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Sarah Bringhurst Familia's avatar

This feels very similar to my experience as an American in Amsterdam. Especially the (not) making Swedish (Dutch) friends part. I like your invocation of an American Diaspora, and wonder why in over a decade of living abroad I’ve never once heard or even thought that expression. I suspect it’s partially to do with the fact that it feels somehow like cheating to use a word usually reserved for people from less privileged places. But then again, it was leaving the U.S. that enabled us to buy a house, afford good health insurance, and find a sense of financial security. To some extent, I’ve also done a lot of running away from my American identity, not only physically, but psychologically. In any case, thanks for bringing this up, because it has given me some food for thought.

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TanzPunk's avatar

Hah! Here in Portugal I can't imagine any purpose for a Costco to exist for the same reasons you mentioned in Sweden... no where to store bulk items! Our refrigerators here are typically very small, and closets, as we knew them in the U.S., non-existant (we have built-in or standalone wardrobes). I have seen that there's a Costco in Spain, so if I ever happen to be in whichever city it's in, I could see visiting out of sheer curiosity and for nostalgia's sake.

It's rather difficult to make friends with (straight) Portuguese folks here for much the same reasons you mentioned, but as we are queer Americans (our biggest reason for fleeing the U.S.) we have found a very supportive and close-knit community of other queer folks who have moved here from all over the world. I have queer friends here from Poland, Brazil, Romania, the U.S., France, Ireland, and Portugal, too (LGBTQ Portuguese folx seem more open to making friends), as well as acquaintances from several other countries.

I wrote a piece here last year in which I also noted the difficulty in getting a grip on just how many of us have left the U.S. since there's no official tracking, but I cited an Economist article within mine that gave some estimates, including that as of 2020, around 10 million Americans were living abroad, with those numbers sharply increasing in the years since.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jdgoulet/p/the-american-diaspora?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=10bxpq

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