I spend much of my life in the tax haven isolated. It sucks and Nana’s recent message that she is seeing someone makes me feel truly alone on the continent. But the brief moments of human interaction that I get are exhilarating. I went to see Andrew (Weeks) in Paris last week which helped greatly, but TGVs to Paris are expensive so cannot see him again this weekend. My isolation continues.
Yesterday was a break in the monotony. I had a meeting at the immigration directorate in the morning – I’m finally getting my ID card – so I got up, got dressed, and brought my backpack planning to get coffee with a classmate before going to the BNL. When I arrived, there was a short line outside the building, it was cold and wet and I was underdressed, but I assumed it would not be too long. Standing there it felt almost like a Soviet breadline, the cold nipped at my feet while we all chatted amongst ourselves. We had managed to divide ourselves into three groups: several American U Miami students (they have a study abroad campus a few towns over), banker immigrants, and the real ones. I managed to fall in with the real immigrants because I responded to them in French. After about fifteen minutes a security guard came out to tell us that there was a “technical problem” and that we needed to come back another day. The line was displeased, appointments require a three-week waiting period so the security guard assured us that we would be able to come back next week or later in the day. A few of the American students had to ask the security guard to repeat herself in English, I was proud that I was able to hide my identity with the crowd of “real immigrants.”
The security guard eventually said that we could wait in line if we really wanted to, expecting the cold weather to drive us away. It was at this moment that several of my queue-comrades spoke up, there were several mothers with their young children, could they wait inside? The guard acquiesced so we all looked around for every parent we could find, we wanted to make sure as many people were at least warm. The line continued to get whittled down by the cold until there were only seven of us, the hardcore of the hardcore. We were also the small group that informed mothers that they could go inside so the guard decided to let the rest of us in. Once we were inside the building a kind bureaucrat was keeping us updated every fifteen minutes or so. No one was angry at him, we all knew it wasn’t his fault, and he was good-natured, apologizing that he couldn’t offer us coffee because of COVID. But the small group of us that had waited in the cold, as well as the mothers who decided to wait it out, found a sense of group solidarity together. We were all suffering together but at least we could laugh. They were shocked that I was an American – my French is getting better – and we all kept each other’s morale up. After about 40 minutes of waiting for the kind, Luxemburger bureaucrat told us that the system was back online and that we would be going shortly. We all felt like we had won the lottery, cheering each other on and laughing as each of our numbers would get called, and no one filling in behind us. Everyone was in the same boat and helping each other out, one of the people I was sitting with took care of a woman’s baby while she went to the desk. The room was brimming with solidarity, I’ve never seen so many happy faces in a government building before!
I couldn’t get coffee with my classmate, she never responded to my text. The next day she responded to apologize, she doesn’t have push notifications and wasn’t feeling well yesterday. I sent her the French revolutionary song Ça Ira to let her know it’s okay. I would like to get to know this classmate better, but I just seem to keep missing my chances. Oh well, ça ira.
As I was preparing to go to sleep last night I received a text from my Kosovar-Albanian classmate and her cousins and she were coming to Esch in a half hour to look for a bar, did I want to join? The excitement I felt was overwhelming, a social event! I quickly put on the bar (and weather) appropriate clothes and went to the train station to wait for them. When they arrived, they told me that they were looking for a hookah bar, and after some wandering, we found one that is owned by some Bosnians. The Bosnian security took a liking to me because I had the correct opinions on Serbs, and he liked the cousins as well because they have a Montenegrin father so they could talk to him in Serbo-Croatian. I’ve never tried a hookah before, it was fun. The club was mostly empty (good because COVID numbers are going up) and it turns out that our bartender was a friend of the cousins, an Azjerbijani. The music was exactly what you would expect, but, apparently, a few pieces of Albanian nationalist rap were thrown in by a sympathetic DJ. It was an extremely fun night and I sincerely enjoyed it, all the former Yugoslavs have positive opinions of Tito and the Yugoslav state.
When we left the guards were sad to see us go, good comrades that they are. I’m glad to have found some comradery in the lonely tax haven. When I told Erik (Lynch) about the night he remarked that he was happy that I’ve found some culture in the tax haven. There’s real internationalism and solidarity here, it’s just not exactly where I expected to find it.
Signed,
Andrew (Pfannkuche)
Normal Thoughts 