10 years of living abroad

A big personal milestone worth celebrating - 10 years of living abroad. By far the wildest adventure of my life, the biggest personal and professional growth opportunity, and the toughest challenge. In 10 years, I lived in two cities (London, Prague, then London again) and five flats, I had a 2-year long-distance relationship with my husband, I had five jobs, started a new company, adopted a doggie, bought a home, and made some good friends along the way.??

I remember that mix of feelings of my first months when I moved to London in 2013. How thrilled I was to have been offered a top job in a top firm in my top city in the world. How excited I was to experience London’s world-class everything: museums, art, food, music, theatre, sport, and culture. How lucky I felt to be able to live in my favourite neighbourhood, Notting Hill, the most eclectic, artistic, and charming place in the world to me (where we also bought our home years later).

But also how confused I was, how totally out of my comfort zone. You see, I left my birth country when I was 37. I already had a whole life there: my family, my house and my car, a support system, a wide network, a great career and a professional reputation I had worked hard to build. Here I was almost starting from scratch, and when I spent my first night in my new London flat, alone, without my loving husband, with no furniture but on an IKEA mattress placed straight on the floor, I became painfully aware of that.

The other very unexpected thing I became painfully aware of was… my nationality. I’ve never thought I would feel foreign in a culturally diverse city, full of people from all across the globe like London. But being a Romanian in the UK is not easy - especially in 2013 when the whole immigration furore in the UK mass media started, preceding the lifting of immigration restrictions for Romanians and Bulgarians in 2014 and then leading to Brexit.

The sad truth is that the inflammatory discourse made life difficult for many, including highly skilled professionals like myself. For the first time in my life, I was confronted with terrible assumptions, stereotypes and prejudices – not occasionally, but every single day. This experience made me aware of how our views of the world are heavily influenced by origins and background – ours and others – and it changed my viewpoint forever. Everyone’s a foreigner somewhere.

Gaining a #globalmindset is what I adore most about living abroad. Experiencing other cultures and perspectives, including biases, enabled me to open my mind, broaden my horizons, redefine my comfort zone, and become generally better at adapting to different people and different circumstances. I’ve been through phases of idealising the UK, being frustrated that I will never quite fit in, and accepting that there will always be local references I need to learn, but that’s all right – I also have a world of valuable knowledge that other people don’t know and could benefit. I may still not use all the proper prepositions and tricky idioms, but I am stronger, more empathetic, and able to accomplish more because I pushed myself more.?

With all the bumps in the road, it has been a great experience overall. So here’s to all people who supported me along my journey. Here’s to London, the city I now call home and I never feel like I’m done exploring. And here’s to 10 fantastic years of living abroad, filled with excitement, joy, melancholy, confusion and curiosity, and hopefully a lot more and happier years ahead.