HAPPY CANADA DAY

[Canada]

HAPPY CANADA DAY - OR HAPPY DOMINION DAY, AS YOU PREFER.

[Ursus Canadiensis]

Thank you, and I hope you had a happy Canada Day too!

I am from the Kelowna, in BC's Okanagan Valley. What corner of the country do you call home, Canada?

Any other Canadians in the Forum? If so, Happy Canada day to you all!

Arnie

[Canada]

Used to call Chatham, Ontario my corner of the country but home nowadays is definitely TRIESTE FOREVER.

[Ursus Canadiensis]

Great! I didn't know that we had another Triestine Canadian on the forum.

I sensed a bit of nostalgia when I read your phrase "Trieste Forever.”

We go to Trieste every two years or so, since my mum is still alive and is now on her 94th year (I still think she will probably bury me, rather that the other way around), and we stay two or three months each trip. It's hard to say what it is like to be immersed again in the Triestine everyday life. Certain aspects, like the camaraderie, the less superficial way of friendships, which is a much too often the norm here in Canada, the food, the immediate contact with history and the variety of peoples as you travel no more than twenty kilometres in one direction or the other, I really appreciate and miss when I am here, but there are also a great number of things about our style of living, especially here in the Okanagan that I sorely miss when I am there. It is my view that once you have left home for a long, long period of time, what remains in your mind is an artificial bunch of pleasant memories which, when you go back for a brief visit all come back to life, but once you stay longer (and this is a big “but”), reality suddenly strikes you and with it the realization that your Trieste as you had it in your mind, no longer exists.

Anyway, my own personal two bits of philosophy about leaving a country to go live in another. By the way I had much the same sentiments when I had left Paris to go live in Stuttgart, Germany, decades ago and, following that, when I left Germany to come here to BC. It seems that we all tend to repress the unpleasant things and glorify those that are “glorifiable.” And RIGHTLY so, I might add.

Talk to you anon.

Arnie

[Canada]

In seamen's language its called "mal de ferro". Once you've been on a ship for a certain length of time, you never feel at home ashore. The same happens for people who have lived for a certain length of time in two or more countries. You're never fully comfortable in one, reminiscing about the good things you had in the other country, complaining about what you don't like about where you are. Typical of numerous Triestine immigrants who lived abroad - Canada, Australia, South America - and then came back to Trieste. They will never probably be entirely happy in either of the two continents. Once you realize that, you adjust by making a check-list of the pros and cons of both situations. In my case, Trieste won.