One year in the Netherlands

Introduction

A few years ago I wrote a blog post in which I shared my experiences and observations after one year of living in Portugal. It was very much a “should I stay or should I go” kind of article, as I had very mixed feelings about my life there. As it happened, three months after publishing the post I moved back to Warsaw and felt a great sense of relief. I also felt, having moved countries a good few times by that point, that perhaps I had had my share of packing and sending boxes back and forth, and perhaps the time had come to make Warsaw my permanent home.

But life has a tendency to turn such statements on their head and two years after this “permanent” move back, my partner and I started plotting yet another exodus. There were many reasons for it, the political climate in Poland being among our major concerns, but the main thing was: we didn’t feel that we had found our place yet. Ever since becoming an adult, I’ve never felt that I fit into the Polish landscape, hence my journeys abroad. However, I was beginning to wonder if perhaps this had more to do with me rather than the environment. Perhaps I’ll never fit in, no matter the country, I thought.

There were a few countries