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Interview with Barbara and Steve Hall - Part 1
An American Family in Germany
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The Halls: Michael, Steve, Barbara, and Gregory. Photo courtesy the Hall family. |
The Halls are a family of four (photo above). Steve is a chemical engineer who took an expatriate assignment in Germany. Barbara is a stay-at-home mom. Their two boys, Michael and Gregory, were both still youngsters at the time of the move. Gizmo, their Bichon Frise, was a puppy less than one year old when they moved to Germany. The Halls moved to the small town of Nufringen in Baden-Württemberg, southwest of Stuttgart, in the summer of 1995 and returned to New Jersey two years later. Being a company-paid move, there were no financial considerations or hardships, but the emotional toll was very high. More details on this and other aspects of their time in the Stuttgart area can be found at their own Americans in Germany Web site.
Interview
GW&M: I know approximately why you went to Germany. Steve’s company offered him a position there and so forth, but what made you both feel like moving your whole family to a foreign country? Was it a sense of adventure, the challenge, or what?
Barbara Hall: WE did not make that decision! Steve did!
Steve Hall: That's not fair! I distinctly remember discussing the idea of going, even before I got the formal offer.
Barbara: But you KNEW I was hesitant. I didn't have the same sense of adventure that you did.
Steve: Well, the real reason I pushed for going was the opportunity for our boys. It would be two to three years in Europe for them, just as they were turning the corner, so to speak, from childhood to boyhood. Michael was eleven and Gregory nine.
Barbara: Both of us were looking for change, too. Life was boring. It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but...
GW&M: Well, how did it work out for the boys? Do you have any regrets about the decision?
Barbara: I think it was a negative for Gregory and a positive for Michael. In Greg’s case, we didn’t live near any of his friends. And his education was poor – we can talk more about that later.
Steve: For Michael, though, it was a ball. His middle school had much more to offer in terms of education, trips and personal attention. Plus, he became best friends with a boy living in the next town. Overall, and even with regrets about Greg's experience, I think it was a very positive move for our family and it enriched our lives.
Barbara: Gag!
GW&M: Expats are often most unprepared for the differences in daily life in their new home. From reading Barbara’s newsletters and your other comments, I gather you had your own share of surprises. Looking back, what was the hardest thing to deal with?
Barbara: There are a lot of things! The stores aren’t open long enough. (See Shopping hours.) Refrigerators are tiny. The garbage.
Steve: It has to be the garbage! That was the one thing we were most unprepared for.
Barbara: Yeah, let me tell you my compost story. You know, we weren’t allowed to have a garbage disposal. I don't think anyone in Germany has even heard of them! So we bought an annual sticker for a special green pail. It could hold 100 liters I think. The Nufringen trash people emptied once every two weeks. Can you imagine? In the summer? The stench, the bugs, the mice?!
Steve: I can imagine that! In fact you made ME carry the sloppy mess from the kitchen to the pail every night.
Barbara: So one day I learned that they have Compost Police. Really! When I came home from shopping, my compost pail was sitting by the curb, full. Everyone else's pail was empty! Thanksgiving was coming that week and we were expecting a crowd. I started crying on the spot!
Steve: I'll say. Everyone in the office must have heard you screeching when you called me, what, three seconds later?
Barbara: But then I realized my neighbor’s compost wasn’t collected either. They had dumped their pail onto the driveway, and a man from Nufringen was picking through it with a metal detector. They spoke a little English and I managed to learn that two tea bags with staples – you know, the staples that hold the strings on – had triggered the metal detector on the truck. I convinced the Nufringen guy that there was no metal in my compost. So he agreed to send the truck back to pick up both my neighbor’s pail and mine. Trouble was that our compost set off the metal detector on the truck again, and they refused to take it. All of my pleading reached deaf ears!
Steve: That must be when you called me again. Boy was I desperate then! I called around in the company, and even though we lived so far from work I actually found an employee who (a) lived in the next village, and (b) could help us get rid of our compost! So the next day this woman peddled over on her bicycle, we stuffed the compost pail in the back of our station wagon, and drove to a local farm. She boarded her horse there and got permission from the farmer to dump our pail on his compost pile. Our garbage looked pretty weird sitting on top of that pile of branches and yard waste.
