03-09-2010 om 13:23 by Sueli Brodin

Although I’ve been living in the Netherlands for almost two decades and officially became Dutch in 2006, I am still often asked where I come from, not so much I believe on account of my foreign looks but more because of my distinct French accent and the mistakes I make when I speak Dutch.

This seldom happens in France, where people immediately assume that I am French as soon as I start talking.



Maybe that’s why every year, when we go to France for our summer holidays, I inevitably ask myself the same series of questions:

Did I make the right choice to leave France, where I spent most of my youth?
Would I like moving back?

But also:
How French am I (still)?
Would I be able adjust again, after living so many years abroad?



Buying fresh fish at the daily market in Royan

I wonder if my long time foreign friends here in the Netherlands ask themselves the same questions when they visit their home countries every summer. How do they feel when the time comes for them to say goodbye to their family and friends and return to the Netherlands where they have built their life and a home?

This year we spent our holiday on the seaside resort of Royan in the house that my parents inherited from my father’s parents. I took my children to the nearby cemetery to pay our respects to my grandparents and greatgrandparents who are buried there. As we looked at their names engraved on the family tombstone, I told my children that my greatgrandfather Theophile had spent a long time abroad as an French army officer and that my grandfather Pierre had lived all of his adult life in New York. Pierre and his second wife Dorothy only used to come to France in the summer. It is in their house in Royan that I usually saw them in my youth.



Visiting my grandparents' tomb at the cemetery in Royan

My husband had never been on the French Atlantic coast before and was enthusiastic about everything we did and saw. He even joked at one point that he wouldn’t mind retiring there. But our children vehemently disagreed. They said they couldn’t imagine us living anywhere else than in the Netherlands, and more specifically in Limburg.



La Pointe Espagnole, Charente Maritime

In fact, one of the things I realised this summer is how Dutch my children feel and how attached they are to our life in our small village near Maastricht.

They often wondered out loud how our three chickens were doing back home. “Do you think they’re missing us?”

We hardly saw any other Dutch car during the three weeks we spent there, but the few times we did, my children exclaimed excitedly: “A Dutch car! I see a Dutch car!”

At the supermarket, they gave me a broad smile when they recognized their favourite “Leerdammer kaas” among all the other delicious French cheese.

They said that they were enjoying their holidays a lot but that they often thought about our house in Bunde, their friends, their toys, their books and would be happy to eventually go back home.



The harbour in Royan

One afternoon, as we were returning from a day trip around Royan, a French man who was walking past our car started talking to us. He almost immediately began to complain about life in Royan. He explained that he was originally from Paris and had moved a year ago to Royan in the hope to open a business but was now forced to draw the conclusion that it was just not going to work out and that he would have to go back to Paris. “It’s so difficult to get things done here, and for a Parisian, it’s very hard to be accepted here… People here have a closed mentality, they don’t know how to appreciate someone like me who was actually planning to create jobs for young people in this region.” When he learned that we came from Maastricht, he said: “Oh you are very lucky in the Netherlands. Things are efficient there. The Dutch understand business.”

I was lost in my thoughts the following day on our journey back to the Netherlands, especially after we crossed the Belgian border and it started raining.

The skies however suddenly cleared up the second we entered the Netherlands. My children, who were getting increasingly agitated in the car, shouted out “Zuid Limburg!” when they saw the sign on the side of the highway.



Home sweet home

As soon as I parked the car in front of our house, the three of them jumped out and rushed to the garden to check on our chickens. And then our neighbours appeared and greeted us with a warm smile: “Welcome back home!”

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