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Reflection on 2023
I’m going where the sun keeps shining through the pouring rain. Going where the weather suits my clothes…
It is very late, into the year and into the night. This article is written in hindsight and is intended to just be a memento the time I spent before and after I went abroad. It’s not the most concise nor a good-written review, but it is what I feel must be written.
Before I went abroad, I went through a difficult year. Taking care of several things and moving back and forth through the suffering here and there, rarely having time for myself. I suppose it is precisely what John Gray meant, the humane need for diversion. I diverted here and there to numb myself from the pain of the fate I had to go through, from many aspects of my life at that time. In hindsight, there would be a lot of things I would do differently, but I am just glad I was able to resolve my worries and do things I had to do.
Early in the year I applied and got accepted for a scholarship from the government to spend 1 semester at a university of my choice. I chose a small university in the Netherlands. Wrote a bunch of things about myself and I present it as it is, so I didn’t expect to pass. Somehow, I got accepted and I was to fly in August, with a tentative departure date.
Taking care of the Netherlands visa was surprisingly simple. In contrast to the bureaucratic rules I was bound to all my life, bringing excess documents here and there (photocopies, birth certificates, etc.) following the saying lebih baik lebih daripada kurang, the embassy did exactly the opposite of that. The woman who was looking over my documents at the Embassy asked specifically for the following documents:
- Fully completed application form
- Original valid passport + and a copy of the passport’s personal data pages
- Passport picture according to Dutch requirements (I took it the same day at the embassy)
- Approval letter of the IND (Immigratie en Naturalisatiedienst)
It is definitely not a good idea to bring more attachments to the appointment. This experience is very different compared to my experience with the U.S. embassy.
After finishing the visa process, it was time to pack luggage. This too I did late in August. I procrastinated hard, it was because my old apartment was riddled with stuff I didn’t want there but was too reluctant to reject someone’s offering. A part of me didn’t want to leave Indonesia too for some foreign land far in Europe. I was afraid of making changes. I wanted to be stuck in the fabric of time. The departure date too was moved forward by two days (supposed to be 18 August but ended up being 16 August) while the scholarship money hasn’t been deposited into my account.
It was a time for change, my ways, and my views. Indeed an old book has taught me, that change is the only constant. I packed up my luggage and brought four books: French-Indonesian poetry (Paris la Nuit), an English novel (Beauty is a Wound), a book on Indonesia’s music development before and during the 70s (Dari Ngak Ngik Ngok Ke Dheg Dheg Plas), a small Pelican book (Sacred Books of the World). And so I left my small apartment, a place where I lived for more than a year.
Off to Schiphol, from Istanbul. I saw Sri Lanka on the way there, and the Mahakali and grotesque demons written in Seven Moons of Maali Almeida came to my mind. I thought to myself: would the Netherlands have ghosts on their streets? Calling by the canals at dawn?
As the arrival gate at Schiphol opened up that morning, Albert Heijn and other shops had this scent that was distinctively pleasant. And then as I went out the gate with my two boxes of Indomie and two briefcases, the cold struck me sharply. Waiting for a cab for many minutes, and finally getting one. I then walked the streets of Amsterdam with the other awardees. After some days passed in Amsterdam, the university sent a bus and I finally went to Nijmegen, the place I would study at for the rest of the months.
The room I got at the housing was smaller than my apartment and the rent there was 3 times my Indonesian rent. Well, there was a housing crisis. The environment around the place was alright. But I was in Europe. And so I went to Germany multiple times, Italy twice, and other countries too. The continent was full of things I could only dream of as a child.
It was not all rainbows and sunshine, a lot of hard days came to me. I ended up opening the pages of that poetry book and I didn’t even like poetry at that time. And yet the imagery was beautiful, the words too. I went to protests here and there, and that too was beautiful. Poetry really did describe what it felt like.
Meninggi musim hingga ke subuh Jendela dibuka melihat salju jatuh.
in La Ronde by Sitor Situmorang
Translated loosely: “As the season rises to dawn, the windows are opened to see the snow falling.”
Daun-daun kuning sudah, sebentar lagi jatuhlah. Kau tak usah sedih jika mesti pergi dalam dingin angin yang mulai merintih
in Au Revoir (1) by Wing Kardjo
Translated loosely: “The leaves are yellow, they will fall soon. You don’t have to be sad if you have to leave in the cold wind that begins to whimper.”
I have seen many cities in their Summer, Autumn, and Winter. The cold vanilla ice cream and the curry-sauced fries on those hot summer days in the city center, the chilly winds carrying those yellow leaves from the Basel forest out to the streets, and the warm red wine of the Cologne Christmas Market. Sweet memories on top of those painful days when I felt alienation in a foreign land. I too, met those who were alienated and exiled from my country, listened to their stories, ate with them, and saw them in the coffin lowered into the ground.
After that, I escaped from the gloom of the cold Netherlands into the warm sunny days in Roma, Napoli, Pisa, and Padua. Lake Cuomo was beautiful, the stairs were a lot but the lake led me to wonder if Lake Toba was ever once that beautiful. There was also one rainy day in Pompeii, but it felt beautiful. To see remnants of an old civilization in the wet noon with the slippery stones. The Birra Napoli, Tuscany wine, Neapolitan pizza, and kosher food were something unique and it dragged me out of my misery. And so that was my last trip abroad before I moved from Nijmegen on 26th January to Hoofddorp awaiting the departure date.
I went to see the places where Sjahrir, Sitor, Simone, Wing, Willem, and Henk, once were. Reading their stories and poems in the same places they walked, wondering if someone would do the same to mine. One evening, my neighbor played Mahjong and in the midst of the game, he taught me one Dutch ballad from Anton van Duinkerken titled “Ballade van den katholiek” with the underlined text “Daarom, mijnheer, noem ik mij katholiek.”
I found the ballad to be beautiful, and in the next round of the game, I told him of Amir Hamzah’s Boeah Rindoe poem while I was losing the game: “Verlos mij uit mijn verdriet.” We and other players of the game laughed, and as the night ended I gave each one of them a souvenir I brought from Indonesia: Batavian pants. It was quite funny to see Dutch people wearing clothes associated with the colonial past.
The continent had its painful and lovely times. But I came back to Indonesia with a new sense of self. Confidence and sureness I didn’t have last time I was here. Moved into a new apartment and brought the stuff I brought to and from the Netherlands, turns out I can live with just a little stuff. The books I bought from Leiden, Paris, and Amsterdam joined my bookrack and they look nice. When I got back to this country, it was during the election season. It was also election time when I was in the Netherlands.
The way my Dutch friends talked about the election there (where Geert Wilders’ party came out as the winner), was very different from how Indonesians talk about it (where Prabowo Subianto came out as the winner). The realization of what happened in Indonesia hit me hard, my credits from the exchange program weren’t enough, and so a new wave of sentimentalism hit me again. This was in February of 2024, and again, friends and poetry helped me through it.
Amsterdam, Leiden, Leuven, Den Haag, Paris, Pisa, Maastricht, Padua, and Roma; lovely people made lovely memories with me in those cities. And at last, I wrote something of my own, on one warm night when mosquitos took a taste of my blood and my nose was stuffy from the pollution of the city.
Kini kau di tempurung
dibawah dansanya nyamuk
rasa ingin kabur diurung
dan ombak takut berkecamuk.
Hidungmu radang
dan rindu menjelang
pada musim gugur riang
dan salju sepanjang petang.
The Lost Child was right. It was a quiet sensation, forgetting to forget the cold, cold Europe.
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