I have spent the last 5 weeks back "home" in the USA after over a decade living in Berlin. This is far from my first visit back. Typically I close down my German household and go back to my home state of Washington every year and a half, with parents visiting in...
The GW Expat Blog
Tag
reverse culture shock
Questions I Get About Raising Kids in Germany
Even though I am American, I've never raised children in America. I was about 5 years into our German adventure when I had our first Berliner. Now we have two and I am often split between the two countries on my parenting-style; not quite American, not nearly German....
Long-Haul Flights With Kids
I am in the midst of my third trip back to the USA with kids. Along with questions about jet lag and reverse culture shock, one of the questions I always get is about taking kids - particularly a baby - on a long-haul flight. And it is a flight. I live in Berlin with...
American Versus German Parenting – The Distance
I am fresh off the holidays back in America and along with other oddities of reverse culture shock (how much water is in American toilets!?), I have a new one. Even though all of my experience as a parent is in Germany, I would assume that - as an American native -...
Are Home Appliances Boring?
... if so, you must have the wrong brand. Moving from Germany back to North America, it has become painfully evident to me that the German obsession with perfection in engineering doesn’t translate across the Atlantic. In multiple rented spaces, I have made do with a...
Culture shocks go both ways
As I write this, I am two weeks into a holiday with the children in my hometown of Hull, in Yorkshire, North England. Beyond it being wonderful to catch up with family and old friends, it has provided interesting opportunity to reflect on a few cultural and social...
Incorporating a New Worldview, Into Your Old Life
It’s fairly common to feel like an alien at times, while living in a foreign country. But now, when I come home to Canada for my regular summer visits, I often feel like a bit of an alien here too. In recent conversations with family and friends at home, I am finding...
Put Away Your Checkbook
Of all the things one can miss about a country after departure, the banking system probably shouldn't be at the top of the list. For this ex-expat, however, it is actually one of the things I miss about Germany. The banking system there has arrived in the digital age,...
What Makes You Happy?
About a year ago, I was on a walk in Germany with another expat. We were exchanging experiences and advice on living with the natives and dealing with German spouses, and comparing life in Germany to life elsewhere. Inevitably, the question came up: "Do you think...
Homesickness in a Global World
We have now arrived in Toronto and are busy setting up our new house. Like any move, this one has had its share of surprises, including our air freight sitting in Germany for two weeks because the movers forgot about it. Flexibility is key, and a very long fuse… so...
Auf Wiedersehen
This afternoon a crowd of my in-laws converged on our house for the traditional German Sunday afternoon Kaffee & Kuchen. This doesn’t happen very often, maybe once a year, as they all live over an hour away. Anyone with in-laws will sympathize with the latent...
Homesick?
As I write this, I am dazed with jet lag. In this haze, the thoughts I had on the airplane for this blog post are distant and somewhat difficult to grasp. The moment we arrived back in Europe, it was as if the trip had never happened. Three weeks of the Great...
“Almanya” in San Diego
San Diego kicked off its first German Film Festival, German Currents in 2011. It seemed to be a long time coming considering that there are an estimated 100,000 Germans living in the San Diego metro area and Orange County. The festival opened with the screening of...
Enjoy the Silence
It used to annoy me that I couldn’t do any shopping on Sundays and that our Saturdays were so hectic racing from one shop to the next when I first moved to Germany. Like anything in life, I got used to it. In fact, I started to like the fact that there was some time...
Living the German Way Part III
I was disappointed to read that my fellow blogger, Sarah Fürstenberger, was leaving our ranks as German Way Co-blogger for the time being. She and I had become friends while recording the same chapter in life as American expats living in Germany through this blog....
An Adjusted Adventszeit
In the past week, I had to adjust to the fact that Christmas is OVER, a week earlier than I had become accustomed to. I was used to our southern German world being shut down not just from the week of Christmas to New Year's but also through the first week of January...
Flavors of Christmas
Spending the Thanksgiving holiday with friends who have recently moved to Germany, I found myself thinking – yet again – "I am becoming sooo German". The topic of conversation was the abundance of deliciousness available at German bakeries; under contention was...
German Transplants in California
We're a long way away from our Swabian village. Here in sunny California, the roads are wide, parking is plentiful and you throw everything away in one place. Welcome to the land of plenty. We've been here for one week, and my mind has been in a big jumble sorting out...
Buying Bio (Organic) in Germany
Long, long ago, in 1992, when I first came to Germany, I, at the tender age of 21, had no real idea of what "organic" even was. Who did back then, except a few hippies and tree huggers (ha, ha). I had a few older and wiser friends with small children who bought bio...
An American in America
Even though it's the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall I won't be addressing the relevant and memorable occasion in this post as fellow blogger Hyde already has. Instead I will be addressing the other side of the Wall. Far west of East Berlin in...
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