The Migrant Questionnaire #4 | Paul

"I went on a gap year, and life happened!"

Leaving one’s home and discovering other cultures is both brave and a uniquely personal experience. This is a mosaic of stories and insights on roaming the world from other expats and migrants. We’ll also bust some myths about expat life along the way.

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Today, Paul from Always Care Community answers the Migrant Questionnaire.

Paul has been a migrant, living outside his native Canada for 40 years and one week, as reported. Currently, he is a re-pat, which I hear has its own set of challenges compared to emigrating. Paul has lived the Nordic life, I could say, calling Norway, Denmark, Belgium and Canada his home(s).

Read on to discover his journey through these countries, the challenges of the local languages and of the irritating nickname he inherited along the way.

Photo: Paul Moxness

1. Where were you born and in what places have you lived since then?

Born in Jasper, Canada. Grew up in Kelowna, Canada.

Lived in Norway (Trondheim, Oslo) for 20 years.

Lived in Copenhagen for nine years and then Brussels for 11 years before returning to Kelowna.

In Norway, where I was only supposed to spend one year at a “Folk High School” to learn a little about my paternal ancestry, I met a university counsellor who suggested I apply to the University of Trondheim so I could immerse myself in the culture and not forget the little I learned. I was a perpetual student, choosing studies at random and only focusing on getting twenty credits per semester so I could extend my visa.

After leaving university, I moved to Oslo and worked as a ticket taker in a movie theatre before ending up as a security guard in a hotel and discovering that was where I wanted to be. In ten years, the hotel company grew, and I was promoted to a broad corporate role. That led to a transfer to Copenhagen. During my nine years there, I met and married my wife, and continued to grow along with the hotel company as it expanded and went through an IPO. After the IPO, it was clear that my role as head of corporate safety and security was changing. It was less focused on providing direct support to our hotels and more focused on ensuring we were following all the regulations publicly listed companies need to follow. Our headquarters was in Brussels and my commutes there were becoming more frequent, so we decided to move there in 2007.

Brussels was different from my time in Oslo and Copenhagen because I was on an expat contract. The company took care of all the formalities, so I didn’t need to learn how to pay taxes (and almost forgot what it means to pay bills…).

We lived there until I left the company and we moved to Canada in 2018.

2. How long have you lived outside your country of birth?

In total, 40 years and one week. It wasn’t too long. It wasn’t planned. I went on a gap year, and life happened!

After the second or third year, I really stopped thinking that I was away from home. I was comfortable with the language and the culture, and just kind of naively went about my studies and my life, even though at times I was very poor. I think the fact that I was so young when I left home (just turned 18) and knew so little about what I was getting myself into was a blessing. I’ve often said that had I been older (say 21-22) when I left, I never would have put up with what I did. Instead, being a stubborn teenager kept me going those first few years. Later, I always felt at home wherever I was living. I didn’t feel like I was going home if I went to Canada on holiday, which I didn’t often do until I started earning better. After I met my wife and daughter, we came once every year or two.

I was totally unprepared for the impact not understanding anything [of the local language] would have on me.

3. How did you go about making connections and friends in the new places you lived?

In Norway, the university gave me my first network. The first year was tough, I was in large basic psychology classes with a few hundred students. After that year, I chose subjects with smaller class sizes (ethology, and higher level psychology classes for example) and it became easier to socialize with classmates.

My financial situation meant I couldn’t socialize much though, because beer was expensive in Norway, even in those days. Later, in all countries, most of my friends were people I met through work. The hotel were I started my career had an excellent internal culture and groups of us went out for drinks, meals, or even on weekend breaks together. The best part was that it wasn’t always the same group. It was quite an eclectic, inclusive group of people.

After I got married, I met friends via my wife’s social networks, and through my travels I also met people. When we moved to Brussels, one of our best supports was through a friend who worked for the EU. I had met him at a conference and kept in touch. They showed us the ropes in Belgium, helped us pick a good area of the city to live in, and even allowed us to crash their Christmas dinner during our first year there.

4. What was your biggest cultural shock?

Language.

I knew they spoke a different language in Norway, but I was totally unprepared for the impact not understanding anything would have on me. I wrote a story about it, "Sink-or-Swim" or "Fake-It-Till-You-Make-It"?.

When I moved to Denmark, I also had a language shock. Danish and Norwegian are very similar, but are pronounced quite differently. I knew that, but I was completely unprepared for the fact that the Danes didn’t understand me when I spoke Norwegian.

