Un-British

By Wandelstorm

It doesn’t begin with a flag, or a passport, or a lesson in school. It begins with a feeling, that quiet, electric click of recognition. Not to a nation, but to a way of being. To something that finally lets you breathe.

I felt it in the Netherlands. And again in Croatia. And in Bulgaria. And in Italy. I felt it wherever joy wasn’t muted, where truth wasn’t punished, where strangers became human before they became polite. That’s the part I carry, not my country. I carry curiosity without ego, humour without hierarchy, pride without needing to be above. I carry Europe in the bones, not the borders.

So when I rushed one day, mixing up Slovenia and Slovakia, my stomach dipped in that instant of “oh no I’ve done it now.” He sent a reply in bold; Slovakia, not Slovenia.
I apologised, saying I was usually so careful. He reassured me: “They can be mistaken by foreigners.”
I laughed and said, “Yes, but we have the British education system to contend with too, so I’m already at a disadvantage.”
And he laughed.

I’m the kind of foreigner that wants to connect. I never quite fit the mould they handed me.

Not in the classroom, where answers were graded by obedience, not wonder. Not in the office, where truth had to be softened, trimmed, smoothed over like it might hurt someone. Not in the streets, where kindness was rationed out through tight lips and tight rules, where laughter had to be earned, and freedom explained.

But in Europe… I didn’t need to explain why I was barefoot. I didn’t need to apologise for loving too loudly, or thinking too quickly.
I didn’t need to shrink to be accepted, because they never asked me to shrink at all.

I belonged in the glint of a crooked grin from a stranger on a tram, in the waiter who answered my question with a joke instead of a correction, in the Balkan women who welcomed me like family after a two-minute conversation, in the casual, ordinary rightness of being spoken to as if I was already part of it all.

I wasn’t “British abroad.” I was home.

The Real Language

This isn’t about flags or languages, not really.

It’s about instinct. About sensing the rhythm of a place where your inner voice doesn’t feel like a threat, where you don’t have to rehearse your tone, where your directness isn’t seen as aggression, where the space you take up isn’t measured or resented.

Even my mistake, that mix-up between Slovenia and Slovakia, wasn’t met with scorn, but a grin and a tease. Because I didn’t come in acting like I owned the place. I came in open. Willing. Curious.

And that is the language that matters. That is the one people understand, even if you mangle the rest.

European, Always

This is what the British system never gave me: a place to exist, not just perform. I was never really British. I was European with an unwanted accent, taught how to queue, but not how to live. And I am done apologising for it. Because I am not a product of empire. I am a child of wildflowers and ferry terminals, of forest paths and salty air, of café tables where no one rushes you away.

I am simply home, wherever truth is spoken without fear, and laughter comes before permission.

Home Is Not a Country

It’s a calibration. I have walked through so many nations, but only one lets my mind unclench completely, my voice drop the disguise, my thoughts move at their natural speed.

The Netherlands doesn’t ask me to become Dutch. It just lets me become me. The storm quiets not because it’s gone, but because it’s recognised. No one tries to cage it. No one fears it. And maybe that’s why my roots grow so easily there, not because the soil is soft, but because it doesn’t fight.

Wandelstorm Was Never English

She’s not made of teacups and queuing and quiet desperation. She is salt air and clear paths, coffee steam and truth spoken aloud. Not a rebel, just a force that was never meant to be bent into shape.

She’s the one who always knew that real connection isn’t filtered through politeness, but found in the glint of honesty across a café table, in the unflinching directness that says: “I see you, as you are, no mask required.”

She is a storm I walk with, not run from. And in Europe; in that strange, collective soul I feel in the Balkans, in the laughter of a German train conductor, in the deliberate kindness of a Dutch shopkeeper; I am not asked to explain her. They already know what she is.

This Was Never About Leaving the UK

It is about returning to myself. I am not running away. I am heading home: to the idea of Europe, to the truth of open borders and open minds, to a place where my intensity isn’t “too much,” it’s just lunch conversation. I always belonged there. Not because I chose it, but because it matches me. It always did; and it always will.