Reflections on Moving Abroad

It’s been nearly 4 years since I moved to Berlin, Germany from America. Time flies as they say. Asking why I ever moved here is by far the most common question I receive when I meet someone new here. My usual line is “I got a job that moved me here and gave me a visa. Why would I say no to that?”. And while that is a true statement, it’s not the whole truth.

To be honest, I was overdue for a big change in my life. I previously lived in Austin, Texas for 7 years (with another 2 years in Houston for grad school) and while it was nice to spend the latter half of my 20s there, it was honestly never a place I saw myself settling down in. Sure, people always told me I was lucky to live there but truthfully, it was only because I got my first job there after bombing out of grad school and stayed for a bit due to work. I actually hate Texas weather – it may be sunny but it was too hot for me to enjoy the outdoors and I frankly didn’t care about the sun because I was always in some air-conditioned box given my American lifestyle (either in a car, at a store, in an office, or at home with A/C blasting all the time). I grew up on the East coast and missed the four seasons. And the sun gets real old real fast when it’s trying to kill you for half the damn year.

There were plenty of other reasons to leave too:

• Felt stuck for way too long due to COVID. I basically wasted the last 2 years of my time there isolating myself and lost contact with people in the city. It felt pretty easy to move on from that when I could
• Can I really trust other Americans at this point? They couldn’t put on a simple mask for each other and considering recent events (including ones today), you can see why my faith in them has been shaken. This is a common theme I find with Americans I meet abroad: we all really needed a break from our country. Some people turn that break long-term or permanent
• I missed my life as an expat. This is my second time living abroad (the first was as an English teacher in China right after undergrad. Perhaps I’ll tell that story another time) and the itch to live abroad and start over again was too great to ignore
• Again, I got a job that offered to move me out here and give me a visa. How rare is that in life? I felt like I would regret not taking the chance while I could. And it is easier to meet people when you’re younger so I didn’t want to wait too long. There’s an age limit where this move makes less sense where you might as well wait until after retirement to move abroad. I’m not waiting for that, I’m gonna live now while I can!
• A host of other life circumstances changed. I’ll leave that as a mystery to the reader 🙂

You can see why I usually go for the short answer: the real ones are too hard to explain and keep a new person’s attention. It’s been hard building up a life out here but I was willing to try (and fail if it came to that). I’m still a work in progress, nothing wrong about that. Berlin has a special place in my heart at this point and I will try to capture parts of my life here in future posts.