When I first moved to the Netherlands, my friend M. smiled at me with that knowing curve in the corner of her lips and said, “Let me know when it gets hard. When you start missing home. Or when you’ve simply had enough of all this… Dutch.”

And sometimes, it does get hard.

Not in a dramatic way. I don’t find myself sobbing over jars of zacuscă at midnight or daydreaming about crowded buses in Bucharest. It’s something quieter.  I miss leaving my lovely daughter with my mom at any hour, without cross-referencing agendas and syncing calendars like it’s a NASA launch. I miss weddings. Real ones. Romanian ones. You know—where the music doesn’t stop till the sun comes up, where sarmale steam on every plate, and where you dance until your shoes beg for mercy. Read more