Ana Claudia Luz, Amsterdam – On August 29, the Pavilion of Treehouse at NDSM hosted Open Dialogue #2, a welcoming space for open discussion about belonging, identity, and the meaning of home in a multicultural world. In its second edition, under the theme “How do you find home without forgetting where you came from?”, it began not with speeches, but with silence. For one minute, the audience and the speakers stood still, remembering Ukraine’s fallen defenders. Then, Alina Bielun, the evening’s host and project coordinator of Together Project, welcomed the group that would switch between Ukrainian and English, with the help of translators Anna Ali and Victoria Chala, she set the tone: this would not be a panel on policy or politics, but an exploration of something “deeply personal, yet shared by so many of us: the journey of integration.”
On stage sat four speakers whose lives spanned continents, wars, and decades of migration: Srdjan Fink, born in Belgrade in the 1960s, who fled Yugoslavia’s collapse in 1991 and now is documentary editor in Amsterdam. Borys Biletskyy, an AI expert from Kyiv, with a Ph.D. in machine learning and a childhood partly spent in Catalonia. Sofia Zhukova, a graphic designer from Kherson who is raising two sons in the Netherlands. Patricia Silva, a Brazilian mother of two who founded Road of Hope to support newcomers navigating Dutch society. Each told their story in fragments that circled back to the same theme: identity! What it is, how it shifts, and how unexpected events and different places can shape it.
“Acquiring New Selves” – A few highlights from the speakers
“When I arrived in the Netherlands, I became more aware of my identity,” Fink began. His escape from war had been meant as something temporary, yet it took him seven years before he could return to his homeland, even if only for a visit. By then, he realised that Amsterdam had undeniably reshaped him. “I discovered I wasn’t losing my identity but acquiring new ones. After five years, I could already feel them blending together.”
His reflections were both philosophical and pragmatic: Integration, he said, is less about pressure and more about participation: finding work, making friends, joining conversations. Yet he warned that without learning Dutch, newcomers risk being held back. “Time is the most important capital you have, especially when you’re young.”
Biletskyy, who has lived abroad for more than a decade, framed identity not as something fragile but as a force. “Don’t be afraid of losing your identity. If you have lost it, it was never yours. Identity isn’t a candle flame; it’s a torch. It enlightens the surroundings.” He added that Ukrainians, no matter where they go, will always carry their own way of making things. “It’s not about what we do, but how.”
Zhukova spoke about the delicate balance of raising her children between two traditions. She recalled meeting a couple while living in Poland who had spent most of their lives abroad before returning home to reconnect with their roots and restore their identity. “Their story was a very inspiring example for me, and it encouraged me to teach my children to stay connected with our Ukrainian identity,” she said. At home, she tries to keep both Ukrainian and Dutch traditions. “On the 25th of December, my children get presents in the morning from Saint Nicholas, and in the evening they also receive presents from Sinterklaas.” At the same time, she remains committed to passing on her cultural roots. “My wish is that, no matter when or by whom they are asked who they are, my children will always be able to answer with confidence that they are Ukrainians.”
Silva grounded her identity in language. Traditions, she argued, could be borrowed, adapted, remixed. But the words one speaks to family are irreplaceable. “My kids cannot just say ‘bye’ to their grandparents. They have to say ‘bless Grandpa, bless Grandma.’ That’s how we speak back home in Brazil.” She laughed softly before adding: “And if possible, a warm dish at lunchtime instead of bread.” It was also Silva who confessed she first felt at home in the Netherlands when she realized she was speaking up for the Netherlands as if it were her homeland.
“Between Two Roads”
When the discussion opened to the audience, stories spilled out with equal parts grief and gratitude. Ludmila, a lawyer from Kharkiv now in her fifties, spoke of continuing to practice law remotely for Ukrainian clients while her son, just eleven, had already become fluent in Dutch. “I didn’t plan to move,” she said. “But despite the hardship, I’m here, and events like this (the Open Dialogue) give us impact.”
Valentina, another participant, shared that she often feels “in between, like standing in the middle of two roads with traffic coming from both sides.” For her, this struggle is made harder by not speaking Dutch, by the challenges of adapting at a more advanced age, and by what she perceives as a lack of sufficient initiative from the municipality in supporting integration. She asked the speakers: “Do you share the same feeling? And does it scare you?”
Zhukova answered with empathy. Yes, she said, she had felt that same fear. “Sometimes I see myself in between, and it scares me,” she admitted. Yet she reframed that fear into something powerful: “You are capable of navigating between cultures. It can also become like having a superpower. Don’t feel sorry for the past, and look at what you have now.” She also shared that she found support in her international friends, whom she calls “Netherlands family.” Community, even if not wholly Dutch, gave her a sense of home.
Another woman compared the evening to group therapy. She recounted a friend whose child faced discrimination at school and was considering returning to Ukraine. “Have you felt discriminated yourselves?” she asked the speakers. The question hung heavy in the air, one of many that pointed to the invisible costs of integration. Before it vanished, speakers came up to her with different experiences but with common empathy and words of encouragement.
The evening ended not with solutions, but with shared vulnerability. “Integration is not about replacing one identity with another,” Bielun reminded the room in her closing remarks. “It’s about weaving the old and the new into something meaningful.”
Soup and More Stories of Survival
Before the silence or after speeches, the smell of soup was constant. Warm, earthy, and carrying the weight of memory. The soup plenty served to the participants had been prepared by Alla, a young Ukrainian volunteer resident of Botel, who, in the very first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, turned cooking into an act of care. Back then, in Lviv, she joined a self-organized initiative of artists and activists (@kukhnia.lviv), that provided humanitarian support to the displaced. Being supported by a Dutch organization, they moved through different corners of the city, greeting families fleeing bombed cities with something simple but vital: a hot bowl of soup. Alla remembers cooking with whatever she could find in the kitchen, vegetables from local markets and simply ingredients that could
stretch into nourishment.“For me, this experience was very much about care and about being creative,” she explained. “We didn’t follow recipes. We just tried to make something tasty and nice.” So when Alina asked her to prepare soup for this second Open Dialogue, Alla returned to that spirit. She did not write down a recipe but composed a list of ingredients that felt right, stirred them together with the same spontaneity that once guided her in Lviv. “It was good to see people enjoying it,” she said afterwards. “It worked inside of me with a sense of community, as something we do unconditionally, trying to support people in a different way. This was a recall that made me really happy.”
As people lingered over the last spoonfuls of “Alla’s soup”, the point was clear: survival is not only about safety. It is also about belonging, sometimes fragile, often fractured, always in motion. In a city of 170 nationalities, as Srdjan Flink pointed out in the beginning of his speeches, where every language is spoken but Dutch remains a gatekeeper, belonging is not given; it is negotiated, meal by meal, word by word.
This article got a bit longer than usual, right? But the Open Dialogue series is also not finished yet. On October 7, a third and final gathering will continue the conversation. If the second edition brough so much “food for thought”, the last edition promises to keep the relevance, asking deeper questions and making meaningful connections!
