The Perils of Double Expatism

I’ve fallen into a state of ‘double expatism’. Let me explain. My life started off and continued for several decades in the UK. I then moved to Finland, and several decades later I find myself working in Germany. Three different countries each with a different personal meaning: the UK is where my roots are, Finland is where I’m permanently resident and where my family is, and Germany is where my job is. I spend the majority of my time shuttling between Finland and Germany, with occasional forays to the UK.

There are probably myriad academic articles on the psychological, social and cultural ramifications of this mode of existence – because there would be, wouldn’t there? – but here are a few random observations.?

1.?????? Where’s my stuff?

In order to avoid travelling with a full suitcase every time, I’ve divided or duplicated my possessions as between the family home in Espoo, Finland and my apartment in Frankfurt, Germany. I also keep a stash of emergency kit at my mother’s house in the UK. What this means in practice is that I own a ridiculously large number of socks but they’re never in the same place at the same time.

Despite all the careful strategies I try to follow, things are constantly going wrong. I’ll be getting ready for work of a morning in Frankfurt and think to myself ‘that blue and white striped shirt would be just the thing to complete my attire’, only for a vision of it draped across the back of a chair in the spare room of my mother’s house in southern England to flash across my mind. Or I’ll think, ‘I’ll finish reading that book I started… yep, the one that’s lying on the kitchen table about a thousand kilometres away’.

Last summer my wallet spent two weeks languishing inside the wardrobe in my Frankfurt flat while I spent an interesting two weeks in Finland trying not to need any of its contents. But summers are always tricky on that front – something to do with not wearing a coat (and therefore not having so many pockets to put things in).

2.?????? Where’s my home?

I’ve heard that some people live, work and have their roots in the same country. This is truly astonishing – how do they manage it? Through careful and unbroken concentration is my guess – one momentary lapse, especially when young, and you’ll find yourself haring off across the world in search of... well, the usual things.

Having a different country for each of those functions (living, working, having roots) certainly keeps me on my toes but then again I’m never quite sure when I’m home. Sometimes I think, well, it must be where I came from, but where I came from was the UK in the 1990s – a very different country (IMO a better one too, but let’s not do that debate again now) to the UK that exists today. And sometimes I think, OK, then it’s Finland – that’s where my family is, but then it’s not where my roots are. Is it Germany then? My job’s there. My guitar’s there. My air fryer’s there. Could be…?

3.?????? It’s (not) the final countdown

I’m never quite settled. I’m in perpetual motion. As soon as I arrive back home in Finland the countdown starts to go back to Frankfurt again. And as soon as I get to Frankfurt the countdown starts to go back to Finland. And whenever I visit the UK there’s a separate short countdown to go back to either Finland or Germany. I have a set of daily routines for each country and am constantly alternating between them. This constant disruption is probably good for the brain. That’s what I tell myself, but there’s always a shadowy overhang from the routine of the other place. ‘About this time’, I tell myself as I commute from one side of the bedroom to the other (from bed to desk) in my home in Finland, ‘I’d be crossing the river and walking up to the office if I were back in Frankfurt’. And vice versa.

4.?????? Constant low level angst

Back in the day when I mostly worked from home, I never gave much of a thought to the prospect of transport workers’ strikes or extreme weather events. But nowadays I’m constantly scanning the news to ensure that there’s no impending strike, stoppage, snowstorm, hurricane, plague of locusts etc. that’s going to stop me from flying from A to B or stop me from getting to or from the airport. It’s a constant source of incipient stress.

And this incipient stress is compounded nicely by generalised guilt about the heavy carbon footprint necessitated by this way of life, which lends a feeling of futility to all other environmental endeavours. What’s the use, I ask myself, of painstakingly separating the household refuse into various recycling containers or walking down to the supermarket instead of driving if I’m going to offset all that good work by taking several flights a month?

5.?????? Fear of missing out

It’s a variant of Murphy’s Law that whichever of 'my' three countries I happen to be in there’ll be something going on in one of the other ones. That’ll be (a) something that I want to go to but can’t because I booked my flights before I knew about it and it’s too late to change them now; or (b) something that I should go to and might be able to get to if I follow some crazily complex, costly and fatiguing travel schedule; or (c) (worst of all worlds) a variant of (b) in which I succeed in getting to the thing I needed to get to, only to find that it’s cancelled.

And yet, despite all of the above I find this nomadic lifestyle suits me fine. You can get used to anything.