Moved 12 June 2003, 09:44

After more than five years away, adjusting back to my own country, culture and people seems to be a slow process. Besides this, there is the move from Vancouver to Edmonton (via the Netherlands and France) also to be considered. Sometimes our lack of adjustment seems all the more apparent.

We’re sitting in one of our neighbourhood’s ill-attended “art house” or “festival” theatres. The audience is mostly grey heads, dotted with a few painfully cool hipsters. And we find ourselves silent while the rest of the theatre is laughing, at various points in the admittedly appalling movie.

Normally (i.e. particularly in Canada) I’m laughing at bits of the play or film which are sobering to the rest of the audience. Some of this is simply an aberration, as I found Tristan and Iseult a laff riot when I first read it for a third-year French lit in translation class. I’ve since readjusted, as confirmed by a re-reading (we brought most of our books with us to Holland).

At the moment I won’t give in to temptation and air any disadvantageous comparison between the people of Utrecht or Amsterdam, the Netherlands and those of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. But things, and people, are certainly different, and it’s unsettling.

More weirdness to come, I promise.

---

Commenting is closed for this article.