Each month in Home from Home we ask someone to compare Dublin with another city in which they have lived. Sometimes they are Irish who have lived (or are still living) abroad, sometimes they are expatriates in Dublin. This month we spoke with Totally Dublin contributor Laura Gozzi on her mixed up Euro-heritage and her proto-utopian Brussels homestead.
You’ve been living in Dublin since 2009, and your hometown is Brussels – but you’re not Belgian. Explain where you’ve lived.
Well, both my parents are Italian and have been working in Brussels for four decades now, so that’s where I was born, but I have never considered myself to be Belgian – possibly because I went to an international school, and we would travel back and forth from Brussels to Trieste, where we’re from, every six weeks. When I turned 18, I had the opportunity to decide where to go next, and, despite never having set foot in Ireland before, I picked Dublin, where I started a degree in Russian Studies, which allowed me to live in Moscow for a year in 2011, and I am relocating to New York in August. God, I am getting confused just telling you all this.
From Trieste to Moscow to Brussels to Dublin you have covered quite a good deal of Europe. How much homogeneity (or heterogeneity) do you find between the cultures in each city? Is there a sense that young people still do pretty much the same things in each city? How much of the heritage then is illusory or at least over-stated? Or is it in fact much more significant than we realise and Irish people are too easy to relinquish their own cultural heritage.
A lot depends on the student cultures of the different places, which really vary enormously. The Italian and Russian higher education systems involve long hours of class, a ten-month academic year, and generally far less partying and much more studying. Brussels and Dublin seem to share the “fun” aspects of being a student – not only in terms of the infamous partying, but also because many young people actually move out of their homes and take up part-time jobs, both of which allow them to build their own lives earlier than the average Italian or Russian student, who isn’t truly “free” until at least the age of 25. In this respect, I find the Irish to be particularly adaptable when it comes to moving around and leaving home, which I understand can come across as a very frail attachment to their own cultural heritage. But for me, you’re just quite easy-going, to be honest.
Today we see Brussels is a divided city in a divided, albeit peacefully so, country. How did you feel on your last visit home? Has it changed much? Or does life in the international Brussels feel the stresses of Waloon/Flemish tension?
I find that Brussels was, and still is, a bubble of privilege and diplomacy. It shares so little with the rest of the country: practically everybody speaks English, the supermarkets are full of European products for the benefit of the thousands of expats, and it is a wonderfully kept, rich, bubbling city. In this respect, it’s fascinating, but it would be hard to label it as quintessentially “Belgian”. And, although an MEP’s standard of living can be wildly different from that of the general population, there is little resentment towards the so-called “Eurocrats”, who have had a key role in the “remaking” of Belgium after the destruction of the war and are now contributing to keeping it an open and dynamic city.
My very shallow experience of Brussels paints it as an almost standardised continental city. What makes it special?
Oh, there is so much more to it! It is painful to hear people talk about Brussels as a limited, “boring” city, when it is constantly flooded with foreign influences. I do agree that it is not stunning in the way other European capitals are, but I do maintain that Brussels’ beauty is in the eye of the tourist who ditches the map to wander around the old streets of the centre, still full of former tiny chippers and chocolate shops, Europe’s first gay bars, wonderful royal palaces and 1930s Art Déco houses and restaurants. The cosmopolitan crowd is a bonus, although I feel like the Belgian sense of humour and kindness is massively underrated. I really do think that Brussels is almost a microcosm of what an ideal EU should look like: the local population mixes well with the expats to create a fusion of values, cultures and mutual respect – there is a tangible sense that the “European utopia” of creating a multicultural, solid community has worked. It’s a pity that, for now, it is limited to Brussels.
Belgian beer or Guinness? Waffles or chipper chips?
Five years in Ireland and I still haven’t managed to finish a pint of Guinness. Stella Artois, obviously! And Irish chipper chips, especially if eaten by the sea in winter.
What are you favourite places in Dublin to eat / to drink / to relax?
A favourite has to be Grogan’s – I would sell my own mother for a pint of cold cider and a cheese toastie pretty much any day of the year. Speaking of mothers, Mamma Mia, the tiny, hidden restaurant off Mount St Lower is my go-to spot for when I miss my Italian mum’s cooking, and the wine is very nice too. And if I think “relax”, I think about Trinity’s cricket pitch on a sunny day – it’s even got a really convenient slight slope to lie down on.
You are an Italian who grew up (for the most part) in Brussels who came to live in Ireland to indulge your Russophilia. What we need to know most is who do you shout for in the World Cup?
I am shocked to even have to answer this. One of my fondest memories ever is the 2006 World Cup final, I cry my eyes out every time the tone-deaf players belt out Italian hymn before a match, and my heart is irreparably azzurro. I began counting down the minutes until the start of Brazil 2014 six months ago, and few things bring me more joy than watching the team working its way up to the final – even if it ends in tears, like at the Euro Cup in 2012. Long story short – despite my fragmented, messy background, I never feel more Italian than when football is involved!
Words: Ian Lamont / Photo: Mark McGuinness
