Note to a small island

By: Lindsey

“Let me guess… Australian?”

“Ummm, no, English.” 

“Oh, I thought so. I really have an ear for accents you know."

Really? I sound really English to me. Which doesn’t sound very Australian, but apparently there isn’t much in it if you live in Maryland. 

I blame Nicole Kidman for confusing everyone with her English/Australian accent in Australia - the film that is. It certainly wasn’t a question I was expecting to be asked once a month when I moved to the US, but I guess in the enormity of moving overseas, it’s not such a big deal.

I’ve become one of those ex-pats who moans about the fact you can’t buy ‘proper’ teabags here. You can buy UK things here, it just costs a bit more. And with the food packages from family and friends, I have no right to moan about that. I still moan about the money though. Why are all the notes the same colour? And why is a five cent coin bigger than both a dime and a quarter? 

Going on an American bear hunt. 

I miss my family like crazy. The world is small, but it could still be a little smaller when I want to give my Mum a cuddle.

There are so many things I like about living here. I like the heatwave we’re currently having; especially while the UK bathes in, well, rain. It’s Wimbledon isn’t it? Is it really a surprise it’s raining? 

I’m growing tomatoes! And chili and broccoli and radishes and potatoes and a whole range of other things! They will mainly get eaten by deer and groundhogs and rabbits and chipmunks, but at least they would have a chance of growing big and strong, not like my pitiful attempts at tomato growing in Glasgow. 

So far we’ve had a snake in the basement, a groundhog living under the porch, a black bear in the neighbourhood (the black sunflower seeds in bird feeders are apparently crack to bears) and of course the family of deer who forget they're meant to be scared of humans and eat everything in their path (not humans thankfully).

I love the fact my babies are happy. Boy 1 has grown confident and brave and continues to amaze me day after day. Boy 2 is American, born but not bred, so I guess he will still have some roots in the UK. 

I do wonder a lot about things. If we stay here, my boys will identify with being American. I will always identify with being British. I don’t know how I’m going to feel about that as the years go by, and they don’t realise that you should offer a cup of tea to every visitor who comes to the door. 

Will we stay here? Who knows, but it is a good life for my family. We smile a lot more and do a lot more, and we all have a lovely tan.


~ Part of Strangers in Strange Lands. Lindsey is a doula, tea drinker, and forensic biologist, which means she spends a lot of afternoons wondering if snails need doulas. This being the 4th, she is obligated to attend some sort of BBQ thing, after which she is entitled to a restorative cup of Yorkshire Gold. 

Call me broccoli

By: Britt

Foreign is what I felt for the first 19 years of my life. 

I was condemned by birth to a country that totally creeps me out. Nobody ever thought I was funny there. I got out of there like a bat out of hell first chance I got, and have been engaging the universe in uproarious encounters of the foreign kind ever since. 

The Economist wrote an article on being foreign a couple of years ago, from which I remember this nugget for the purposes of scintillating dinner party conversation: “For the first time in history, across much of the world, to be foreign is a perfectly normal condition.”

Valkyrie Vegetables. (Jessica Mullan)

Being Caucasian, I slide into western European, North American and Antipodean locations very nicely.

There are two caveats here. First, I have the shoulders of an incredible hulk. I am foreign-looking in the kind of feminine outfit that a large proportion of the female species of all countries seem to slide into. Don’t get me wrong: I am not fat - I'm Valkyrie.  

When I leave the bright lights of the city and enter central Manitoba, the mountains of Cyprus, sheep farm country in New Zealand, I slide into place much better. It's something about hard physical labour, the free fresh air, rising when the sun comes up, and jumping into bed when it goes down. Too bad I HATE the countryside.

I know you are all waiting breathlessly for caveat 2, and it's in my mouth: my command of various languages is perfect, but I don’t sound like I fit into the geographical locations where I find myself. And I can't find the strength to stay mute for a couple of days to try fitting in. 

