For Carlijn Remmelzwaal, the feeling is slightly different. Both alumnae praise how they can easily feel at home in different countries or comfortable with people from different nationalities. But while the shock for Sevón was abandoning her home country which she has since been idealising, the tough part for Remmelzwaal, who had always attended the European School, was going back to the Netherlands. "It felt strange because I wasn't like all the other youngsters from my generation," she says.
In order to keep a balance between the roots and the European mindset, basic instruction is taught in the student's mother tongue, resulting in different language sections in each of the schools. The difference from other schools is that not only one, but two foreign languages are compulsory, and a third one is optional. Language classes, as well as art, music and physical education, are always composed of mixed nationalities.
Through these experiences, kids end up being multilingual, and their group of friends is often composed of several nationalities. Remmelzwaal remembers hanging out with Dutch, French, Italian, and Swedish friends; while Sevón remembers the Nordic group formed by the Swedish and the Finnish section, that got on well with the German and French but not that well with the Italians.
"I remember chatting to a group of Italians, before they became my friends, and saying something in response to which one of the girls grabbed my arm excitedly and said she had the same experience. This shocked me since in Finland you would never grab the arm of someone you do not know," she recalls.
Putting it in a simple way, those are the kind of experiences that the European School helps pupils understand, not only in classes, but also through traditional events. Each section celebrates its own national holidays, while the only common official holiday is Europe Day. Sevón remembers learning about other cultures through their festivals, as for instance the Swedes organised a parade through the school to celebrate Saint Lucia's Day or the Irish wore green for Saint Patrick's.
The greyer area of this type of education, as most students admit, is the lack of links with Belgian culture. "In a way, it's sad to think you grow up in a place you don't really know," Sevón says. "But it seems kids inherit the older expats' tendency to dislike Belgium, and the country never becomes home to them." This way, considering how most families share similar professional backgrounds, students might have different nationalities, yet similar lifestyles.
Perhaps it's the lack of attachment to Belgium that makes it easier for many of the students to leave the country when school is over, and go to university somewhere else with the possibilities offered by the European baccalaureate they get. However, both Sevón and Remmelzwaal say that, even if at the beginning friends seemed to get spread throughout Europe, many of them ended up having EU-related careers, another sign of the links students develop for Europe.
If they had to choose the best aspect of their school, though, both would choose the possibility to learn about other languages and cultures, or as officials would like to say, how kids end up "united in diversity."
