Ireland

By Rebecca Senti
Towards the end of my stay abroad, I recognized that I felt more and more at home in Dublin. I remember visiting the city for the first time back in April, getting lost on the bus from campus back to town with my Dad … I thought I would miss the wide grassy fields and the woods from back home. When I moved to Dublin, it was my first time living away from Liechtenstein, the first time living somewhere else than the house I grew up in. It was like my world blew up and became gigantic. If I hadn’t been in a group during the first week on walking tour through the city, I would have never found the bus stop back again without Google Maps. Oh Google Maps, my friend and helper during the last four months! In the first month, I even used it to find the Architecture building on campus! Now, I walk across campus as if it’s my tiny hometown. Every day, the campus got smaller. Every time we cycled into town, every Saturday I went into town for brunch by myself, my universe would shrink again. After my grandma had visited, she kept proudly telling everyone back home how I walked the city with her as if I had been born in Dublin. I laughed about that comment when my mum told me, but looking back now, I enjoyed walking through a big city, for the first time in my life not like a tourist but like an inhabitant.
At the beginning, I admired other exchange students calling the student accommodation and Dublin their “home”, whereas now, I catch myself doing it as well during the last few weeks. Four months ago, when we talked about the word “home”, I was sure it was connected to the house and the village I grew up in, and especially to my family. And I told everyone I would never have a similar feeling for Dublin. Now I am not so sure anymore. In the beginning I hated my room in the student accommodation so much, I thought it was tiny and cold and not homey at all. I would always refer to it as my place to stay not my home. It got better once I put up photos from home and some fairy lights and the friendship with one of my flat mates grew. It was nice coming back from university and knowing someone cares how your day has been going, someone who would notice if you are sick. Now our relationship is comparable to the one of sisters, we could share clothes and talk about everything, we even flew to the UK together for a few days during reading week. A similar story is the one of my friends from the course. I met all of them on the first day and it was like in kindergarten, we just decided we would be friends. We see each other every day and looking at it now, I can confidently say that we are family for each other. Every pain, every concern was shared. Knowing that these people are your only immediate support system creates a different kind of friendship. One I hope will last for many years.
This experience of feeling at home far away from what I though was home is a very humbling but at the same time extremely unexpected experience. I never thought I would feel like that, make such good friends from far away in such a short amount of time. I know now that outside of this bubble that is the country I was born in, abroad, I am adaptable. I am not a tree whose roots are hanging in the air, but a seed that could grow somewhere else again.

Rebecca Senti