Stories from my life and travels as an American immigrant in Germany!
Reverse culture shock is the experience of returning to your home country after living abroad for years, and feeling as though you no longer belong. In March, I finally went back to the USA to visit my family and friends. It had been over three years since the last time I’d been in America; so, needless to say, this trip…Continue Reading
Full disclosure, Quedlinburg only has one castle on a hill (that I know of). So, the title is kind of a lie. The singular form just didn’t sound as nice, OK? And, no, I can’t explain why; it’s not like a have a degree in linguistics or something. Just a lousy English degree. Moving on. Quedlinburg is a single-castle town…Continue Reading
Last Summer, while many people were going abroad for the first time since the pandemic started, my husband and I played it safe and stayed in Germany. I already talked about our trip to Frankfurt, and made the (outrageous) claim that I’d have posts about my mini Summer vacations in the coming weeks. That was, of course, a lie; I made…Continue Reading
Frankfurt am Main is the largest financial center in continental Europe and the fifth-largest city in Germany. It’s also the only city in Germany with a classic “city skyline” of skyscrapers. Some people refer to it as “Mainhatten”, because of how it (supposedly) resembles New York City. Does it? Well, I jokingly shared a photo of a cluster of sky…Continue Reading
My husband has wanted us to take a vacation to the North Sea coast ever since we moved to Germany four years ago. The closest we’ve been is Hamburg, which isn’t actually close at all. Like camping in my home-state of Michigan, however, it’s hard to find accommodations on the coast unless you book far in advance. So, he’d put…Continue Reading
There’s a lot to love about living in Germany. Lately, though—and mostly because of the pandemic!—I feel like I’ve been forgetting just how lucky I am to live here. As my husband can attest, I’ve been whining even more than usual about aspects of life here that I find annoying. In my defense…I can’t help it, OK? The last time I…Continue Reading
German comedy has a bad reputation. Even Germans, self-deprecating people that they are, will often say that German comedy just isn’t very good. Is that true, though? First, I have to be honest and add a little disclaimer that I haven’t seen many German comedies. That may be because the first few I watched were awful, which made me reluctant…Continue Reading
A key part of learning German (or any language) is immersion. That’s tricky, of course, if you don’t live in a German-speaking country. This post is a companion of sorts to my last post on learning German. In that post, I broke down how I learned German in about three years. Unfortunately, it was already getting too long to make…Continue Reading
Do you want to learn German? Or, worse…do you have to learn German? I learned German in about three years. Last November, I took the TELC Deutsch C1 Hochschule exam and passed. Officially speaking (which is, incidentally, the best way to speak in Germany) I am a “proficient” or “advanced” user of the German language. If the idea of learning Mark…Continue Reading
Biden won. Trump has been defeated. We love to see it, folks. I’m so relieved. At the same time, though, I don’t think America is completely out of the woods just yet. Trump has stacked the courts in his favor. He has sycophants at his side who may yet help him cheat the American people out of their president-elect. Republicans…Continue Reading