”The place chose me”

I was starting my doctorate, and at that time (early 1990s) there were very few opportunities to get funding to do it in Catalonia, so I applied for a scholarship to continue my research in the USA. To my surprise, I got selected, so I joined an American university. After my PhD in Massachusetts, I started working as a professor in New York, and I stayed there through tenure. I was a very eager student, but truly, I also had a strong desire to see the world and meet different cultures, languages, people, and approaches to life.

After some 20 years living in the USA, I felt I was ready for a change. I had become American, but I also kept strong roots to Europe. My two daughters were of an age (9 and 11) when they would still easily accept a move following their parents, so, even though I had a permanent position and a good salary, my partner, who is German, and me started thinking of going back to good old Europe. When an opportunity came up at the University of Groningen, we took the job and the whole family (including our two dogs) moved to the low lands. As a professor of linguistics, I don’t tend to that get many job offers, so I feel I didn’t choose the place as much as the place chose me. I’ve been here for six years now.

I fell in love with the project that was proposed to me, mainly to help establish the new study track Minorities and Multilingualism within the Frisian department. I appreciate a relaxed atmosphere and the acceptance of family and personal lives in the workplace.

The Netherlands is a country that takes pride in advancing sustainable and environmentally sound alternatives in all aspects of people’s lives. Biking everywhere and taking the train instead of driving, as well as a generally frugal lifestyle, is part of the Dutch way of living. Dutch people also strive to be tolerant and open-minded; they have managed to be so especially with respect to some topics such as sex, recreational drugs, politics, and religion. I like their relaxed and friendly attitude, especially in a town full of young people like Groningen. While the Netherlands has not been blessed with spectacular nature, there are lovely cities with canals full of ships and boats of all kinds, and narrow, picturesque houses that I find very romantic to stroll or bike by yearlong.

From my daily life, I would like to see a radical change in the use of plastic, especially in the packaging industry. A family of four ends up producing an obscene amount of trash, even if you make a point of buying from the market and bringing your own bags and containers. Fortunately, this is slowly changing, and there is more awareness every day. More deeply, Europe in general, and the Netherlands is no exception, has some work to do examining their attitudes with respect to questions of race and other kinds of diversity, their colonial heritage, or the scandalous practices of the animal exploitation industry. People in the Netherlands take their comfortable standard of living for granted, and oftentimes fail to respond empathetically towards less fortunate situations. Again more trivially, I don’t quite care about Dutch cuisine. But since I cook my own food, this only becomes relevant when I go out to a restaurant.

I visit Catalonia quite often, and I feel connected otherwise through social media and so forth. If anything, I would like to be able to do more shoulder-to-shoulder work supporting the defence of the democratic freedoms that are currently in crisis there, and that is hard to do from afar. At a more trivial level, I miss mild winter days by the sea, as well as hiking in the Pyrenees -the coastline in the Netherlands is oftentimes rainy and always windy, and there is no vertical dimension in the landscape. From my American home, I miss the feeling of freedom, positivity, and possibility that characterizes all aspects of life there.

I like bringing people flower bulbs. I know it is kind of a cliché, but the Dutch really have perfected the art of floriculture, and they produce an unbelievable array of flower types. I have also brought cheese, since that is one food the Dutch are sophisticated about. The province of Groningen is next to Friesland, the only region with a recognized official language other than Dutch, and I like to buy little postcards with cute idioms or sayings in Frisian. Likewise, I recently brought a friend of mine a little statue of Grutte Pier, a legendary hero who fought during the Dutch-English attacks on the Frisians, and whom the Dutch describe as a fierce, cruel pirate, while in Friesland he is celebrated as a courageous freedom fighter. I thought it was interesting how each side characterized the same person in those two very different ways, based on the same facts, and with my friend we got a kick out of drawing parallelisms with other examples from current times.

Probably the most shocking view for the outsider is the hundreds of bikes you can find in all corners of the city, and in great concentrations near the station and the University buildings, since Groningen is a town with a large number of students, and with a committed bike culture. There are a number of eclectic buildings all over the city, but it is when I see the canals, with the drawbridges and the house boats, when I know I am home.

I had a wonderful time visiting the vast tulip fields in Spring. Also, I am oftentimes overcome by a feeling of aesthetic pleasure while biking or strolling through the beautiful streets of the city center, through the canal bridges and the narrow streets, taking in the small residential buildings with their big windows, the tiny shops, the boats big and small, and the hundreds of bikers, on my way to work. Of course, I will never forget going to Ameland with my family, flying the kites with the kids at the beach and walking the dunes with the dogs.

I go to Catalonia several times a year. Settling there, it is not something I am considering at the moment. I value personal freedom a lot, and nowadays there is a climate of repression in Catalonia that I would find very difficult to live with. I think the civic and political movements of the recent times make Catalonia one of the most interesting places in Europe right now, but I prefer to participate in this historical transition from the free space that not living in Catalonia affords me, and hope to be useful at a distance.