Barbara: I wonder if he was sorry he let us dump it there?
GW&M: How did you happen to choose the town of Nufringen in particular? It seems to be a rather small dot on the map.
Barbara: You got that right!
Steve: How did you even find it on your map? Nufringen is a little village with 4,000 residents, located 30 km [18 mi.] southwest of Stuttgart and 4 km from Herrenberg, the nearest town of any real size.
Barbara: I still get angry when I think about how we ended up there.
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Map adapted from the Herrenberg website. Used with permission. |
Steve: Yeah, the company let us come to Germany during a holiday to look for housing. We arrived on a Thursday which happened to be a German holiday – some kind of church holiday in June.
Barbara: The problem was that our real estate agent wouldn’t show us houses on holidays or Sundays. And since it was a long weekend (lots of people took Friday off) there were two major problems: (1) nobody was around to show us their houses, and (2) our real estate agent went away for the weekend. Not only that, he didn’t tell us he was leaving until Friday night!
Steve: So between Thursday and Sunday we saw exactly two places. And they were both horrible.
Barbara: I was about to divorce Steve already and that spurred him into action.
Steve: I asked everyone I knew if they could recommend real estate agents. And I started calling them. Then I called the International School and got a list of all the expatriates that were leaving. I called those people and asked if their house or apartment was available.
Barbara: I had to return to the US. Before I left, I was able to see three more houses and two of them were almost acceptable.
Steve: To make a long story shorter... and to wrap this up before Barbara starts reliving the actual move into our new home...
Barbara: Don’t get me going!
Steve: Suffice it to say that I found the house from a returning expat. My company management was not happy about this. They had to pay extra real estate fees – you pay two months rent to your agent, and in our case they had contracted with someone (who couldn’t deliver) and then had to pay another agent for the house we took. Also, they were very afraid that by calling multiple agents they’d start getting invoices from all of them!
Barbara: That house was horrible and I'll never let you forget it!
Steve: Well, it was big...
Barbara: And 30 years old and falling apart!!
Steve: It had about 2,200 square feet, constructed like a New England Cape Cod with pitched-ceiling rooms on the second floor.
Barbara: And only one bathroom!
Steve: Plus a guest toilet room.
Barbara: Try living with three men and only one bathroom!
Steve: It had a two-car garage, a little fenced yard in back, and faced a huge field. Great for the dog.
Barbara: Plus there was the tenant. Hyde, do you know that nearly all German homes have apartments? It’s some kind of tax deduction thing.
Steve: The kitchen was already installed.
Barbara: Like I’d move into a place without one. [See our Kitchen page for more about German houses – with or without an installed kitchen!]
Steve: All this for 2,600 DM [about $1,450] per month.
Barbara: We lived 30 km from the school, 35 km from your office. It took forever to get anywhere.
Steve: But Nufringen had three bakeries, a stop on the S-Bahn [commuter train], and a Saturday market.
Barbara: I still say if we’d picked a place closer to where you worked and the kids went to school I would have been much happier. So what if the rent would have been 4,500 DM (about $2,460) closer in? It would have been worth it.
In the next installment the Halls discuss the Tea Group and other hobbies...
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THIS SITE
- The German Way Expat Blog
- The German Way Forum - Join our forum, where we share info and tips about life in German Europe.
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ON THE WEB
- The Herrenberg.de Web site - A larger town next to Nufringen. Definitely worth a virtual visit! Photos, maps, historical info. In French, German, or English.
- Nufringen.de - Information about “die Gemeinde Nufringen im Kreis Böblingen.” In German only.
- Region Stuttgart (in German only)
- Stuttgart.de (in German and English) History, politics, culture, tourism, and much more about Stuttgart and the surrounding region.
- Steve and Barbara’s Life in Germany. Online Powerpoint slide show with photos concerning the family’s two-year stay in Germany. Part of the Halls' Americans in Germany website.
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