Earlier today, we had sort of a philosophical discussion about 'where is home'. This of course was precipitated by our return to the Netherlands, which after a two month spell in Germany and Denmark certainly felt like 'coming home'.
But for us it's more complicated than that: Officially, home is Cape Town, South Africa. That's where we own an apartment. That's where most of our family (Greg, parents and siblings) stay. That's where we pay tax (that's a bit prosaic, but when doing something official with a bank, that once was used a definition of 'home').
Culturally though, both of us identify much more with Europe than with Africa. Especially looking at the way South Africa seems to be going, it's increasingly more difficult to 'feel part of it'.
In Europe we have Sean in London and thanks to the incredibly generous hospitality of Gwilym and Janine we easily feel at home in a city we really enjoy!
And we have 'Onbekommerd', which is our home for some six months every year. However much we enjoy the Baltic countries, every time we enter Dutch waters and switch the VHF to channel 3 when going into the Delfzijl harbour entrance and hearing Dutch spoken there, we feel we have arrived 'home' (and look forward to herring and real Dutch cheese....).
So 'home' is complicated and we are very privileged to have so many versions of it!
Having said that, we are currently in Appingedam. The weather is cool and showery (typically Dutch) but of the 20 or so boats in the guest harbour only 3 are Dutch. Our Eastern neighbours have clearly discovered Appingedam....
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