I am 4 hours out of the hospital and already posting about giving birth in Germany. When anyone gets on the internet to write about an experience this quickly it could be because it was outrageously bad or overwhelming positive. Lucky for me (and other soon-to-be...
The GW Expat Blog
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Tips, advice, suggestions
Expat Tip: Want to Find Work in Germany? Have a Job.
There are some major cultural differences between German work culture and U.S. work culture, and many of them have been covered here on The German Way already (follow the link for the complete list!) From attitudes toward working mothers, or attitudes toward working...
Free College Degrees in Germany
No Tuition Fees at German Universities Updated for 2020 Get 'em while they're hot. If you're a German-related news junkie like we all are at the German Way, you might have seen your Facebook or Twitter feeds filled with headlines like these a few years ago: "Free...
Prenatal Courses in Germany
Do I look a little tired here? That's because I am. Last week was baby week. After 35 weeks of pregnancy, we were cramming hospital registration, one of our last doctor visits (plus ultrasound) and 2 long nights of prenatal courses into just a few days. My dad...
Keine Gelegenheit versäumen – don’t miss your chance …
I remember that when I lived in Berlin for a year as a student ten years’ ago, I approached every conversation as a language-learning opportunity. Like a hungry caterpillar, I would gobble up more and more words whether talking to taxi driver or a philosophy...
Gifts from Germany
A visiting friend from New York asked me for some tips on good gift ideas for her to take back home from their summer in Germany. I love this question as it's one that I have to think about and refresh each time I go back home. Here's my list which includes some...
5 Reasons to Become an Expat
You may have enjoyed Hyde's recent post on Ten Reasons Why You Should NOT Become an Expat here on the German Way Expat Blog. In the past few months I have found myself talking to many less-experienced expats, consoling them in their homesickness or loneliness, or...
“Swiss Life: 30 Things I Wish I’d Known” reviewed
What happens when an all American woman with a French-Italian name moves to Switzerland? American writer Chantal Panozzo tells all about it in her recently published book, Swiss Life: 30 Things I Wish I'd Known. With her trademark humor, she shares her evolution as...
ATMs in Germany: Chips versus Magstripes
Although we take them very much for granted today, automated cash-dispensing machines have only been common since the late 1970s. Banks introduced the devices first in Europe, then in North America and elsewhere. Today there are an estimated 2 to 3 million ATMs in...
Dealing with Damage
Despite not being military or part of any diplomatic corps, my family and I move frequently. We moved in 2010, and then in 2012 - not counting the two additional moves within the same town from one temporary flat to another and then into the house we bought, and now...
White Knuckles
Galavanting about Europe in my early twenties, I spent a spring holiday in Italy. The journey began in Germany, meandering from Frankfurt down through the Black Forest, into Switzerland and through the Gotthard Tunnel (17 km!) to get to the Italian border. The entire...
Au Pair in Germany – the Hosting How to Guide
Like Sarah did several years ago, I mentioned our foray in having an au pair. We had had one from South Korea last summer, a relationship which ended pretty miserably. Despite our efforts to have fair and adjusted expectations of a young woman, age 20, from a culture...
Expat Tip: Buy an E-Reader
I am a self-confessed bookworm. Books are a significant part of my life, and no day is complete unless I have spent part of it reading. Moving to Germany in 2000, I spent years on the hunt for books I could read. At first, devoted as I was to achieving fluency in the...
Teaching ESL in Germany
I recently finished a two-week stint of teaching intensive English for a company that has been contracted to provide training for unemployed people. The unemployment office sends a lucky few - in this case five people - to take a course that is meant to help make them...
Expat Life Advice: Fill Your Tank
I have written a few posts about homesickness here at German Way, not because I am constantly homesick, but because it is a major theme in an expat's life. The first wave of cultural euphoria keeps you riding high in your new surroundings for about 6 weeks, and then...
American Expats, the IRS, FATCA and Other F-words
Besides "IRS," Americans can now add another item to their list of ominous acronyms: FATCA. Like most things related to income taxes, the FATCA issue has a lot of people in a dither. As if US tax law wasn't already complicated enough, along comes FATCA to gum up the...
House Hunters in Germany
Flipping through the myriad of cable channels the other evening, I landed upon House Hunters International, a staged-reality show where buyers are shown three homes and have to pick one of them to buy or rent. I say “staged-reality” because this isn’t a true reality...
Auf Wiedersehen, tschüß, Bis dann!
So goes the life of an expat hockey-wife, I am once again preparing to move to a new land. This move is one like no other as it is taking my husband and me to the most foreign place we will have ever lived: Russia. After six years in Germany and Switzerland, I really...
Say cheese
It is not allowed, you know, to require photos from job applicants in the UK. CVs arrive as faceless email attachments. There was even talk, a while back and possibly still ongoing, of making applications completely anonymous, removing the name in bold across the top...
Don’t Get Too Comfortable: a cautionary tale
Admittedly, after six years I felt pretty savvy with the whole expat thing. I had lived in two major German cities (Dusseldorf, Hamburg), spent two years living near Zurich, Switzerland, and had travelled to ten other European countries. I even felt comfortable go at...
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