38 am
When I worked in a developing country (Guyana), the expat community was particularly strong. But even here in London, it’s amazing how strong the Australian expat community is. We speak the same language, share a not dissimilar culture, and yet Aussies are invariably drawn together through the common experience of expat life. It probably helps that there are 100,000 of us in London.
By the way, some of my comments are being picked up by the spam filters. Is there a limit to the number of comments one person can leave? I didn’t mean to spam you! It’s taken off my second comment on the Chicago post, and my second and third comments on the Everest post. In fact, the Everest comments section looks a bit funny now since your second comment is replying to my second comment, which is no longer even there! Do let me know what the rules are so I can be sure to abide by them, and if you can rescue any comments currently in Purgatory that would be great.
I’ve given you a shout-out on my latest post on my site, by the way.
January 17th, 2008 at 9:29 am
I’ll talk to our editor–I noticed the Everest comments went funny. Sorry about that! I’ll check the moderation log, too. I think we just updated the site, so something might be wobbly. I don’t want your comments in Limbo–they’re good!
I have to say, Australian’s have the strongest ex-pat communities I’ve ever seen. Does it have something to do with that year+ of work/travel that so many of you do? We lived in Sydney for a couple of years, and everybody we met had worked and traveled a LOT overseas.
And when I was traveling in Turkey, I invariably hooked up with groups or couples of Aussies … who managed to find hostels run by Aussies and Kiwis …
January 17th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Thanks for the shout-out, Caitlin. And nice post, that. Seems we really need to start looking at travel through a different lens.
January 17th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
(Let’s see if this comment goes through).
I think the Aussie expat community is strong for a few reasons. Firstly, although we share a lot of our culture with Britain and the US, our physical isolation does mean we have developed a distinctive identity and we tend to have an affinity for other Australians in terms of sense of humour and general attitude to life.. Secondly, the physical isolation also means that when we travel we travel further and for longer. Aussies love to travel and there are now a million of us abroad – 5% of our total population and a much higher percentage of people in their twenties and thirties.
It’s a very common experience to spend at least a year or two working abroad and we will always look up friends or even friends of friends from home and it’s very natural to start hanging out. Although we may want to meet local people it’s harder to do because they have their own lives and so it’s very easy to slot into the expat community. This is just as true for 30 year-olds as 20 year-olds in my experience. I don’t hang out in the Walkabout in Shepherd’s Bush yet, after three and a half years in London, it’s still the case that a good number of my friends in London are Australian.
January 18th, 2008 at 7:06 am
I lived in Austria on and off for the past ten years, unfortunately NOT in Vienna, but in a small town in the Salzkammergut. Gorgeous, yes, but no expat community. Brief whine: You think it’s hard to feel at home in Vienna where they’re less than welcoming? Try living out in the countryside. That said, I made GREAT expat friends via the web that I just adore, still.
January 18th, 2008 at 7:42 am
I can imagine that a small town is less welcoming than Vienna, knowing the reception even Austrian city-dwellers get when heading for the hills. That said, although Vienna’s an unwelcoming place, I still really do miss the quality of life there. Especially the coffeehouses. And the easy train access to that gorgeous countryside.
January 18th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Wow, this post really resonated. The point about the strong friendships that can be developed is especially true. It seems like the stages of friendship are put through warp speed….stranger to friend in no time.
January 19th, 2008 at 7:05 am
That’s such a good way of putting it, Chris: “stranger to friend in no time.” Come to think of it, that’s what my study-abroad experience was like, too.
It’s still amazing to me that people I haven’t seen for ten years can call up, say they’re in the area, propose getting together for coffee or a meal, and they’re the one type of friends with whom there’s no awkwardness, no filling in the gaps of the years apart, no adjustment period. Now that we live near New York City, it happens a lot more, and the ease of conversation and lasting mutual interests just fascinates me.
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:20 pm
thanks for the mention! i agree with what you said about living abroad being a subset of the traveling life…to me it is as if traveling is your major and being an ex-pat is your senior thesis. eventually you can grow weary of moving quickly through places and want to stop and catch your breath in one special place for a while. it also helps you appreciate your homeland much more; as time goes by and you start to miss the quirky little things about home you love it more, not less.
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:39 pm
No worries Jacki
It’s a very interesting site you’re running.
I’ll tell you what I missed living overseas: hot fudge sundaes and really good salads and a decent hamburger. For me, it’s always the food!
February 6th, 2008 at 12:34 am
[...] abroad is a form of travelling, as Antonia notes on the Perceptive Travel blog. The more foreign the culture, the more true that [...]