Ekaterina Netchitailova

In 2007, my psychic, a French expert in I Ching, told me: ‘You will move. Somewhere sunny.’ Why on earth would I move?

I was thirty and thought I had kind of made it. With two psychoses behind me (or maybe three?), I sat in the PhD students’ room at the faculty of sociology in Amsterdam, staring out of the window. I had a good psychiatrist (even if all the meds were total shit back then), a promising academic career, a flat in the centre of Amsterdam, good friendships and stability. Thanks to Seroquel, I was more or less lucid.

Two months later, I lived in Brussels.

Back in Amsterdam, I was quite Dutch then, and could boast of successful integration. I spoke Dutch and loved Amsterdam. But like many people who have ever changed their country of residence, I was a bit confused. I missed both Russia and Brussels, and didn’t know where home was anymore.

And so I called my psychic to enquire about my fate. The first thing he asked me was: “How does Amsterdam feel for you, happy?” I mumbled a tentative “yes”, but he was already busy reading the Tarot cards. “You will move,” he said, in a slightly disapproving voice. “Somewhere sunny.”

Surely he couldn’t mean Brussels. It rains there all the time, less than in the Netherlands, but still. And yet the winter I moved was the warmest on record. I understood then what he meant by “sunny”.

Brussels, of course, is not a place one would choose for the weather. It stands out for its other qualities: friendly people, amazing food, a joie de vivre that even the French don’t have, and an excellent choice of chocolate (better than Swiss). I had moved there at nineteen to study in French, and spent five beautiful years there before I moved to Amsterdam, where I received a bursary for a master’s degree. That was before my psychoses, when no one would ever have predicted I would end up with one.

After moving to Amsterdam, I didn’t visit Brussels for seven years. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I missed it like mad, and I knew that if I went back, I would stay. And then, two months after that phone call, I did exactly that.

I thought I had finally come home. My psychic, however, wasn’t finished with me.

(me in Brussels when I was still a student)