On the outside looking in

This is the phenomenon of being a foreigner on foreign land. It is made most apparent when you do not phenotypically look like the majority, and especially when you do not speak the language. But, there are also invisible cultural threads that remind you that regardless of the surface, there is also the things that you can’t quite understand.

I feel like my brain is constantly making adjustments and translations for things that I haven’t considered before. For instance:

• Measurements: distance and height being measured in meters, with weight being measured in kilograms and grams.
• Time: 24-hour clock, which I think is ultimately superior and reduces any need for clarification (am or pm?! 🧐) or context clues, but it requires my brain to do some mapping.
• Temperature: Celsius, not Fahrenheit! I still do a little bit of calculation to get there. My favorite way to do that is multiply by 2 and add 30.
• Grocery stores: the layouts of grocery stores here can be a bit different. Not that I eat eggs, but I’ve noticed that they’re sitting on shelves and not refrigerated. Speaking of, at Lidl, the refrigeration sections are not all consolidated in the same place. All of the brands are completely different, so you can’t rely on familiarity with the look and feel of a product from back home, and as a vegan, I will read through ingredients. (Although I do see a lot of products clearly labeled as vegan, which is helpful!)
• Street signs: I like that they’re not so in-your-face here and they’re fairly uniform when you come to recognize them. They’re small placards on the side of buildings, but it feels like you have to reach that intersection before being able to decipher them, at which point sometimes it is a little too late to make certain turns.
• Bike paths: Google Maps does a sufficient job of providing a route via bike, but will sometimes miss the mark closer to the city center. It will make me turn onto another street and then return to the original street when I could’ve just stayed on that street. Also, in het centrum, it can be tough to distinguish the bike path from pedestrian path since they look roughly the same.
• Ads and billboards: Okay, no one really wants to see this, but it’s another reminder that I still don’t understand Dutch.

I am sure that with time, all of these things will become more intuitive. At the moment, they can cause a little bit of friction in my day-to-day life. Maybe that’s just how I keep my hersenen sharp, right? 🧠