It is now over a year since my family and I moved to Enschede in East Netherlands and started our new life in the Dutch kitchen in the sky, and I can say hand on heart, that I have not regretted the decision for one minute.
Leaving our rural farmhouse in Suffolk, UK was never going to be easy, but the rewards of a life anew have more than made up for the short-term disruption and the upheaval of moving to a new country – in the middle of a pandemic and post Brexit!
As I sat this morning at my kitchen table with my new-found friends and surveyed the cloud covered buildings from our apartment which is literally in the sky, for the first time, it really hit me how lucky I am to be living in such a wonderful city and to be surrounded by such lovely, interesting and inspiring individuals.
Enschede is a strangely unique place: a city set deep in the rural heartland, but with inhabitants who are so obviously international and foreword thinking. The mix of high technology industries and the university, with scores of students and staff from all over the world plus all the infra-structure which comes with supporting such endeavours, brings a highly metropolitan feel to this quiet corner of what I affectionally call ‘Dutchland’.
We parted, thinking again of the lives we have left and how venturing abroad to begin a life in this corner of the world has given each of us an extra something in our lives, a Va-Va-Voom as Thiery Henry the French footballer used to say many years ago in the British advert for the Renault Clio.
As we said good-bye, the sun broke through those dark and lurking clouds and the city basked in the radiant glow, resplendent in the sun’s rays. Enschede shines like a jewel in the crown of NL.
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