The European Melting Pot

Last year of university is always closely related to a job hunt. Your body and, above all, mind finally reach the maturity stage to enter real life, real relationship, real job...

Browsing through career websites and application tools of several companies, I stumbled over an interesting detail: almost everywhere they now leave you two lines for nationalities and mother tongues! Personally, it makes my life only easier since I don´t have to choose anymore which to put, but this discovery got me thinking.

If the majority of application websites start to insert this extra space, it also means that I am not a special case anymore. There must be an emerging trend of multinational, multilingual, multihomeland (or homeless?) European citizens! Forget Yuppys, Baby Boomers, DINKs – the time has come for the MEC generation (Multinational European Cosmopolites).

To prove this thought of a European melting pot, a closer look at my surrounding was enough. In my class people don´t seem to even notice the difference between the languages they speak and the cultures they carry inside. The brain just switches from French to English to Spanish similar to an online dictionary. At this one dinner we even decided to have a conversation in 3 different languages simultaneously. Every sentence had to contain at least one word from each. Just for fun. I tried to explain the game to my parents, but unfortunately their imagination did not go that far.

At the next party I was hit by another revelation: almost none of my friends is dating a person from the same nationality! Having a long-distance relationship with Germany, Italy, France or Ireland seems to be the most normal thing on earth, pardon, in Europe. Fortunately besides low-cost airlines there are also these all-you-can-call-abroad offers, which make sure your partner gets his usual good night talk and a virtual kiss. The flight itineraries of low cost airlines are learnt by hard and the tickets are reserved months in advance. The weekend schedules deciding who goes to see whom next are determined with a precision of a true professional. It appears that Ryanair, Easyjet & Co. have fully turned into shuttles, that keep a relationship alive. If I was a marketier for either of them, my next offer would be a trip for a couple meeting in a romantic spot, but coming from different cities. Buy-one-get-one-free-from-any-other-destination-for-your-missing-half! The phrasing definitely still needs some polishing, but the essential business idea is there.   

One of my best friends, who is already half-French, half-Spanish, is now dating a wonderful Norwegian boy. Will the generation after us follow the American example and express their heritage in percentages? Something like: “I am 50% Norwegian, 25% French, 25% Spanish – basically I am European!”

The process of European fusion is a phenomena that gets more and more complex. Long before a marriage couples already decide, who will speak which language to the offspring and how to make sure all nationalities get passed on to the next generation. I have friends with up to three passports (always reminds me of James Bond somehow...) and up to 4 mother tongues. By that I mean speaking it without the slightest accent!

Did Jean de Crèvecoeur, when coining the phrase « melting pot » back in 1782, ever realize, that more than 200 years later his descriptive words will be as up to date as ever?

Dedicated to my amazing friends C.D and S.M.