Column: east, west, 'home' best

There is a life before and a life after a gap year. A gap year in which you fill in what you are going to do. Will it be work or travel? A combination of both maybe? I chose to as au pair in Italy to get started. Building something new in an unfamiliar environment for a long time. Then you're happy when you can go back after a while, right? Unfortunately, it is more difficult than expected. 

abrupt ending

My months in Italy were so good that when I suddenly had to go back abruptly, could only cry. Within 24 hours I set foot on Dutch soil again and exchanged my pasta for brown sandwiches and tasted the broth not at home like in Italy.

Instead of Italian hand gestures I heard very flat Frisian accents around me again. Did I miss the Netherlands? In the beginning yes, but now that Italy was actually hundreds of kilometers away, I almost wanted to crawl back.

Ver-Italianization and dilution

It's difficult, but that makes sense. You trade your own environment for another month. It will eventually become your own. You ver-italian. Unless of course you choose a country other than Italy.

When I came back to the Netherlands it felt like I had started in the middle of a book without having any idea what it was about. My family and friends' lives had gone on as usual. Mine too, of course, but elsewhere.

At some point you notice that your daily Skype calls are reduced to maybe once every three weeks. Your daily apps with messages about what you have done that day are also less.

Your life elsewhere becomes 'normal' and not everything is worth mentioning. After a few months everyone really knows that you in Italy breakfast with cappuccino and biscuits.

That the pastas are really tastier than those from the local Dutch supermarket. And: what you are up to with your Italian friends is no longer so important and interesting.

Pizza with fries

I came back and it took months before all contacts were really back to the way they were before departure. I was still in contact with my Italian family every day, but after a few weeks it felt like Italy had been a dream, which woke me up very abruptly.

To this day it is difficult to explain what I have experienced in Italy, and that pizza and chips really exist.

Sometimes it is almost better not to bring it up because explaining to someone for half a year (often in only 5 minutes, because Dutch life is simply a rush, haste and busy, busy) is impossible.

All's well that ends well

As I write this column I am in Bardolino. Guess where. Right: with my Italian family. After almost three years we still have such good contact that I have visited them at least once a year for the past few years.

In front of me are my Italian brother and sister in the pool. Nothing has changed here.

The same men still work at the supermarket who are almost open-mouthed looking at my blond curls. The bar on the corner of the street still seems to be the most visited bar in Italy every Friday and 'my brother' is still the prince of the family and 'my sister' the princess.

Charging for a week at the family's country house. With a view of the Lake Garda and the port of Bardolino. I'm sure. I am home.