Foreign Perspectives

Even people who’ve been living abroad for decades and plan to live out their days here still consider “home” as being where-ever they came from.

Is that realistic though? After all, someone who’d moved to France even as recently as 10 years ago would find difficulty in discussing a number of topics with the people “back home”. Even aside from the changes in the political landscape over that time, there would be sigificant changes in the road layouts and even new words that they wouldn’t know.

Take Belfast as an example. In just three years there has been massive construction in the city centre and in another year or so the centre will look very different than it did when I left. The road layout hasn’t changed much but there’s a lot of work ongoing with various roads and it won’t be long before it does change a lot. Even the aiport has changed its name and the signs say George Best Airport rather than Belfast City Airport.

So how long before “home” isn’t home? I don’t know that there’s a set time but after as little as four or five years, it would certainly take a period of settling in to move “back home”.