What’s a place you visited that felt like home?
A simple question if you travel. For me it is painful. I almost cried when I saw it.
I have lived in four countries. Each one became a home.
Brussels first: six years. I arrived at nineteen to study in French. The start was hard. A year later I loved the city, and that love stayed, even though Brussels has changed. Friendly people, good food, languages in the street, waffles and chocolate that melt. I thought I would live there forever.
I didn’t. A bursary for a master’s took me to Amsterdam.
I fell in love at once. I lived in the Plantage, looking over a canal. Friends, the Jordaan, the flea market on Waterlooplein, the Amstel. Hard to imagine better. So I stayed. Then life turned, and I learned I was not made for a strict office.
I went back to Brussels, then to England for a PhD, stayed there for eleven years, and then moved to the Netherlands again. Each place left something I still carry.
Russia is the one I miss most. I spent the first nineteen years of my life there. My father, my sisters, cousins, closest friends, I miss them. The language, the long talks, Moscow streets, churches, babushkas with pastries at the station, I miss them.
I have not been back for years: first Covid, then the war. When I think of going I feel like a visitor. I also know that when I do go, it will feel like home again.
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