Travelling Without Moving

View Comments 01 February 2010

By The Hunger

In an ideal world, everyone would have their own castle. Whether your abode is a tin shed or Buckingham Palace, everyone needs to be a king or queen somewhere. Everyone needs to have a place where they can chill and release their inner asshole. However, this sometimes isn’t the case; whether it’s money, convenience, circumstance, or even choice, many of us will endure the “share house” experience.

This microcosm of society has more pieces than a chessboard and can have as much drama as a Greek tragedy. In short, if home ain’t sweet, you won’t wanna be there.

When we had to find a new housemate recently, I thought, which are the best flags to live with? Do the same countries you love to visit necessarily equate to the best nationalities to share living space with? Even though salsa music is great, would I want to live with a Colombian who plays salsa all the time? As much as I love Thai food, could I live with someone who only ate Thai? (Granted, these are broad strokes.) Exoticism seems to have a use-by date, like chopsticks or the green lure of absinthe. People are no different; choose your brand of unfamiliarity carefully.

Some countries are great to live in, other countries are better just to visit. But how do these preferences affect which are the best countries to live with? The difference between living in and visiting a country is massive.

You experience the best and the worst of a place, just as you would in the grind of your normal life. The longer you stay in one place, the more you’ll understand the people and be able to connect more of that nation’s dots. You learn so much stuff you wouldn’t be able to find in Lonely Planet otherwise.

If Cedric Klapisch’s famous movie L’Auberge Espagnole (The Spanish Apartment) about a French exchange student who lives in a shared apartment in Barcelona with six other nationalities is to be believed, we can live together in harmony as well, albeit it will come with obstacles that can be overcome with an open-mind.

Each foreign housemate will have something that is distinctively Danish or French or whatever, which cannot be overlooked at some point. In the film Tobias, the German housemate is portrayed as stereotypically organized whilst the brother of the English sharemate, William, is depicted as being an ignorant yob that drinks too much. Should stereotypes be the rule of thumb when deciding on future flatmates? I’ve met Germans who are late to appointments, but I’ve met a lot more that haven’t been. Stereotypes are there for a reason: they should only be considered as a guide, not a rule.

I’ve lived with quite a few different nationalities, and whilst it’s easy to see patterns in how they do things, there can be surprises.

Who’s the best to live with? It depends on which part of your lifestyle is most important to you. Is it food, privacy, cleanliness, punctuality, environment or some other quality that you won’t budge on? All countries do the same thing, they just do them differently.

Living with people from the same country might be easier. But I think if you find someone from a foreign country who “ticks the same boxes as you” and they come from North Korea for example, then why not, give it a shot. You might not get another chance to travel without leaving your front door.

Flags of the World