There's no place like home | Hacker News Reader

There's no place like home

sivers.org

33 pointsyan9 comments

I'm an American living in Australia who spent time in France. I grew up in New England and lived the majority of my adult life on the west coast of the US.

"home" is a concept that is easy for me to define: where my family is. When I was younger that meant parents. In my early 20s, that was friends and some closer family (brother). Now it is my wife and kids. With the Internet, skype, email, facebook and everything else, I can really stay connected to people around the world very easily so where I live is less and less important.

Goal of our family is actually to have a split life: Winters in Phoenix and Winters in Auckland, NZ. "Home" in that situation will likely be wherever we are sending the kids to school as that will probably be the majority time country, but we have yet to work out all those details :)

That doesn't really work for me - my parents left this country for Australia, and I've visited them but it sure doesn't feel like "home", it feels a lot more like home when they come visit me here in Sweden - so there's definitely something to say for environment playing a role.

Having lived in the same house all my life (21 years of it), it definitely is my home.

That said, it's not the place I feel most attached to. I'm currently flat-hunting in a different city, and I don't think I'll particularly miss living in Oxford, as much as I like it as a place.

I've spent time, from a couple of days up to a few weeks, in so many countries (17 if my latest count is correct), and I don't ever actually remember a time when I was at all homesick, or even missed being home.

And indeed, the places I feel most attached to are ones where I haven't spent more than a couple of weeks. A small town near Copenhagen, downtown LA, a tiny town in the south of France... I actually miss being in those places when I'm at home, and if I didn't have a job then I'd move to one of them in a heartbeat. Until then, I'll just keep counting down the days until work will take me there next...

I've lived most of my live in Belgium, with mum and dad living apart. Home was the house I was living in that week.

I've also lived for longer periods of time (over a year) in Greece and Brazil. At first, home is the place you've left behind and all the people that live there. But then as you spend more time on your new location and get your life sorted there (things like local friends, language, culture), it starts feeling like home.

Leaving that place again is where it gets really hard. You leave your new home and go back to your old one, which feels different.

But in the end you have familiar places and faces where ever you leave, a home to come back to.

No place like 127.0.0.1 :) I do agree having lived in quite a few cities and now 2 different countries. I still call home where I was raised.

'Home' is where I have the most memories of my childhood. In my case it where we lived between my ages 9-23. Everu once a while, I talke a drive there to relive the home feeling.

I do not think I can experice that home feeling again until I have my own family and we have our own experiences in a house long enough.

Definitely cool to live lots of places, but does Derek really learn all of those different languages? If he lives in one place for a few years at a time he has to pick up a decent amount, I'd guess. I'd be interested in hearing about the language barriers and how one overcomes them -- my understanding is that it's difficult to be totally fluent in more than a few different languages.

He'd get by with English in almost all of them. Not sure of, or no firsthand experience in, Panama, Curitiba and Kyoto, but you'd get by easily with English in the rest of those places. Just need to pick up some basic things and make an effort in a few other places and that'd be appreciated without absolutely needing to become fluent.

It depends where you go and what people you hang around with. If they don't talk English there is only one way: learn the local language. I lived in Brazil in a small town and every small interaction forced me to speak a little bit of Portuguese. After two months I knew how to get around and talk to people. I had learned Spanish before but still, if you haven't got an option BUT learn the language, you will manage.

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