Three years ago I was living in Germany and eager to share my experiences with the world. I was going on seven months as an expat and I jumped at the chance to join an expat interview series by a popular blogger. Last month I discovered that the interview was taken down (thanks to my broken link checker – such a useful tool). I don’t want my work to be wasted, especially when it’s so hard to work with chronic pain, so […]
Category: Life in Germany
How Germany is different than the USA:
Differences Between Germany and the USA.
Grocery Shopping in Germany (Compared to the USA).
Our Cost of Living in Germany Compared to the USA.
17 Ways the German Restaurant Experience Is Different Compared to the US.
12 Differences I Experienced While Going to the Movies in Germany.
An American Goes to the Doctor in Germany.
How Holiday Park (Germany) Is Different from American Theme Parks.
On life in Germany:
50 Things I Miss from Germany.
A Day in the Life: Expat in Small Town Germany
“Why Would You Wear Lederhosen?” and Other Things We Don’t Say in Germany
You might live in Germany if
Trying to Pay My Bill in Germany
American Food According to Germany
12 Facts about Christmas in Germany
15 Times Google Translate Failed Hilariously on the German Amazon Site
Expat Living in Schweinfurt, Germany.
On moving to Germany:
Meeting Our New Home in Schweinfurt, Germany.
An Expectation of Silence
Our First Week as Expats in Germany
Our German Home
8 Things I Love About German Home Design
Coming Home to Schweinfurt
Things you might see in Germany:
Love Locks in Germany
Street Art / Graffiti in Germany.
40 Things I Saw on the Deutsche Bahn
Blog Roll:
Grocery Shopping in Germany (Compared to the USA).
Going grocery shopping in Germany has always been a stressful event for me. On my first visit to Kaufland, a few days after moving to Germany, I unintentionally made a cashier very angry because I didn’t weigh my bananas before checking out. Even after living in Germany for 13 months, it seemed like I always managed to do something wrong on each trip to the grocery store. So I’m sharing 20 ways that grocery shopping in Germany is different so that you can be […]
Missing Germany: 50 Things I Miss the Most.
During my year in Germany I often pined for things from the USA. Now the reverse is true; I’ve been home for three months and I’m missing Germany fiercely. To make matters worse, I have no timeline for when I might get to return – just a long list of reasons why I’d like to. Missing Germany: 50 Things I Miss the Most. 1. Schnitzel. 2. Brötchen 3. Schnitzel in Brötchen. 4. Rittersport chocolate. 5. Nürnberger bratwurst. 6. Christmas […]
Summarizing Life in Germany in 30 Tweets.
You can squeeze a surprising amount of information into 140 characters. I’ve used twitter for several years, but my use of it changed once I made an account for my blog. It became a quick, easy platform for sharing my life in Germany with other bloggers, expats, and curious travelers. I looked back over everything I tweeted during our year in Germany and now I’m sharing the best and most informative tweets here. I tweeted about what we learned, dealing […]
Differences Between Germany and the USA.
Our impending departure (#3daystoUSA) is making me think about all the ways my life is about to change. In fact, my mental list of the differences between Germany and the USA started growing so long I decided to write them all out. I’m sharing this thought provoking list partially because I’m exhausted and sick from the past week of moving related stress (and, sadly, a week behind on my current blog series as a result). I’m sure I’ll notice even […]
One Year Without a Vehicle.
This is the second post in the blog series One Year Without. See all of the posts here. We gave up our habit of driving daily when we moved to Germany without a vehicle. For the past year we’ve either walked, used public transport, or used a rental car. In fact, we only spent 19 days driving over the last year. It was a pretty big life change for us. So what was it like? The planning stage. The first step […]
Expat Frustration (Also Known As: Germany Makes Things Hard).
With only 24 days to USA, we’ve been dealing with various problems that tend to accompany an international move. However, one situation has been particularly difficult. Let me start at the beginning. One year ago we were brand new expats, being picked up by our relocation agent to go get German drivers licenses just a few days into our first week in Germany. I remember walking into the foreign waiting area and later being ushered into a surprisingly private office where we […]
A Day in the Life: Expat in Small Town Germany.
“A day in the life” posts have become really popular on Imgur (an online image sharing community); people all over the world have been taking photos throughout a normal day of their life and sharing them. The Imgur blog said the following about this idea: As we go about our daily routines, we rarely stop to consider how fascinating our lives may be to others. Our homes, the commute to work or school, what we have for dinner, and how we […]
Coming Home to Schweinfurt.
How long does it take for a new place to start feeling like home? Probably not long if you’ve only moved across town, but it took seven months for me after we moved across an ocean. I wasn’t sure that Schweinfurt would ever feel like home during the 13 months we planned to live here, but yet I started having unexpectedly warm fuzzy feelings about going home at the end of a long train ride back from Berlin. Perhaps the […]
“Why Would You Wear Lederhosen?” and Other Things We Don’t Say in Germany.
There’s no denying it; living in Germany has been hard. Unbelievably hard at times. But it comes with so many rewards that we don’t (or at least we try not to) spend too much time complaining about it. But sometimes homesickness will sneak up behind us and slap us in the face, and that can be very startling. This happened recently when Mr. Meena turned to me on a Sunday afternoon and said, “Let’s go to Wal-Mart.” I started bawling. […]