Why I Will Never Come Back to the United States

this is the story of why i left the united states and why i have no intentions to live there it's a scary decision to leave the country that you grew up in i was lucky to be born there but i had the choice to leave and so i chose to go in my search for a home i ended up in a tiny country that i knew nothing about i want to tell this story for anyone who doesn't feel satisfied with the place they were born in to all the people that are curious to see more of the world there's a world out there waiting for you and it's full of surprises [Music] let's back up a little bit this is me i would describe myself as a little tornado unable to stay put in one place i think i had a hyper active imagination that led me to create entire worlds in my head as a kid i invented languages i knew very early on that i had to chase adventures adventure is what makes me feel alive one of the things that drives so many of my adventures nice dude is this obsession that i have on learning about how other people see the world learning about other societies other world views other perspectives when i was in high school i went on my first trip abroad without my parents and it was to spain and that was a quite eye-opening experience for me because for the first time i was seeing first-hand how different life could look from what i had gotten to know growing up i absolutely loved how different the spanish sounded when they spoke how different their cities looked from the town that i was from i say this a lot about travel abroad but for me it felt like stepping into an alternate universe where even the most basic things looked different like the food of the street lights when i returned to the united states i could not stop thinking about the world that existed out there you know it had captured my imagination and returning to my town felt like re-entering a bubble and i've spent a lot of my life since then trying to expand my bubble seeing and experiencing things that i would never be able to see or experience otherwise to help tell this story of expanding my bubble i want to take you on a little journey to a micro nation in the heart of europe called luxembourg a place that for a dumb american like me seems like something straight out of a fiction novel i want to take you to this place because it represents something very important to me uh that i can't get in the united states which is a different history and a different vantage point of the world spending time in places like these is how i am expanding my bubble for whatever reason i just didn't take too many typical american traditions i didn't play american football or baseball i never watched a super bowl final i didn't go to prom i didn't attend my high school graduation i didn't go to university and join a fraternity i've never cared about spring break or halloween for whatever reason i just never felt super connected or tied down to the united states honestly this country is full of little surprises somehow in the same city right now i'm sitting on stairs right by this river passing through this is so nice so lovely and then you just see the the very luxembourgish architecture everywhere these very impressive stone walls this is nice and so i felt like i had to find or create rather my home somewhere else i've met a lot of people that have told me that learning english for them has opened up all kinds of doors and opportunities for them it has been a way to escape what felt like their own little bubble of whatever little town or country that they're from and i have experienced the same thing just in the opposite direction i found that learning other languages has opened all kinds of doors in my life giving me access to different ways of living and different perspectives on the world and different people luxembourg incredibly is just two hours away by train from paris where i live currently this is something that i love about europe you can take a short train ride and be in a place where the food and language are completely different peanut butter latte did you just you just you heard those words right peanut butter latte luxembourg style i've never tasted something like this before for starters i'm amazed that a place like this can even exist squished in between three very powerful neighbors belgium germany and france despite changing possession many times over the last centuries it is currently a sovereign state and what impresses me the most about this is that despite its imposing neighbors it has its own unique culture and identity to be luxembourgish is to not be french or german or belgian so i'm wearing right now clothing that has been upcycled by a lovely luxembourgish woman by the name of debbie where is she hello right now we're in this like little square music was playing earlier i don't know what happened but uh it's amazing this is just a lovely little secret corner i love this yeah i'm getting pictures taken of me right now as always i'd like to ask a few questions to the locals to better understand the luxembourgish identity do you feel like luxembourg has successfully like created its own sort of identity if you will or does it get kind of squashed by these super powerful countries that are nearby no i do think that we definitely have like a strong own identity but i mean we have our own language we have our own food we have our own culture but we learn about so many cultures growing up we're so familiar with the german culture and french culture and different languages and i mean we feel very strong about our identity but i think the moment you leave luxembourg nobody really knows about it but it's very very this by the way is also my guide in luxembourg to help me better understand the country she's french but grew up here i already have a feeling i'm gonna like this country a lot partially because almost everybody here if i'm not mistaken is a polyglot so many different languages are spoken here four right basically english german french and luxembourgish can you rank them okay okay is there a culture in particular that has more of an impact like is it do you feel like it's closer to french closer to german it's very interesting question because i've thought about that quite a lot i think it used to be closer to french because our grandparents would speak more french but i think nowadays a lot of kids feel more related to germany because for example we don't have like much tv so a lot of people watch german tv growing up we don't learn we don't know how to write luxembourg okay this is this is not the first time i've heard of this it's like it's more of a spoken language it's not taught in school we don't you have i think we have 14 years of school and you have one year where you learn luxembourgish and the west you just speak here so for example when