Paperjam: Please, introduce yourself.

Eimear Hölzle: My name is Eimear, I’m Irish, I’m teaching in the European School in Mamer on secondment from the Department of Education in Dublin. The European countries send teachers over to their respective language section. Though it doesn’t always work: Ireland is the only English-speaking country at the moment, apart from Malta… so we have ten classes in Mamer, maybe 15 in Kirchberg. And there are 15, 20 European schools? There’s no way Ireland can support all of those teachers! The rest are locally recruited teachers of varying origins. So we have all different nationalities. It’s a lovely experience for seconded teachers, because you have your job security at home--you get paid at home and get an allowance for living here--but you also get that international trip away. The initial contract is two years, and then if you do well, and want to stay, you can extend for up to nine years.

And you’re in your initial contract still?

I’m just finishing my first year. I arrived to Luxembourg last summer for the beginning of the school year in September.

And do you think you’ll want to extend the secondment or is it too soon to say?

Oh, God, absolutely--I’ll stay here till they send me home!

I came late to teaching. My first job was in engineering. I qualified as an engineer from university. I worked in Germany for 13 years and came back to Ireland with a German surname… and [laughing] three small kids. So engineering wasn’t feasible anymore. I was looking around… what could I do? Production engineering means you’re there till the line is fixed or until the problem is solved. And with three small kids it’s not feasible.

I had been doing more of a translating and mentoring and developmental role at work, and a job came up teaching German on a pilot project in the primary schools in Ireland. So I hopped straight into it. I had no qualification but I did it for two years, and then I thought… I can do this. It’s suited with the kids, you know, holidays and all of that. So I went back to university and did a post-grad in primary teaching. I’ve been teaching now for 18, 19 years.

And this opportunity in Luxembourg: how did it come about?

My kids at home--I have three boys--are finished with university. And I thought… there’s a little itch I need to scratch. And a secondment came up. I’d done another post grad in intercultural learning and leadership, because I was working with newcomer children to Ireland. I had spent about six years teaching English as an additional language in our primary school. And I loved that. I loved talking to the parents, recognising their education system, comparing it to the German and the Irish systems.

So I thought: OK, let’s give this a go. And my son--he’s a finance bro [she laughs]--he had been working here in Luxembourg for two years. So I had been over to visit a few times. And a job in Luxembourg came up. There were jobs in Germany, but I thought: I don’t want to live in Frankfurt. That’s just too big of a city for me, to start over on my own. Brussels? No. Didn’t want to go there either. And there were three jobs in Luxembourg, one in my school and two in Kirchberg.

And what were your first impressions of Luxembourg, either from last year or when you visited your son?

My first impressions? The European vibe… the free transport! Oh my God, that’s just amazing. And I love just how it’s so centrally located, so easy to hop on a train or a bus. You can be in three cities in, you know, in a matter of hours.

Cities in other countries, you mean?

Yeah. I was telling the kids that we have our end-of-school-year dinner in Belgium. Or you go to Trier to do your shopping, Metz to do whatever. Just the novelty of that. It’s so easy. In Ireland, if you need to go anywhere, you have to get to the airport… or get on a ferry for 22 hours. But here it’s not a bit of effort, you just hop over and back. OK, you notice when you go to Belgium because the roads get a bit bumpy, but other than that… you don’t notice!

What cultural differences have you observed in your line of work?

It’s quite interesting, the dynamic we have. On my corridor--I teach P1, so six- and seven-year-olds--I have French colleagues across the corridor, Danish, Czech next door, Greek down the corridor, Italians. We have section meetings where all the Anglophone teachers get together, and then year-level meetings where it’s all the corridor. So, you know… in the Anglophone section, it’s pretty standard, we all arrive pretty much on time. But trying to get the section of the corridor to meet… [she pauses for a long moment] the French aren’t bothered--the Italians have 20 minutes’ delay--we’re all sitting there going, where is everybody? [She laughs.]

And the kids are the same, you know? I teach English as a second language to French and Greek and Italian kids, so you get those little quirks.

Wait, are the Italian kids also, like, late to class?

Well, they do learn!

But the Greek kids never stop talking, and some of the Italian kids, and the French--those three groups all pretty much speak the same language at school as at home, whereas my kids don’t. I have 18 kids in my class, and I think two of them have two British parents and two more have one British parent. Other than that, they speak no English at home. So, you know, both parents are Romanian--we don’t have a Romanian section--or Spanish--we don’t have a Spanish section.

But, yeah, the French kids come in with their nice pencil cases, the Greeks come roaring up the corridor! It’s fun. You can nearly tell by the way each kid moves in the corridor what classroom they’re going to pop into.

Going back to your arrival: how did the settling in process go?

I got the job offer in maybe February 2024, came over to see the school in May, went home, had to finish up the year… and then I started looking online for somewhere to live. It was kind of difficult because you don’t know your salary. We get an allowance from Europe and part of it is deducted depending on how well you’re paid at home. So it kind of evens out, the pay that everybody on the corridor gets. The Greeks are very poorly paid at home, but their European salary would be a lot more. And so I suppose, technically speaking, we’re well enough paid in Ireland.