If I picked a mid-size town - let’s say Chattanooga, Tennessee - I'd slide right in. It’s countryside-like enough that there'd be a fair influx of broad shouldered country gals. And if I didn’t speak at all, how could anybody in Chattanooga think anything of me but the purrfect Tennessee woman? Now if that sounds like a goal I want to achieve in my lifetime - sliding in and NOT being foreign - then dude, you got another thing coming.

Think of me as the crunchy, utterly out of place broccoli on a plate, mingled in between a hunk of bbq ribs, themselves slathered with a sauce that makes your arteries squeak like a ventilator that has just busted its last ball bearing, a mountain of mash the size of McKinley and some buttered corn on the cob that slips through your fingers like your 2 year old who doesn’t want to go to bed.  

As Mr. Melville would say:  Call me Broccoli!


~ Written for Strangers in Strange Lands. Britt Permien is a graphic designer who left behind the foreign climes of Germany for the familiar comforts of Britain and British Colombia. 

The expat brat pack

By: Mia

As a child of wanderers, I have always felt like a foreigner. I do even now, after more than a decade in the UK. I've discovered that looking foreign invites people to put you in a neat little box. 

Not Greek - honest.

With freckles and curly hair in Hong Kong, I certainly looked the part of the expat brat. But in Cyprus it was trickier, because I could pass for a native. On discovering that I am not Greek-Cypriot, the common response was “Are you sure? Because you look Greek and your name ends in ‘OU’.

I always found the insinuation that I do not know my OWN ORIGINS mildly annoying but extremely amusing. 

The 'where are you from' question tends to get people truly confused. They don't get the answer they expect, so they usually try with increasing desperation to find the correct pigeon hole for me. 

I have fine tuned my answers over the years. This is a typical exchange:

“So where are you from?"

"Many places."

"Where did you grow up?” 

"My parents traveled a lot."

“OK, so where are your parents from?”

"My father is from Brittany and my mother is an Egyptian Jew brought up in Rio, then London."

"And where did you go to school?"

"Paris, Jerusalem, Cannes, Hong Kong, Cyprus, London."

Then, with escalating panic over the seemingly impossible but strangely necessary task of finding my ONE TRUE ORIGIN, they ask the clincher question: "Hah! Where were you BORN?”

Here I grin like a happy Cheshire cat grin and pull out my aces: “Tokyo.”

~ Part of Strangers in Strange Lands. Mia Navellou is is a voice-over artist based in London, however her ONE TRUE ORIGIN is always liable to change at any time without prior notice. You can ask her "why London?" if you like, but your line of questioning is likely to end in futility and frustration. 

Location fatigue

By: Claire

The other day in Brussels, where I live now, this guy had to know exactly where I come from. He seemed nice enough, but I bit the nose off him anyway.

"I'm from Dublin, is that not enough information?"

He looked shocked. He meant no harm, but I knew he wanted me to be more precise. How did I know? Because most Dubliners I meet are preoccupied with which square meter of the sprawling town you come from. 

Universal. (Glenn Euloth) 

The beauty of living away is the anonymity that goes with it. But I learned early on in places as far away from Dublin as St Petersburg that Dubliners won't let this one go.

"Okay, so you are not from the Northside so you must be from the Southside. You're a posho aren't you?"

Well-intentioned people might assume that it's just about striking a familiar chord with someone, walking the old streets together, homesickness, but this kind of questioning usually brings out an argumentative streak in me.

The reason I refuse to answer is because I can predict the reaction: "Ooh Killiney? Isn't that near where Bono lives?!" Yes it is close, but not a strone's throw. Bono lives in a mansion on a hill overlooking the sea. My parents live more like at the very bottom of the hill in an estate of small bungalows.

I told Bono where the carrots were once when I was working at the local grocer's checkout counter during the summer of 2004. He nodded, grabbed a bunch, paid and left carrying them nonchalantly by their leafy top.

