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Everyone has a story from his or her life that illustrates the complex beauty of the world we live in. I’ve often thought that one of most appealing and enduring aspects of travel, particularly travel though a foreign country, is the way it fills you out as an individual, gives you a broader range of knowledge and experience on which to build a sense of self and place. The stories I’ve heard from friends who have traveled and lived far from home all reflect this broadened perspective, this heightened sense of who they are which they achieved by forgetting themselves for a while. In paying attention to what other people make of life, these friends of mine augmented and altered their views on life here at home in the United States. The philosopher Pascal once said that much if not all of what we do in life is done so we can tell others of our great accomplishment and adventure, rather than for the sheer joy of the experience itself. Though I resonate with some of his ideas, here I find his observation on a human habit a little too cynical for my taste. I think the stories we tell one another, the experiences we cherish and share, bring life to relationships and allow people to learn from one another. It is with this in mind that I offer my story of the semester I spent living in a remote castle in the Netherlands. In the fall of 2000, I spent three and a half months living in a 12th century castle in the tiny Dutch town of Well, about an hour outside of Amsterdam and about as far as you can get from the ultra-urban environs I’m accustomed to. I went as part of a study abroad program run by Emerson College, which owns the castle and sends a group of students there each semester. I was 24 at the time, a good five or six years older than most of the other students. For me, the experience was somewhat more adult than it was for most exchange students. I had been living on my own since I was 18, and leading a fairly adult and independent lifestyle, and now here I was thrown together with people I didn’t know in a dusty old castle surrounded by two moats and sprawling acres of farmland.

Maggie Berwind-Dart was born in San Francisco, and lived there for the first 18 years of her life. After high school, she moved to Boston, where she’s lived ever since. The only break from New England life was her four-month stay in the Netherlands. Boston’s Emerson College, where she was an undergraduate, owns a castle in a small Dutch town, and Maggie spent her final semester there. It was one of the best things she’s ever done! .. Additional Resources Living Overseas  International Jobs Marketplace  Overseas Education  Moving to Europe  Epatriate Websites  Articles on Living Overseas  World Reference Desk  Contact Maggie Berwind-Dart .

The castle was old and delapidated, lovely from the outside and strangely sterile and pale on the inside. I think this was due in large part to the high cost of keeping up a crumbling castle, and the exterior lovingly cared for because that’s what most people see. The castle grounds were private property and therefore not open the public, though many tourists on day-trips from neighboring Germany tried to slip past the gate to get a closer look. Signs reading ‘Verboten Togang’ (Entry Forbidden) marked the gates, and we were supposed to shew people away when they disobeyed. I always pretended not to see them, so they could wander the grounds uninterrupted -- I think beauty should be shared!

During the first two weeks of my Netherlands residence, I didn’t venture outside my little Dutch town. Though it was a bit strange to live so far from home, in a creaky old castle, we were living in a fairly insulated world, surrounded by universals (trees, rivers, fields and small houses) rather than the particulars that make a country unique and foreign to outsiders (language, distinct architecture, unfamiliar customs). It seemed safest to get my bearings before I stepped out into the bustle and hum of the country’s famous and sexy capitol.

I had visited Europe before, once with my parents when I was 10 and again with a boyfriend when I was 22. My parents and I had traveled across much of the continent, never staying in any one city for more than a couple of nights. My boyfriend and I had spent an entire week in Prague, wandering the streets of that haunting and melancholy city. But living in a foreign country was entirely new to me and proved at once stranger and more natural than I could ever have imagined.

The difference, in terms of aesthetics, from what I was accustomed to struck me first. The houses looked so unlike any I’d seen in the United States! Most homes were compact and square, small and boxy like so many of the cars people drove there. The windows were enormous, bare of curtains and blinds, and faced the street. I went for a walk through the village every evening, and I never really got used to being able to see into people’s living rooms, seeing them eat dinner at their table or watch television together.

The townspeople viewed us with both curiosity and apprehension. Emerson has owned the castle for about 15 years, so people in the town of Well are used to the twice-yearly influx of students. Yet I don’t think they’ve ever quite adjusted to the noise that comes along with so many young Americans living abroad for the first time in a country where the drinking age is 19. Being on the one hand an American in a foreign country and on the other a 25-year-old living with people who were 19, I found myself a bit of an all around outsider. Far from being negative, this outsider position gave me the chance to observe small town Dutch life and the way fairly urban young Americans reacted to such an unfamiliar way of life. In the end, I felt welcome to mix and mingle with both the townspeople and my fellow students, free to move back and forth between the two as I pleased.

The Vink, one of two small bars in the town of Well, proved to be a very popular evening hang out spot. It was such a quirky little place, with a small indoor fountain lit by red bulbs and plastic gnomes sitting on swings that hung from the ceiling. The beer was inexpensive, as was the food. The townspeople who wanted nothing to do with the American castle dwellers knew to avoid the Vink, which for 15 years has been the destination of choice for restless students in need of a study break. The locals who did come to the bar were quite curious about us, and wanted to tell us all about their lives and their thoughts on the United States.

I was delighted to find that most people I spoke with felt kindly towards the U.S. and wanted to know all about what life in the states is like. At the same time, there was a great love of all things Dutch and great pride in the moral and educational philosophies of the Netherlands. One young man I spoke with had graduated from University by the time he was 19, and had been working as an architect ever since. He had designed the school building in the center of town; it was a building I had immediately noticed, thanks to its modern style and bright colored trim. When I told him I was a fan of his work, he smiled and shrugged and said that he too was pleased with it, but it was no big thing. “I do what I love”, he said. “I do what I’m best at. Shouldn’t we all?”

“Yes”, I replied. “I suppose we should.”

The fact that most Dutch men and women speak English made living in the Netherlands a comfortable, fluid experience. This fluency in English is more prevalent in the larger towns and cities, though even in my little village of Well most people spoke enough to make simple, straightforward communication possible. I was never made to feel shy about my skimpy Dutch vocabulary, and most people said they liked the opportunity to practice speaking English.

When I finally did take the hour-long train ride to Amsterdam, I found it remarkably different from life in Well. I suppose that makes sense, and certainly life in America’s cities is quite unlike suburban or rural existence even within the same state. But what I noticed was the lack of interest the city dwellers had for the country town I’d come to love. Many of the people I met in Amsterdam had never heard of Well, and most asked me why on earth I’d come all that way to live in a cow town! Well, I said more than once that I’d come to love the town of Well for being so decidedly Dutch, and Amsterdam for being so gloriously cosmopolitan. 

Few people venture outside of Amsterdam when they visit the Netherlands, and what a shame that is! Though there's little a Dutch village can offer that rivals Amsterdam's bold, bright nightlife, the details of daily life that I was able to see gave me a keen sense of the day-to-day realities of an existence that is seldom discovered in an ultra urban environment. But, urban or rural, the world is remarkably similar in the make-up of its inhabitants. We may have different customs and habits, but we're essentially all the same. Travel and living among peoples of other countries allows one to see this in all its vivid reality.
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