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...
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expats
A Golden Cup
Tomorrow one of the most coveted trophies in sport will come to Berlin. Today Germany woke up collectively hungover but with a jubilant smile on its face. Yesterday, just before midnight, the nation erupted into euphoria when the German football team won the World...
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...
Fluent in Denglish
Denglish: If you are an expat in a German-speaking country, you're probably pretty fluent at it. It's the combination of the two languages of Deutsch and English, and your fluency doesn't really depend on how good your German or English is. Or even how committed you...
Confessions of an Expat TV Addict in Germany
This is the most honest way to introduce myself to German-Way readers, Hello, my name is ebe and I am an expat TV addict. It’s true. Despite living in Germany for several years, I still watch American TV every day. As a writer working from home, I have the freedom to...
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 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...
Foods that are hard to find in Germany, part 2
Hyde wrote a blog about this topic last year, but here are my thoughts... I have been living in Germany most of my adult life, and for the most part, I have learned to move past the few foods that I really miss from the US and just simply live without them. I moved...
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...
The German health care jungle
Since becoming self-employed, which was not so much of a choice for me, but more a forced path, I have had to become privately insured when it comes to health insurance. I had very much hoped to avoid doing so, but it turns out that public health insurance gets very...
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...
Election year – time to swat up on German politics
Before I became an expat I was well versed in politics. I read the broadsheets daily (usually at the top of a London bus on my way to work) and, when occasion called for it, I voiced a distinct opinion at dinner parties. So I find it embarrassing that after three...
How being an Expat has made me Weird
First off, I should probably give myself a break, “weird” may be a bit harsh. What I mean to say is that over these six years living in Germany and Switzerland, with intermittent summer visits home to Canada, I have realized that my social skills have become a little...
Inverse Customs: When Germans Do Precisely the Opposite
Expats in Germany and the other German-speaking countries are often surprised by a type of culture shock I call "inverse customs." These are practices that are either the exact opposite of, or extremely different from the same custom in the US. Expats quickly learn...
A different type of renting
The friends we left behind in London all had one thing in common - their desire to get themselves on the property ladder. Had we stayed I suspect we would have started hunting around for somewhere to buy in just the same way. It is simply what you do when you're a...
Luisa Weiss’ Advice for the Expat in Germany
It's Monday, but I got to talk to the creator and author behind the popular food blog The Wednesday Chef, Luisa Weiss, last week. She's also the author of the best-selling memoir, My Berlin Kitchen which came out late last year, and as you may have guessed, she lives...
Expat Life and Loneliness
One of the most poignant feelings I have experienced as an expat is loneliness. It was an emotion that I knew very little of before I moved abroad. In some sense, I was probably naive in my adventurousness; I wanted to experience things that were new and different, I...
Expatriates and the cost of living in A, D, CH
Expatriates don't always have a choice of where they're assigned to work, but they definitely need to know the cost of living in their assignment location. If your salary is paid by a US company, for example, that salary might put you at a huge disadvantage if you are...
How being an Expat has made me a better . . . Brit?
A few posts back I wrote about how being an expat has made me a better Canadian. After thinking about it a bit further, I have actually come to realize that being an expat has also made me a better English and Irishwoman. Now I have to admit, I have never been to the...
Dealing with the Germans
This topic has the potential to be divisive and insulting. I will tread lightly. A year ago, a friend of mine celebrated her last few days of singledom with a bachelorette party in France. Unable to attend, I sent along an “Instruction Guide to a German Husband”, a...
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