This week we’re hearing from Nanne Boorgeart from Anchorage. Boorgeart is originally from the Netherlands and has lived in Alaska for five years.
BOORGEART: I went to study at Colorado School of Mines two years before that where I met a girl who graduated that year and then moved up to Alaska, so I followed her two years later.
I’m a student nowadays again, since a month ago. Before that, I was an engineer. I was dissatisfied with my profession. So now I want to become a teacher.
I worked at Endicott. And that’s a very large difference in view. Most of the operators up there, I think, are very like-minded. And in town, not the same as the ones on the slope. Everything goes more out of a… I work with engineers, so people have a little more of a sciency approach to everything. So it’s not just like a standpoint is a standpoint. You can debate everything. We could talk about stuff and pull in some research and that kind of stuff. And it’s a way more multicultural environment because the engineers that I worked with were from all over the world, so that’s a big difference.
I’ve been to Norway a lot, which is fairly similar. This is like a rough Norway, I think. With everything, it’s wilder. Norway has all the pretty nature. It just all feels more civilized. It more structured. I think there’s more trails. There are huts. The narture’s still veery pretty, but here you’ve got bears, you’ve got moose. They don’t have the wildlife and stuff.
I like the freedom you have here — to go to the mountains after work. You can just… 20-minute drive and you’re up in a mountain. In winter you can ski everywhere. It’s something you can’t see anywhere else.
Wesley Early covers Anchorage life and city politics for Alaska Public Media. Reach him at wearly@alaskapublic.org and follow him on X at @wesley_early. Read more about Wesley here.
