merel van beeren

Written for my reporting class at NYU.

The city hardly feels any different. Streets are the same, the crowds haven’t changed and bicycles have not gone out of style. Amsterdam is unperturbed by my absence. I, on the other hand, have changed in the first three months of my two-year stay in New York.

Small details prove that I have been slowly adjusting to life on the other side of the world. Addressing restaurant personnel in English, waiting for the subway doors to open automatically as they do in New York, a feeling of happy surprise at the low cost of alcoholic drinks in a bar. But mostly, I feel slightly out of place in my hometown.

I am not alone in feeling unsettled. Nicky Amiabel, whom I interviewed some weeks ago about life in New York, has since returned to Amsterdam, having finished her internship at the Dome project. Unlike myself, her leaving New York is permanent.

Having spent three months in New York, she has a hard time adjusting to being back in Amsterdam. Nicky was thrown right back into normal life, with all the accompanying responsibilities. “Everything went right back to what it was like before I left,” she e-mailed me in Dutch.

Cross-cultural reentry, as returning home after spending time abroad is called, is characterized by ambiguous feelings. On the one hand, an experience in a new country changes a person’s views of the world and encourages them to try new things at home. On the other hand, settling into one’s normal life can be difficult. You pick up where you left off, including all the things that weren’t much fun in the first place. Furthermore, sharing your experiences with people at home can be a letdown. They might not understand what you’ve been through, or are perhaps not interested in your stories.

“Some of your experience may need to be internalized, processed and integrated into your own life in ways that make sense for you, without your ever being able to fully share them with anyone else,” Jim Citron and Vija Mendelson write on transitionsabroad.com.

Even if you are able to share your experiences and feelings of adjustment, the transition can still be difficult and can take some time. “I still feel homesick for New York,” Nicky says, expressing a feeling of not completely belonging in either city, feeling at home and a tourist in both.