Years ago I used this blog platform to vent about opera; it still gets some traffic even though the last opera post is a decade old. Later I used it briefly as an Italian vacation blog. Now I'm in Europe again and reviving the blog to talk a little about my unexpected new nationality as a citizen of Luxembourg, a citizen who got his Luxembourg passport yesterday.
I'm not prone to fits of emotion, but I had one when the passport dropped into my hands. I'd dreamed for years about becoming an Italian citizen in the legacy of my mother. But in the post-war time of her immigration to the US, she had to renounce her birth citizenship to become American. As far as Italy was concerned, that renunciation was permanent and unforgivable, and I was not born to an Italian at all. That made acquisition of Italian citizenship impossible without some years of living in Italy, or, as some in Italy suggested, faking a residence there and "getting to know” ($$$) the right people, which I wasn't keen on.
Ironic, then, that I would discover later in life that my father unknowingly had been a European citizen all along. Mom was the American, Dad was the European! I can hear the two of them cackling about it somewhere. I've been telling people Luxembourg has liberalized its laws temporarily to repatriate descendants of its emigrants to America, which is true. But I was reminded at the passport agency that the temporary law doesn't apply to me. Like my father and his brother and my cousins, I have always been a Luxembourg citizen, by and since birth, because Luxembourg nationality is transferred from father to child regardless of where and when it happens, and the definitive ancestors of my Luxembourg lineage, including the one who came to the US and the one I was born to, are fathers, i.e., male. (Send your sexism complaints to the Luxembourg parliament.) In Luxembourg I'm considered not a naturalized but a native citizen. What happened yesterday was acquisition of the final documents to prove the citizenship and accrue its benefits.
What benefits, you ask? Many of you, family and friends, have been asking.
To start with the practical stuff, I can now go through the usually less-swamped EU citizen line at European airport checkpoints. (Piss off, Britain.) In Europe I can stay as long as I like, rather than a maximum of 90 out of every 180 days. In nearly all other countries I can enter visa-free, because Luxembourg threatens no one, making its passport rated tops in the world for easy travel. If I'm offered employment in Europe, such as a temporary teaching appointment, I can take it without need of a work permit. I could even move to Europe, where I could more easily and affordably access public services like health care through national systems or cheaper private insurance.
As with many things in life, though, the more important benefits are the less tangible and less immediate.
With a course in the Luxembourgish language and a few months in Luxembourg, this citizenship could be passed on to my husband, who is 30 years from retirement and would have more direct use of it. Already speaking English and a major European language and being a citizen of two of the three major North American countries as well as all of Europe, his opportunity would be vast. Luxembourg may be the most valuable inheritance I could leave him.
I'm proud to be an American despite all the problems the country faces. I think many of us in the United States lose perspective about the wealth and opportunity our nation enjoys. Spending time in Latin America has helped me maintain that perspective; among my friends in Mexico are refugees from places with real troubles, who see Mexico as a haven and the United States as a glittering dream. Still, a second citizenship in a country without deep political division and entrenched racial and sexual hatred is a source of comfort. It pains me when Americans who have given up on America tell me "now you have a place to flee." But to say a similar thought isn't anywhere in my mind would be a lie. January 6 gave us all a new and frightening idea of what's possible in this land. The people who ran riot in our Capitol would like to outlaw my sexuality and my marriage and my way of life, and if that flag ever falls to them…I’d still be American, but I’d be gone.
On a brighter note, there’s a thrill in the way my lost Luxembourgish heritage has been brought to life in ways I hadn’t imagined. When my cousin and I first visited Luxembourg in May to file our ancestral records, we were surprised at how we recognized the culture, the food, the wine, the faces, the voices, even though our family had lost its conscious knowledge of this birthplace. Locals in Luxembourg City will speak to me in French or Luxembourgish not realizing I’m from the US and still primarily a tourist, which is a remarkable experience for an American in Europe; somehow my dumbass siren does not go off here. A sprinkle of halting Luxembourgish from my mouth in a traditional Luxembourgish restaurant drew cheers from strangers on this trip, and when in Germany for the number fifteen I erringly used the Luxembourgish “fofzeng” instead of the German “fünfzehn,” the barkeep said, “Ah, Luxembourg?”
It helps in all this that Luxembourg has a rather un-European appreciation for America, derived in part from the Battle of the Bulge having been fought on Luxembourg soil, and from American support post-war for preservation of Luxembourg and aid via the Marshall Plan. General Patton asked to be buried here with his fallen Bulge troops, in what is now an American military cemetery with land use granted tax-free in perpetuity by the Luxembourg government. Luxembourgers know Wisconsin, too, because so many like my great-great-grandfather fled to its similar landscape and climate when poverty struck Luxembourg two centuries ago. A restaurant owner this trip told me she would like to see the Wisconsin villages called Luxemburg and Belgium someday. A bar on the central plaza of the University of Luxembourg’s flagship city of Esch is named Little Madison. The American ambassador is the former Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett, a once-colleague of mine in the Wisconsin State Legislature whom my cousin and I sat with for coffee in an embassy reception room replete with Battle of the Bulge artifacts.
I’m already becoming a Luxembourg nationalist when visiting neighboring countries, which happens a lot, because in Luxembourg you’re never more than 18 miles from an international border. Iron ore was struck here in the late 1800s, transforming Luxembourg from an obscure agricultural country into one of the world’s several wealthiest nations. The iron has been exhausted and the steel mills are closed, but the service industries that flocked in the wake of the iron strike, especially finance, have kept the economy hot and brought incredible perks to the citizens. I’m irritable in Germany and France about their lack of Luxembourg-style luxuries like free public transit and free public restrooms and retrofitted elevators and escalators everywhere. I insanely overpacked for this trip and the many steps and stairs of old Germany nearly broke me on my little soccer tour this past week. In my Frankfurt hotel I was directed up a flight of stairs, over a footbridge and down another flight of stairs to get to a tiny elevator that landed me a half-flight of stairs above my room. Get me back to my country!
Now with passport and ID in hand it’s nearly time to go home to my original country, after one more soccer match tomorrow in Mainz, a short train hop from my departure airport in Frankfurt. Mom, I got your citizenship back. Wish you were here to celebrate it.
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