Abroad and home

I recently read with great interest an article written by Mark Mardell and most of the subsequent comments left by some BBC news readers about how does it feel to have been brought up in a different country from the one we live in, what is in fact 'nationality', how some people have difficulty to relate to 'fatherland', 'motherland', 'patria', etc...

Here is the link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5173326.stm

Related to this, I read today Nicole's blog who visited mine and had a post with the title "HEIMAT".

Cicero: "Patria est, ubicumque est bene ." ("Wo immer es gut ist, dort ist meine Heimat")
"Fatherland is wherever you feel well."

Carl Zuckermayer: "Heimat ist nicht dort, wo man herkommt, sondern wo man sterben möchte."
"Fatherland is not where one comes from, but where one would like to die."

Fjodor Dostojewski: "Ohne Heimat sein heißt leiden."
"To be without fatherland is called suffering."

Herbert Grönemeyer: "Heimat ist kein Ort, Heimat ist ein Gefühl."
"Fatherland is not a location but a feeling."

Wikipedia: "Heimat ist, wo man sich nicht zu erklären braucht."
"Fatherland is where things don't need to be explained."

Thank you Nicole for these nice quotations.

I have been living in the UK for 4 years. No homesickness or anything like that. I miss the odd thing like sitting on the terrasse of a café with a cup of coffee in the evening and French cinema. If somebody asks me where I am from, I say 'France'. If somebody asked me what nationality do I feel like, I would say 'Continental European'. Because although it is only across a narrow strip of water, British people are very different to the rest of Europe, in my experience. I am not saying better or worse! Just different.