Long ago, just after we both graduated, we left for Sri Lanka. There we lived and worked for 4 years in the beautiful town Kandy. Driven by curiosity for distant lands and other cultures, dreams of adventure and a drive to make the world a better place. It was an experience that changed us and that we continue to carry with us. We came back to Belgium after four years, mainly with the idea of letting our children grow up there. In terms of education, healthcare and opportunities, Belgium is a fantastic place, and we wanted to give our children at least the same opportunities that we got ourselves. But Henk, a Dutchman who had dropped anchor in Kandy, said it upon our return, shaking his head: going abroad is a virus. And you have that virus. And you can go back now, but you’ll never get rid of that virus. We will see you again.

The easiest thing to explain why is the climate. We are now more than 25 years back from Sri Lanka, but we never really got used again to our Belgian winters. More than the cold, the lack of sunlight is difficult. Those endless dark, grey weeks in December-January give us a dip every year, and for 26 years now, somewhere after New Year, the topic of emigrating comes up again. In Sri Lanka, we threw open windows and doors every morning for a whole year. Visiting Belgium in winter, we also discovered what you don’t see when you live there, and you experience the gradual change of seasons. People in Belgium are different in winter than in summer. More short-tempered, in a hurry, stressed, less social, less spontaneous. Winter is not only a cold period, it is also a state of mind. So a longer summer and a shorter winter: please.

When you arrive in another country with a different culture, in an environment where everyone thinks differently, nothing is self-evident anymore. You learn to question yourself and your own culture. And every time you learn something about the other person, you also learn something about yourself. It doesn’t work like that for everyone; there are people who are so convinced of their own rightness that they don’t question themselves. But in any case it has made us much more open and humble. We have learned to let go of judging other cultures, different is different. Fascinating, but therefore not better or worse. So being in a different environment with a different culture does not frighten us, on the contrary, it has continued to fascinate us to get in touch with other cultures.

Perhaps the most difficult thing to explain is what it does to a Westerner to live in an environment where nothing is certain and where planning is no more than a vague idea, as it was in Sri Lanka. We started our day like real Western Europeans, with a plan of what we were going to do that day. But then all sorts of unexpected things happened, or you depended on people not doing their thing on time. And so no day ever ended as planned. But you adapt: it makes you alert, flexible and creative. Stay calm, analyse, and come up with a new plan. After a while, I enjoyed handling things my way, I had satisfaction in finding solutions. It made life much more intense, every day was different, every day an adventure. It somehow gave me the feeling that I was really alive. Greece is not Sri Lanka, but it has something of it.  With apologies to my Greek friends, but Greece is a chaotic, anarchist and unpredictable country, I sometimes call it “the most Sri Lankan country in Europe”. Not always easy, but it has its charm. It is going to be super fascinating.

1992 was a different time. Leaving for a faraway country back then was really leaving everything and everyone behind and jumping into the unknown. We had barely been in an aeroplane, there was no internet or mobile phone. In the beginning, we had to drive for three hours from Kandy, the second largest city in Sri Lanka, to buy a pair of jeans. We had pampers for the baby sent from Belgium. But above all: contact with friends and family was limited. Gone was gone. We wrote letters home that took two weeks to arrive. If they were answered immediately, we had an answer a month later. Telephone calls went through a telephone exchange where you had to request numbers, which did not always work, and costed a fortune. Compared to that, this time it’s simple. Mobile phones, video calls, Whatsapp messages, news that you can follow anywhere, and a reachable destination. You’re away but you’re not: being reachable makes a very big difference.