This year I moved job, home and country. That’s a lot of change! Some things feel very similar — as I observed earlier, there are plenty of surface similarities between my previous location and my current one. Not all is the same, however, and it’s interesting to note some resultant changes in my own behaviour and insights.

There are very obvious and expected things: I tend to look the wrong way when crossing the roads back in Southampton (must be careful of that!); my Southampton house key feels small in my hand (my Eindhoven key is chunky); when I say ‘home’ I could mean Southampton or I could mean Eindhoven.

But there’s slightly more to it than that: the move has also given me new insight into things I hadn’t really noticed in Southampton. For example, one of the things I really adore about my new apartment is how spacious it feels. It’s really a studio flat: although there’s a little porch with a washing machine and some miscellany, I’m pretty much living in one large room. Yet although the square footage is far less than in Southampton, it feels more roomy.

Consequentially, I had a chat with my husband and we came up with some really simple changes back home (that’s ‘home’ as in Southampton): moving some furnishings between rooms, freecycling an unwanted cabinet… obvious steps. Yet it wasn’t until I moved away that I noticed a thing that bugged me in Southampton.

I suspect that moving abroad is overkill if you’re after a fresh way to figure out some things in your day-to-day life. I must say, though, it’s a pleasant side-effect.