But--so you don’t know how much salary you’ve got to play with. I was moving out of my home in Ireland, leaving my two youngest boys--they're in their mid-20s--and I was going to live on my own in an apartment by myself! That was really exciting. I’d done the mommy job. I wanted a two-bed apartment somewhere near school. I didn’t want to live in Arlon. Everyone says to go and live in Arlon, it’s so cheap--and I thought: I cannot do a 30-minute commute. That’s not what I came to Luxembourg for. And then if there’s any socialising happening, you're stuck in another country. I know it’s not far, but you know, you’re going with the heavy traffic in both directions every day.

So I live in Strassen. It’s expensive, but I have a commute of seven minutes on the bike, eight with the bus. That’s what I chose for myself. I know other people have different priorities. I didn’t come here to make money. I came here for the experience. Every bus that passes my door goes into town. So, OK, you pay a little bit over the odds for that, but that’s the lifestyle I chose. You know?

Have you experienced any culture shock?

No. I suppose, because I lived in Germany for so long, I had a reasonable idea how things would work here. It is Germanic in a way, with a little bit of French flair. Oh, the price of everything, I suppose. Food is quite expensive. But it balances out, I think, at the end. It’s a little bit of a shock the first couple of months at the supermarket and you go: “Oh, my goodness, that’s the price…? You could get that a lot cheaper at home.” Yeah, but you’re not at home [she laughs] so, you know, get with it!

How many Luxembourgers have you met?

Not that many. We have some colleagues at work… a couple of spouses of Irish people I know who are Luxembourgish. I suppose it’s more international, the crowd I have met. That’s probably one thing: it’s hard enough to meet Luxembourgers. But I’ve been very busy at school this year, just trying to settle in… I’m hoping that next year I’ll have a little bit more time.

I suppose, socially, I meet a lot of Irish people. But Irish people my age have been here for 30 years, you know? So they’re very settled. A lot of them have married Luxembourgers. So it’s not a cry fest for Ireland when we get together--we’re all adults enjoying the Luxembourg lifestyle, which is more my thing. I lived in Hamburg for 13 years. I never met an English-speaking person in those 13 years.

Really?

That was back in the ’90s and the early 2000s. We didn’t have internet. I was working in a German company. I don’t know that there were any Irish people or English people living in Hamburg at that stage. Never met them. Never had a chance to meet them.

I see. What do you make of the multilingualism here?

It’s amazing. You go into the Luxembourg system, you come out fluent in how many languages--four? And if you have a parent from another country, you might have a fifth. The kids are so well able for it here. I see my kids at school: they’re six or seven, and some of them speak three languages. And they think nothing of it. I’m teaching them through English, they might speak two other languages at home, then they’re going to L2 which might be French or German, and off they go again in another--and they don’t bat an eyelid. It’s fabulous, that.

You know, I feel inadequate here! I speak English, obviously, I speak Irish, because we’re mandated to teach that at home, I have a smattering of French and I speak German, but I feel inadequate at times. Because people can just pick and choose languages. I think it’s brilliant.

And it comes so naturally to kids because there’s just so many languages going on. When I started teaching Irish back in Ireland, first we had a lot of African children coming to Ireland, then a lot of the Eastern Europeans, Chinese, Indian kids. And then, the last couple of years, it’s been the Ukrainian kids in the classroom. And within a year they have better Irish than the kids who’ve been learning it their whole life. Because they have two or three languages already under their belt, and they don’t make a big deal about picking up the next one.

I agree, it’s amazing. Languages flying everywhere. It sounds like you’re here for the long term, then?

As I said, I’ll stay here till they send me home! But even at that--because I’ll be eligible for retirement at that stage, I said to the kids: I’m making no commitment to come back to Ireland. I don't know--I could--I have family still in Hamburg, my sister-in-law lives there, my father-in-law. Could very well end up there. I’m open to anything. I could settle here. I don’t know. I’m happy, you know, to not be saying; I have to go back to Ireland. I’m open to whatever life throws at me.

That’s got to be the right attitude. And the most important question for last… how are you faring with the weather here?

The weather? It doesn’t rain as much as Ireland. It’s a lot sunnier than Ireland [she laughs]. I’m very happy with the weather. Yeah, it’s--it’s great.

Virtually everybody else in this article series complains about how rainy it is!

What? Oh, yeah. Go to Ireland! I remember my first year at university, walking from university accommodations to the campus every day… you had an umbrella in your hand. Even though we don’t do umbrellas. But here I can count on one hand the number of times the children couldn’t go out and play at school because it was raining. For the whole school year! In Ireland… [she pauses]--you know, in winter--[she pauses again]--it’s just--[she pauses a third time]--yeah. Yeah, it’s a different kind of climate. I can’t complain!