I grew up outside Ireland, apart from a two year stint at a convent school in Killiney during my teens. Back again at 23, I tried to fit in. I happened to arrive at the same time as many Poles. When I wasn't immediately outspoken, I became just "the Polish girl." The name followed me when I took up work at a bar in Sallynoggin, at the far other end of the income scale.

All in all, which end of the scale I live at means little to me. Abroad (in Germany and the Netherlands to be as precise as I want to be) we always got by easily because the cost of living was low. But even Dad, who was part of Ireland's industrial book, is now paying for recent excesses with other Dubliners.

Recently some Occupy types thought they were doing a good thing by pitching up outside an old couple's house in Killiney because they were being kicked out for late repayments.Then it transpired they could just sell one of their other ten houses.

That's Killiney! So don't ask me where I'm from, ok?

~ Part of Strangers in Strange Lands. Claire Davenport writes for Reuters and (currently) lives in Brussels. She won't tell you which neighbourhood, but she will help you locate the local green grocers if you ask nicely. 

Stranger radar

By: Emma

I am not a Refugee. I have not left my country, exiled for reasons so utterly terrifying that you wouldn't believe me even if I tried to explain.

I am an expatriate. Someone who is privileged to live in another country for work reasons. I am privileged to explore the world at will, rather than forced to travel out of necessity.

Same ground, different footing.

I am however, someone whose eyes have been opened to the feeling of what it is like to be an outsider. Who at times has been made to feel unwelcome and unwanted in another's land. And that's the only thing I have to worry about. I can just forget about the feeling of unease that might have momentarily upset my day, and carry on. I am lucky, it probably won't happen to me again, not for a while anyway.

To those that are in exile, I am grateful for what you have taught me.The best privilege yet, has been to meet some amazing people from a multitude of backgrounds and cultures in the two countries that I have lived in away from my home, the UK. And I have yet to meet more gracious and lovely people than the friends who fled Sri Lanka for example, or the countless others we have met along the way, who had to leave home behind.

We all have one thing in common “us foreigners”. A special skill, only granted to you when you have been a foreigner yourself. A kind of inbuilt radar system that alerts us to mutual “strangers” in the vicinity, whether on a train, or just passing each other in the supermarket. When it’s activated, you might see us smiling at each other, for we have a mutual understanding of what it feels like to be different, and to not truly belong. In this respect at least we are always the same, despite our backgrounds and cultural variations.


~ Written for the Strangers in Strange Lands series. When not taking in the delights of Copenhagen with her family, Emma can be found on A Bavarian Sojourn. 

From Nowhere

By: Daianna

I have a rare phobia. It’s so unusual, I don’t think doctors have bothered to name it.

I am afraid of a question. One that I’m asked by almost everyone I meet. The inevitable follow up to exchanging names and polite comments on the weather.

“Where are you from?”

Nowhere is the new everywhere. 

First, my lips purse. Then, I look nervously around the room and up at the ceiling. I pause for a while, waiting for my interrogator to forget he asked the question and move on to another one.

But there is no escape. And as far as he is concerned, it is a simple question with a simple answer.

I still don’t know how best to respond. Once or twice, I’ve tried “everywhere and nowhere”. But people seem unsatisfied with this. So I usually warn the questioner to prepare for a long and convoluted story.

I breeze through the roster of American cities where I grew up – east coast, west coast and in between. I try to put a quick end to my torture by skipping the messy last decade, when I’ve moved several times between London and Chicago. But everyone wants to know more. “How did you end up in London”?

Before I got married, I’d get the bonus question, “Where is your surname…Rincones…from”? Curses! Another extended and multifaceted yarn featuring another country entirely.

Despite my phobia, I’m mindful of how lucky I am. Whereas various members of my family left Venezuela after being burgled, assaulted or kidnapped, I’m simply a refugee from boredom. When I start feeling too comfortable in one place, I get an itch to move onto the next.

