03 February 2009
"Second Impression", should be positive now. But no. Leuven truly sucks and there is nothing I can do about it. After 5 months I still do not at all feel at home and I do not understand how anyone can, it is like Disneyland, somewhat wonderful but very fake and alienating. The reason I hate Belgium is easy, it is too similar to Holland so that the cultural differences become an annoyance, making life difficult. Because it appears so much like Holland, I think to know how life works there and constantly have to find out that I do not know it. There are other rules at work, with such subtle differences that I cannot discern them, yet with great consequences to everyday life. Thus it feels like I am living in a twilightzone, a freaky David Lynch movie where everything is completely recognizable yet unreal. It still feels as if everything is working against me, that Belgium is a collection of disconnected villagers that do not understand one another and are frustrated with their lack of identity. Not lost in translation but lost in similarity.
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I understand your feelings very well. There are such places for me too which I just cannot feel positive about. What I did was to try to escape the context by digging into other smaller worlds, such as those in books. That helped.
It will pass. Lots of good wishes to you.
Tennia
;)
tennia
Anyway, being a Dutchman myself I only can say this is the land of Margritte. Your comparison with Lynch is quite on the spot, but I must say that I do like Leuven and Belgium. By the way, La Belgique et Les Belges n'existent pas ;-)
Since I moved to Leuven, one and a half year ago, I treated it like a foreign country with foreign habits. I repressed the common Dutch reflex of "knowing everything better" the same way as I did in e.g. a US university. It helps enormously in learning to enjoy the niceties of "Belgian" living! Enjoy it as you would enjoy living in Friesland or Limburg - in which the cultural differences with so-called 'standard Dutchness' are not directly visible either.
Good luck with your studies and hope that you will enjoy every moment of your existence, and that includes living and studying here in Leuven!