A friend from Austin invited me over to have breakfast together. We went to a typical American diner. I ordered short stack blueberry pancakes. The waiter asked whether I wanted french fries with it or mashed potatoes with cheese. I was surprised to have these options. My friend ordered a taco-dish (complete, with rice and beans at 8 a.m.!). I haven't seen this happening in my entire life in The Netherlands, where everybody eats only two wheat sandwiches with peanutbutter, cheese or jelly. If you order something else in the morning or during lunch, it is obvious that you are coming from 'somewhere else'. Because I remember my Dutch friend looking very surprised when I told her that sometimes my mother baked potatoes for us in the weekend for breakfast. It was delicious..Americans understand that..
The climate
Millions of migrants in Europe come from warm sea-climate countries. Most of them in The Netherlands, Belgium and France come from a mediterranean culture. When I started my magazine I defined this with the new term 'olive-oil culture'. This 'olive-oil' lifestyle is all about enjoying life to the full – through meals and friends, finding a balance between work and relaxation. It is the blue sky and sea, the typical cream coloured houses and the unfinished roads where most of the times traffic is a disorganized thing. Like in Turkey, also in America people live this way. Day by day.
The distance between the Turkish lifestyle and American lifestyle differs much less than with the European lifestyle. That I can tell for sure after living here for months.
We always talk about integration policies without really examining why some people feel right away at home and some do not. But everybody will agree with me that it is easier to adapt oneself to a new country where more similarities are than with no similarities at all. And of course, Europe can not change its climate and transform into an other lifestyle,that is not what I plead for. I only say that these psychological issues shouldn't be easily passed by.
We always talk about integration policies without really examining why some people feel right away at home and some do not. But everybody will agree with me that it is easier to adapt oneself to a new country where more similarities are than with no similarities at all. And of course, Europe can not change its climate and transform into an other lifestyle,that is not what I plead for. I only say that these psychological issues shouldn't be easily passed by.
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