As the world gets (figuratively) smaller, I see more people doing the same. Born in one place, educated in another city and working in different countries – stories like mine are becoming more common. Maybe, one day, people will stop asking the question I dread. We won’t need to be from anywhere. We’ll just be.

Or maybe we’ll make the effort to craft, and the time to hear, these great stories that make us who we are.

~ Part of the Strangers in Strange Lands guest blogging series. Daianna Karaian is a marketer at EDF Energy and a blogger at Sexy Or Susty, where she writes on the importance of doing over saying.

A tale of two countries

By: Erica

As both Californian and British, never formally comfortable calling myself one or the other, I have always related to the tale of Christopher and Columbus by Elizabeth von Arnim.  

Nicknaming themselves Christopher and Columbus, the Twinkler twins, orphans of an English mother and a German father, find themselves shipped off to America during World War One. They were “refugees, castaways, derelicts, two wretched little Germans who were neither really Germans nor really English because they so unfortunately, so complicatedly were both.”  Despite von Arnim’s customary wit and charm, there is also a forlorn sadness to the twins inability to belong.

British pragmatism. 

It is perhaps not surprising that Von Arnim, herself, was a refugee of sorts. Born in Australia to British parents, she married a Prussian aristocrat, and lived in both Germany and England, before ultimately ending up in Charleston, South Carolina.

Although I love nearly all the works of Elizabeth von Arnim, I have always identified with the Twinkler twins.  Unable to define themselves to one specific nationality, they are always at a loss when asked if they are British.  Their standard reply of “Practically” results in “surprise, reflection, and then suspicion.”  Unable to fit neatly into any particular box, they alienate and confuse any new acquaintances.

Born in England, but largely raised in California, I, like the Twinkler twins, always have a hard time telling people where I’m from. I tend to give a long, drawn out, complicated explanation that leaves everyone, including myself, confused.  And perhaps the truth is that I am confused by my own nationality. I would like to be British, but despite a love of baked beans on toast, and Cadbury flakes, I don’t always remember to say lift instead of elevator, or biscuit instead of cookie. And yet, I don’t feel entirely Californian either. I’m not blonde. I don’t surf or skateboard. I don’t eat healthy. And I’m terrible at sports.

Although the twins tell themselves that they must decide what they are, they never do. They are constantly in limbo, neither one nor the other. Their German soul inspires them to love Slush (excessive sentiment), while their British soul tells them to mock it. 

I must admit to the same hypocrisy in many of my own opinions and preferences. I love both the British and American office, Steve Carrel and Ricky Gervais being equally brilliant in my transatlantic eyes. I despise the undemocratic nature of the British aristocracy and yet romanticize William and Kate. I’d be hard pressed to say whether I prefer a good Sunday Roast or an all American BBQ. Roast pudding and hamburgers being equally delicious and decadent. But, I always prefer my tea with milk. And I love clotted cream and jam on my scones.  

So I guess at least when it comes to tea, I am well and truly British. The other areas of my life will have to go undefined.

~ This piece is the second installment in the Strangers in Strange Lands series. Although she is liable to change polarity at any moment, Erica is currently a Californian in Britain. A tea-drinking romantic, she can be found dispensing "old-fashioned advice for life's modern dilemmas" at Teatime with Erica.

Careful Construction

By: Arina 

My baby daughter is British. I am not. 

I was born nearly a third of a century ago in a country that has ceased to exist since then. I acquired my fatherland in 1991, when in the aftermath of a failed Soviet coup, Latvia regained independence. Ten years of carefully constructing my Latvian identity have followed. 

The grass is greener. 

So when I left Latvia for the greener meadows of England, I hoped to come back one day in order to singlehandedly pull the Latvian economy out of the post-Soviet mess. Ten more years have passed, and in contact with reality the dreams of a romantic teenager have withered somewhat. 

During my years spent in the UK, I have learned to hold the swinging doors for strangers, instead of inadvertently slamming them in the face of unsuspecting victims who are used to and thus take the courtesy of fellow human beings for granted. I have also learned to give change directly to shop assistants instead of seeking for a little plate to use as a neutral space in the exchange of coins. 