Once we moved to Brussels, I regretted not learning better French growing up. Some of what I did learn came back, but with the life I had, including lots of required travel, it wasn’t really possible to attend classes or learn it properly.

5. When did you feel the most as an outsider and why?

I integrated fairly well over time, but it always bothered me that even after many years, people introduced me to others not as their friend or colleague, but as ‘Paul from Canada’. To me, that always sounded like ‘He’s not one of us’, even though I have a Norwegian name, white skin, and blue eyes. It didn’t matter that I spoke the language without an accent.

When I asked people, they said I should take it as a compliment. To them, they were kind of bragging about knowing a foreigner, but after they introduced me as Paul from Canada, people invariably started speaking English to me because they thought that would be easier. It was much easier for me to speak Norwegian than to listen to some of their variations of my mother tongue. 😀

“Immigrants are immigrants all their lives.” — John Irving

6. What was a favorite journey you took?

Too many to count. I have loved all my travels. One of the most exciting was the year I arrived in Norway, I took the Hurtigruten coastal steamer up the coast to the far North. I couldn’t afford a cabin, and sleeping on the deck of the old boat was ‘interesting’. It was also freezing cold, even though it was August!

A more fun one was my first business class flight from Copenhagen to Hong Kong in the early 90s. I think I was over Moscow before I figured out how to use all the buttons and levers on the old business class seat!

7. What inner journey did you take while adapting to new places?

I did my very best to integrate and to become ‘Norwegian in Norway’ and ‘Danish in Denmark’. (I was an expat in Brussels, so a different kind of adaptation and not really possible to become ‘local’)

To learn the language in Norway, I watched kids’ shows on TV. That gave me a ‘history’ because I knew the names of the kiddies program celebrities, even the puppets. That helped me learn the language, but it also helped me gain a cultural identity.

I arrived abroad at 18 as a North American know-it-all. My life abroad helped me question every belief I had and become more empathetic, understanding, and respectful of every culture and every person I meet.

When travelling to foreign countries, I always try to watch a movie from that country to get a feel for the culture. I remember going to China and watching a movie that began with a couple going for breakfast. The boyfriend was in a band that had been selected for the Chinese version of Idol, so he broke up with the girl because his agent said he’d have a better chance of advancing if he were single. The breakup was witnessed by several of the girl’s colleagues who immediately began texting everyone they knew about the breakup between the budding rockstar and his office worker girlfriend. That all happened before the opening credits and I remember wondering if I was really going to a country that was ‘different’.

8. Where do you feel most at home today, and why?

I have always tried to feel at home where I lived. It bothered me when people who, say, lived in Brussels for fifteen years said they were going ‘home’ when they went to visit the place they were born.

To me, home is where I choose to live. I still feel like that. One of the last things we did before we moved was to go to Oslo and visit the hotel where my career began, and then to Copenhagen, where we met and my wife is from, but to me, I was on holiday in places that I once called home. When we went to Brussels after we moved to Canada, we were on holiday there too. Moving here wasn’t ‘coming home’ — we approached it as if we were moving to a new place that would become our home.

9. What is one myth about expat life that you’d like to bust?

I differentiate between expats and immigrants. For thirty years, I lived as an immigrant in Norway and Denmark. I had to learn everything from the language to paying taxes. In Brussels, I was an expat and lived a privileged lifestyle.

I think many have the belief that they can become ‘local’. One of my favourite quotes is from John Irving’s book, Son of the Circus: “Immigrants are immigrants all their lives.” In short, it means wherever you go, you will most often be viewed as an immigrant, and wherever you left from, you will often be viewed as an emigrant. This has reinforced itself after we moved to Canada. We’re still sometimes treated as foreigners in the city where I grew up and went to school.

10. What tips would you give to someone who is contemplating emigrating for the first time?

Do it, but do it with the understanding that it will be completely different from the dreams or ideas that inspired you to do it. Be resilient when the first few months’ euphoria wears off, and everything seems hard, and you start seeing all the little faults your new country has that your old one didn’t. In the long run, resilience will be your greatest asset.

Avoid joining groups of expats from your home country. In my experience, they quickly become groups where people complain about their new country and glorify their old one… (I stopped going to them after my first year of university). They also hinder your integration.

Remember that even when you are as integrated as you can be, some people will still treat you like a foreigner. Accept that and behave like a guest, but contribute what you can to the society you choose to call home.

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