Living in the Netherlands was not perfect, of course. It had its fair share of frustrations, but which place doesn’t. The important thing is that it had a lot of things about it – some big, some tiny – which I came to love – a lot of them found their way to this blog! Separately they may seem insignificant, especially to an outsider, but together they made me happy – no more and no less than that. The kind of happy when you get up in the morning and can’t help feeling excited about the rest of the day. The kind of happy when you notice hundreds of things around you which makes you smile and which you find pretty. When you know that there is still so many things you are looking forward to, and you can start planning them starting this weekend. When you’re never bored, when there’s always something fascinating to do, to see, to experience, and when you feel you’ve finally found your place. And when you have someone you love to share it with – probably the most important element of all. And that’s why today I’m sitting on the pile of boxes in our new apartment in Warsaw, where my husband got relocated for his job, and my happy little place on earth got left behind – many, many kilometres behind.
I have a strange feeling of displacement. As if the world outside was somehow wrong – a bit like in a dream when you cannot wake up but part of you realizes it shouldn’t be happening. The air seems suffocating – the result of not living on the seaside anymore - the colours seem dull and the light is definitely wrong – I’m almost afraid to take pictures knowing that I do not have the Dutch light at my disposal anymore to make the colours vibrant and the photos alive with them. And I feel so cooped up here, not being able to do what I did in my free time for the last two years.
I’m sure the feeling of wrongness will fade away with time – after all I am good at adapting to new places… In the meantime I think I will have to work on a photo collage, a photo tribute of sorts to all those small and big things I’ve loved about the Netherlands – I’ll post a copy here when it’s ready. But for now I’m entitled to a period of feeling sad and miserable – and what’s better to mope with than a sad, sad song? Here is the one I recommend – Two for Tragedy by Nightwish.