You are not alone – living abroad in the time of corona

As the effects of the coronavirus hit harder and deeper around the world, it's hard to think of another event in human history that has led to so many people so suddenly sharing the same fears: fears for their own health or for the health of their loved ones, fears for their work and future economic prospects, fears for their mental wellbeing during an extended period of isolation, fears for the world's ability to recover from such a blow.

But as the EU and its member states cut themselves off from the rest of the world and from each other, those of us who chose to live 'abroad' find our own daily challenges amplified by the virus and the desperate measures being taken to contain it.

We may not have had journeys booked for the coming weeks but the knowledge that we cannot return to our families and friends adds to the stress of this surreal situation.

Many of us feel cut adrift from the place we once called home, but it doesn't feel appropriate to talk about this sense of isolation when hundreds of millions are self-isolating or in forced lockdown and when enormous personal sacrifices are being made – because it was, after all, our choice to move abroad.

Nevertheless, underneath the stress that everyone is experiencing there is another layer of stress which is a product of living abroad. Here are some reflections on some of the underlying causes of that stress. It may be comforting to know that many of your fellow expats feel the same.

If you have felt that your limited grasp of the local language makes you more vulnerable in times of crisis, you are not alone.

For most of us who have moved abroad, the language is the greatest challenge and the challenge from which all other challenges naturally follow. Not just learning it but all the disadvantages of not knowing it until you have learned it. And even when we feel pretty competent, understanding most of what goes on around us and able to communicate most of the time, we are aware that we are presenting a one-dimensional version of ourselves that inhibits our ability to make friends and influence people.

However much we think we know a new language, there will always be situations where we are suddenly at a loss.

Perhaps it's when your car breaks down and you have to communicate with a mechanic, or when you start a new job, or when you try to buy a home. And dealing with health issues is the classic linguistic challenge. But don't panic. If you end up needing medical care you will almost certainly find that the medical practitioners you meet are very competent in English. And if you feel fine, then now might be a good time to brush up on the language.

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An almost empty Stockholm on the morning of March 18th. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT

If you feel insecure about local laws and how to keep up with any changes, you are not alone.

Rules and regulations – just like language – are absorbed as you grow up. They are the administrative extension of your culture and whether you agree or disagree with them, you have a lifelong context for the logic behind them. Living your life in the place where you grew up, your intuition is, by and large, a faithful guide to the principles of daily life.

When you arrive in a new country, your intuition is not exactly worthless but it is certainly worth less.

Every significant step you take needs to be verified, checked with a friend or partner or on a website – or with an official in a language that at least one of you doesn't understand perfectly.

The rules and practices that underpin work, housing, healthcare, education and every other aspect of daily life may not be that different to what you're used to, but they're different enough to mean that you can no longer rely on what you once knew.

Under normal circumstances this is unsettling and sometimes humiliating. But in times like these, when new recommendations and decrees are being issued every day – and which for some people can mean the difference between life and death – the difficulty of keeping up combined with the imperative to do so can be cripplingly stressful.

My colleagues at The Local are doing their best to keep you abreast of what's going on but don't be afraid to ask people (from a suitable distance, of course) what's going on and why.

If the country you live in has a different policy from the country you used to live in, don't assume that one of them is wrong. There are probably cultural, structural or political reasons for what is going on around you. You will learn a lot about your new home by observing how the authorities and the public react during this crisis.

If you are concerned about being cut adrift from your family and friends 'back home', you are not alone.

The guilt of not being there when ageing parents and vulnerable members of our family need us: we all experience this at the best of times and the longer you're away the more that sense of dread grows. We all feel it.

Then, when we have put down roots of our own, perhaps with partners, children, businesses or other responsibilities in our new country, there will be times when we are conflicted, when the love and support that we have to give is stretched to breaking point. It is the expat's burden.

We try to mitigate the problem of distance but nobody expected this. Nobody blames you for being stuck in your apartment in Rome or Berlin or Paris, or for being banned from leaving Sweden or Denmark or Switzerland.

And with Skype and Facetime and WhatsApp we can be there for the ones we love to a degree that was unimaginable a generation ago. Despite the distance, we can bring them into our lives and be a part of theirs. We can make them laugh and listen to their concerns. We can help them with their online banking or organize their shopping.

It's the best we can do. In fact, it's the best we've ever been able to do and, right now, it's not much less than we could do if we were in lockdown in the neighbouring town.

If you are concerned that you have not yet established a local support network, you are not alone.

One of the most-discussed challenges of living abroad is finding new friends – and how hard it is.

Friendships, by which I mean the deep, lifelong, you-can-count-on-me variety, are forged in the white heat of shared experience. The more extreme the experience, the more solid the friendships that will emerge.

By any measure, this crisis is an extreme experience for everyone. Everyone is worried; everyone, as Camus wrote in The Plague, "is in the same boat". The playing field for friendship is levelled. Look around you, look to your neighbours and your colleagues. Everybody needs support right now. Don't wait for someone to be your friend: make the first move.

And when this passes, as it surely will, we will find that we, as foreigners, and the people around us will have gone through something together, something frightening and destructive but also something which is bringing the best out of people.

You may not know what the locals are talking about when they refer to television programmes they watched as children or how life was back in the nineties or the eighties or the seventies but you will have lived through this country's most challenging time together and that will always be more significant than different cultural backgrounds or language difficulties.

Those of us who decided to leave the comfort and ease of 'home' to seek a new life with new adventures and new relationships, we knew there would be challenges and complications. But we made our choice because we believed we were up to it.

We knew we had it in us to take a bold step in a different direction and to build a new life. We are open to other cultures, we are flexible enough to adapt to the world around us and we have the energy and the determination to learn new languages and make new friends and to hang in there until it comes good.

In a word, we are optimists – and we are not alone.

Paul Rapacioli founded The Local together with James Savage in 2004. Follow him on Twitter here, and read all The Local's coronavirus coverage from our journalists based across Europe here. If you have any questions, or if we can help you, please email us.