On Being an International

He said his name was Legal, but he wasn’t a lawyer. I replied that if names still reflected professions everyone named Childs would be a pediatrician.

Although he was French-born, his English accent was perfect. He accompanied me on the first leg of my train trip back to Geneva. We chatted easily, and I slipped into a question that I ask internationals, people who have lived in many places. “What do you consider yourself?” And like many internationals he gave his passport(s), but said he felt like a citizen of the world. I understood.

Although I didn’t think I had an ethnic identity until I left the US, I now know my roots are pure New England Yankee. My grandmother’s voice, even thirty-five years after her death, still acts as a moral guidepost. But I have lived in other countries, Germany, France and Switzerland for 30% of my life.

Hopefully this year, I will have my Swiss nationality, a process that has taken 15 years. As I said at the required interview, changing nationality is a bit like changing religion – it isn’t done easily. In my case it is adding a nationality, because I do not have to give up my American passport, although if it came to a choice, I would keep the Swiss.

This country has been good to me, giving me the best paying job I ever had, although not the most interesting. It gave me the highest quality of life materially and immaterially. After so many years, I want to be a full participant in the society and that includes voting rather than just saying “they should…” They is me.

Living in a country is nothing like just visiting. Instead of museums you visit utilities, deal with garbage, work through language problems that go beyond vocabulary.

Visitors change money. Internationals worry about personal banking. I thought writing checks was the thing to do, until I realised each Euro check was costing me about $6 at the 1990 exchange rate. In France payments are taken out of my bank account for all regular payments because I’ve given them an RIB(?) In Switzerland the United Bank of Switzerland has machines where I enter the nationally standard payslips and transfer the money to my creditors’ account. Or I will until I get my on-line banking set up.

I find many of my friends, including the Swiss and French, are also multi-lingual internationals. I am unaccomplished with my 1.75 languages (I still can’t write a decent French and my grammar at best is creative). They speak up to seven languages with three being normal.

As an international, we’ve discovered we are never 100% home anywhere but happy many places. Our native countries are not what they were when we left, nor are any countries where we lived for any amount of time then moved on. After a while we become accustomed to the differences we first noticed on moving. A joke passed among Geneva internationals: you know you’ve been in Switzerland too long when you think it is normal to have only one brand of an item in a grocery store.

I have discovered things I loved about everywhere I’ve lived. There are also things that drive me crazy. But as an international, I know the quality of my daily life is good where I am now. And hopefully by next year I will become a full citizen so I can pay back with participation beyond just paying taxes.

I imagine the shock on someone’s face who hearing my accent ask, “Are you American or English?” when I answer, “Swiss.” But in reality I am a bit of everything: New England Yankee, American, a bit French and a dite less German as well as being Swiss. Maybe I am that citizen of the world, much like Mr. Sr. Herr M Legal.