According to convention, the third year of my university degree was spent abroad. Whilst fellow foreign language students packed their bags for warmer climes, I boarded the Calais-Dunkirk ferry and in next to no time was in Lille. I confess, I had been aiming for Paris but missed the mark and ended up a couple of hundred kilometres north.
It was a year of beetroots and chicory, little wine but strong beer. I kicked myself for not choosing Martinique or Madagascar, fell in with a friendly bunch, and ended up with a bit of a Northern French accent. Now before you point to the obvious — that I am supposed to be spending the better part of a year improving my French ; it seems entirely appropriate that in a long-established cultural melting-pot just 20km from the Belgian border, my linguistic immersion be influenced by the foreign tongues that have defined this city through the ages.
Consider Wasquehal. When confronted with unknown situations I tend to rely on intuition and improvisation no doubt acquired during extensive solo hitch-hiking expeditions across the continent. But the year abroad is not an extended holiday. Having a job and a place to stay is enough to subsist but are hardly satisfying by themselves. In this sudden moment of solitude I became acutely conscious of the friendships and quotidian comforts I had left behind in London.
This sense of isolation is undoubtedly familiar to all year abroad students who find themselves removed from the reassuring network that has gradually grown around them whilst living in England. As with anything worthwhile, when it comes to learning languages, finding friends, and feeling comfortable in a foreign place: Duurt lang. Exactly where that is will vary from person to person but will surely always involve a search for some sort of community.
That said, after a few blond beers watch out, they really pack a punch in one of the many estaminets a northern bar frequented by the students, conversation starts to flow and alma maters cease to matter. But where do the Dutch cyclists fit into all this? It probably goes without saying that whether studying or on a work placement; these prearranged elements of the year abroad more or less take care of themselves.