I got used to the idea that if ever I were to afford a house, it would be a hobbit house with tiny doors and tiny windows and I would always have an uncontrollable urge to stoop before entering it. I no longer fear that the local food will unrelentingly make me go up in dress sizes. And on cold winter days I no longer look with horror at cyclists wearing shorts or mothers taking their babies for a walk without a blanket and with bare feet under never-ending drizzle.

By now I cannot imagine going back to Latvia, where border police never smile, and women in the broad daylight wear skirts so skimpy that Westerners frequently mistake them for sex workers. After the
birth of my daughter I started to feel that London is my home. Yet it still feels so strange to watch Postman Pat with my daughter. It is so quintessentially British. 


~ Written as part of the Strangers in Strange Lands series. Arina describes herself as a mother (translation: waitress, cleaner, transportation device), lecturer (subverter of young minds), theoretical economist (creator of toy worlds), modern art junkie and a traveler.

Strangers in strange lands

I have been reminded by Refugee Week that there is a joy to being foreign, and a joy in knowing foreigners.

Songs of innocence and experience. 

To celebrate this joy, I am handing over the reins to some of my favourite migrants over the coming days, and instructing them to write on the vague topic of 'being and foreignness'.

My guest writers are a handful of the wanderers I have met in the green and pleasant land that I am proud to call my second home.

For me, being foreign is the experience of being a snowflake out of water: forever unique and eternally lost. Of course, being unique ain't always great, and being lost can be pretty cool.

Please tune in daily this week for a new story from a faraway land.

Dreams of home

Proof that he grew up on a farm, Yashar Ismailoglu's first memory is of being kicked by a cow. 

His second memory is of waking from a dream to discover a snake descending on him from a branch overhead. The snake landed on his shoulder and dragged its cold scales down the length of his arm, all the while Yasher's body remained paralyzed by lingering sleep 

Warm welcome. 

There must have been points that felt similarly uncomfortable on Yashar's journey as a young student from Cyprus to Britain in 1972, and then again on the return journey he never took from Britain to Cyprus after war broke out in 1974, leaving him a refugee. 

A friend introduced me to Yashar, and I met with him on the occasion of Refugee Week, to talk about his experiences as one of the first Cypriot refugees to Britain. Yashar welcomed me into the Alevi Cultural Centre in Hackney with a sort of warmth and openness that I imagine comes from having had to rely on the kindness of strangers himself. 

When Yashar arrived in Britain, he insisted to the Scottish boarder guard that he could speak English. The border guard insisted the same thing to Yashar, but neither could understand the other. 

Eventually Yashar convinced the guard to let him through, and he went on to discover some local culinary oddities - for instance, that his new country appeared to have a mere two Turkish restaurants to it's name. Turning to local cuisine, he struggled with the notion that the headless, beer-battered lump on the plate was actually a fish.

Land of plenty.

A long-time community organiser, Yashar admits that one of his initiatives has been far more successful than the others: football. The league he helped found as a "bridge between Cyprus and London" now has thirty-two clubs. At one point it sent twenty-three members of the league to Cyprus, paid for by an enthusiastic community raffle. 

Yashar is a poet, and he writes on the impossibility of going home. Years after coming to Britain, Yashar returned to the village of his birth. he found that people of his childhood were gone. "Our fields, rocks, mountains, hills - had all become houses."

Yashar is cautiously optimistic about the plight of future migrants to Britain. "If you come here and rely on the state you will be starving." He points out that migrants must rely on kindness and serendipity anyway. It was a famous Turkish musician who covered Yashar's bus fare to Ankara, and an Irish produce seller who taught him how to supplement his meager wages with leftover fruit and veg from the Ridley Road Market.

Every week is refugee week if you're a refugee. Yashar writes that home becomes place in one's mind rather than in geography. "There is always somewhere else," he says.