As long as I can remember the borders of my own home and country felt too close by. My mother even remembers that I was not even 2 years old and already sitting in the window watching what was happening on the street. That would never change and everywhere I go I peek outside the window and see what happens outside, in Oslo, in Peking, in New York, anywhere!
The cold climate did not help either, as the Dutch winters and the grey sky affected me during my whole youth/life. While my friends and family enjoyed skating on the frozen lakes and rivers, I remember to be frozen till the bone and wishing it would be +25 degrees instead of -5. Maybe I was born on the wrong side of the globe, and therefore I never felt very Dutch and needed to live in a sunny place. How can people enjoy wearing several layers of warm clothes, gloves, hat, scarf and 2 pairs of socks in order to stay warm? I could never understand…
The stories of my parents travelling and living abroad woke up the curiosity inside of me to look outside my own country. My mother had been a nanny in London, New York and Paris in the 60s and my father worked in Luxembourg, Germany and Saudi Arabia. They even met on an international train from Amsterdam to Venice during a warm summer.
After visiting many (sunny) countries in Europe with my family and our self-made motorhome, the different languages, food and cultures got more and more attractive to me. At the age of 16 I was already checking the brochures of international schools in Switzerland with my parents, convinced to study abroad. Nobody talked this into me, none of my friends had this interest, it came from deep down inside of me and I could not explain it either. My dream soon would start: live abroad and speak different languages!
Jessica's travel blog 