you go to store a lot of places you speak french but it's most with your friends family where you speak language do you see what i mean i find that incredible these people had an utterly different experience of childhood than me people outside sometimes think that luxembourg is just all about bags and it's nice music entrepreneurs yeah and we need to break these stereotypes and i try to do my part by sharing cool content about luxembourg say something in luxembourgish what does that mean super pretty super pretty valencia being in a place like this free from the pressures and expectations of the society that i grew up in i find it liberating i get to be an observer i get to learn about the things that this place does well and not so well where are you taking me elsa whoa so before i dive into part two and why i may never return to the united states i wanted to talk about the sponsor of this video which is musicbed and i am over the moon over the fact that they're sponsoring this video because music is extremely important to my storytelling and creative process if you are a filmmaker looking to add music to your creations and add feeling and emotion to what you're making i highly recommend checking them out for the record all the music that i'm using in this video comes from their library which has only expanded over the years and is of spectacular quality they're really good i can't believe that these things exist i've said this before but i think we live in an incredible time where there are more tools than ever to express ourselves and to to to tell stories it's not cheesy or forced and has played a major role in helping me create a certain feeling that i i'm usually trying to evoke in the videos that i make in fact music is actually one of the first steps of my creative process i really like finding a sound that captures the feeling that i want to convey and then i go from there and there are some amazing artists on there tony anderson paul russell so if you're interested in checking them out you can use the coupon code nathaniel drew at checkout to get one free month when purchasing an annual personal subscription thank you so much to musicbed for sponsoring this video and helping make my travels a reality i would not be able to do it without their support okay into part two why i may never return there are three reasons why i may never return to live in the united states and i guess it's important to make that clarification because i'll probably go back to visit friends and family but in terms of spending my life there at this stage in my life i don't see it as very likely and these are the reasons why the first is that i never felt culturally american i might be the least american american you will ever meet i honestly think we should be using the word usonian instead of american because american really should be a word that describes people from all over the americas i probably say that because my parents are from south america if you look at my family tree it spreads across five different continents over the last five centuries so i'm a total mix of different things i am liking the city more and more by the second it's kind of weird there's like an old part of the city and then there's this like super futuristic stuff look at these buildings over here too just very 21st century i've mentioned the idea of home and belonging somewhere several times already i think it's a deep human desire and something i felt myself longing for for so long and after a lot of looking and a lot of kind of wandering i think is the right word to use to describe it i think i found that place i feel quite connected to france and paris in particular and have started to create a sense of community here after meeting people and spending a lot of time here and i feel like even if i leave for a while i always end up wanting to return here it's a place that i feel comfortable in you know i really like the lifestyle and the mindset it's fun living here and people eat so well and it's so beautiful and again i love how a beautiful country like luxembourg can be so nearby i feel very lucky to be able to say those things and i recognize that there's a level of privilege that's a part of all of this the second reason is the freedom that i mentioned a little bit earlier on of being able to sort of be whoever i want to be not having that kind of pressure and expectation that i felt growing up it's like i have a chance to start over and i don't want to give that up this sunday is quite stormy tons of rain coming down loving it we're playing cards here somebody's singing over there i get this beautiful view water and it's good i'm just chilling okay new update like i don't know two minutes later it's like really really going right now there's rain all over oh my god okay it's getting really intense oh my god no seriously like this is out of nowhere i can't even see anymore we're refusing to move we're gonna stay here we're playing cards this sunday here you go i'm gonna distribute and the third is that i feel like there's still so much world left for me to see and at this stage at least in my life i like the challenge i've always felt like adventure has voided me in unfamiliar places there's something about the process of decoding and coming to understand things in a way that you had never seen them before that i'm like addicted to so i hope that that provides a little bit of clarity i have no idea where things will go from here but i hope that i can continue this trend of expanding my bubble because what i found is that it has led to a deeper more dynamic experience of life it's like i can't go in the other direction once you do that you have that forever i give up a lot of what might be considered as traditionally successful in the pursuit of this lifestyle and in my previous video i think i covered a little bit the hard times you know on the way to getting here where i second guessed a lot my decisions because i wasn't sure if things were going to pan out and i know for a fact that in the eyes of some people i'm uneducated or irresponsible for doing things this way and to that i say there are many ways to get an education and this is mine thanks for watching i'll see you guys soon [Music]

Channel: Nathaniel Drew

Views: 1,319,897

Keywords: us, leaving, leave, americna, american, why I left, expat, expatriate, what its like to live abroad, living abroad, expat life, why I left the us, living in europe, european, american abroad, here's why I left, nathaniel drew usa, why nathaniel drew left, nathaniel drew left the us, nathaniel drew, nathaniel, drew, slow travel, moving abroad, living in france, life abroad, travel the world, travel, adventure, luxembourg, luxembourgish

Id: 2Zr7j41a8X0

Length: 13min 45sec (825 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 26 2021