When did you start feeling "at home" in Germany?

[calibear 1,514]

I left my childhood hometown when I was 17 and my parents also moved away from there. Went to visit once about 7 years ago (13 years after leaving) and couldn't believe how SMALL it all was. Tiny town with tiny streets, and it used to seem to big. I hardly recognized any of it. Though I have spent long periods of time in one place since (11 years) with a couple of other places before and after, I feel quite homeless in general. My childhood home is gone, my parents live in a place I have never lived, and my husband and I are now in Berlin. Our daughter was born here and after 4 years we are quite comfortable. This might just become home, it is for our little girl.

[punkinside 1,153]

 

punkinside - a friend of mine is a Berber from the Atlas mountains (town of Erfoud). He's been here for 22 years (since he was about 21). He says that when he now returns to Morocco, he feels a bit alienated and he prefers the 'Ordnung' in Germany. So you can come from a vastly different culture and climate and still get used to this place.

 

Don't get me wrong, whenever I return home getting to sleep without having ingested inhuman quantities of rum is a challenge because of all the noise, takes me a while to get accustomed. I've always been a bit german for Venezuela too. It's extremely exasperating, I do like the Ordnung but it can be overbearing because it is based on an awesome web of §'s dictating what you're to do and not to do at any given point in time, and I'm more of a believer in the mythical 'common sense'. I'm tropical because the sheer exasperation and frustration I feel when confronted with Venezuelan chaos feels somehow bearable and familiar, whereas the fear that I could be breaking any number of §'s and get the german book thrown at me is something I haven't gotten used to. This is an exaggeration of course, and these are not the only things that prevent me from feeling at home here, even though I've built a pretty good life for myself.

 

Home is where the heart is and, my brain's protestations notwithstanding, my heart is there.

[GER308 158]

It struck me after about two years or so. I remember one day having the thought "Hey it no longer feels like a foreign country any more, everything seems normal."

 

Well outside of my brother I have no living relatives that I know, my old friends have moved on mostly I guess here is as much of a home as anywhere.

[nina_glyndwr 4,748]

HEM - I meant that I felt somewhat alien in the UK even when I was growing up there. When I studied at Manchester, I had one English friend. The rest were foreigners. The English didn't seem to like me. The same when I lived in London for four years. No English friends - just foreigners (from the US, Nigeria, Ghana...). And when I was at school, my friends were among the 'outsiders' as one boy put it. "We're all outsiders," he said. "But at least we can be outsiders together."

 

Edit: And I'm considered to be the outsider in the family, too. Even my brother-in-law has said I am 'different' from the rest of the family.

 

Edit 2: But at least when I'm abroad, it feels right that things feel different.

[jennyhoehr 106]

I came to Germany in 1999 and can't really remember how long it took to feel at home here. Probably about as long as it took to settle in to university life in Scotland, which was the other major move I'd experienced before I came to Germany.

 

When I go back to the UK I always say (and feel) that I'm going home, in the sense that it's where I grew up and where my family are. That's lovely, and I really appreciate having somewhere to go back to where I feel so comfortable. Germany is home in the sense that I chose to come here and am very settled in my life here. That's lovely too, and I can't imagine living anywhere else for the moment. It's been like that for years now, and I'm very grateful for it.

[Lyra 507]

At home? Not exactly, but I'm not sure where I would feel "at home" these days. My children live in the UK which is a powerful draw for sure, but beyond that I wouldn't say that I feel at home there anymore.

 

I think that at home for me is as much about people as places. I think that as Amanda say above, it's certain groups of people at a particular time and place. There are a few times, when you've been with a particular group of people and things have just clicked and that's been "at home". But things move on and trying to re-capture that feeling is a futile occupation.

 

I suppose that what I'm saying is that for me "at home" is more about people than about places. Fundamentally I feel at home if I'm with my OH - so I guess that I am at home here.

[chaos_amoeba 2,724]

Well, I've only been here a year and a half, but I think the key to feeling trully at home here would be threefold for me: 1) being fluent in German - I will never feel at home somewhere where a simple task feels mammoth because I'm worried that I'll miss a word and end up gulping like a stranded goldfish; 2) understanding the "systems" enough to feel that things come naturally - so that the pieces of paper I get relating to tax, someone is coming to read the meters on the radiators, etc, don't surprise me, and I can find the right doctor or similar like it's all obvious, not another gentle but real challenge; and finally 3) acceptance - deciding to let this be home. I am working on the first two but not the last, as this was only ever going to be a short(ish) stay. I will return to my country and be in place to take care of my aging parents - as soon as work allows, or sooner if they need me.

 

On another level again, though, my apartment Is home, because, for me, home is the place where I feel safe and can shut out the world, and in my current flat, I do feel that way. Various things that are mine, and my husband, surround me there - it is our place. On one important level, that's all I need from my home.

 

I'll also second what others have said about moving on - the place you feel most at home will eventually become alien. I once thought I would never, ever cope with leaving the village where I grew up; I was attached to that place like a snail is attached to its shell. Turns out, my family didn't think I'd make it either. It feels very strange, now, to return to the place I thought would Always be home, and find that it doesn't stir me in the way 'home' should. Another town does that now (although it's not Berlin - and in fact, the feeling is bleeding away from that town too, as time passes since I have lived there). Stepping off the train in my parents' village, though, I am aware of all my history there but I now also see the truth: a dead-and-alive nowhere. I am always reminded of the Tom McRae song "Bright Lights" [baby, I went back to funeral row / kicking through the old streets / of a place I once called home, not long ago / Searching for an omen, looking for a sign / looking for the place I swore an oath of love undying / of love undying]. And I can feel the same thing happening to places I have since loved and left. What this tells me is that it isn't, after all, the places that matter, but the people, the memories, the love that is there. So my "true home" is a scattered mosaic to me now, of places where there are people who I love. And when I'm in a new place I try to block out the past and concentrate on building those connections; adding a new piece to the mosaic. And when the time comes to move on I only want to keep the friends and the memories.

[Hazza 5,458]

When I came to Germany, I intended to only stay for a year. One year became two, which became three and I'm now into my 12th year.

 

But for the first 7 or 8 years, I lived here like I was going to leave soon, so I never made any big purchases and I lived with old or borrowed furniture, taking quick paying consulting jobs with no future, and never allowed myself to really feel settled. It meant that I was never really comfortable or happy here.

 

One day I realised that I might possibly spend a lot more years here, so decided to just live as if I was staying forever. Maybe something will happen that will prompt me to go back "home" in future, but if/when that happens, then I'll just deal with everything then. That change made me a lot happier and I wished I'd done it a lot earlier.

 

Germany, and in particular Munich, feels like home now.

[Malcolm Spudbury 3,545]

I felt at home after a year or so. I had only intended to stay for a year, two at most, but ended up staying nearly 9 years.

 

Even now after moving away and living in Japan for nearly 5 years, I'd feel more "at home" if I moved back to Munich than if I moved back to the UK.

[anne k 3,643]

We just got David Mitchell the comedian's autobiography the other day and he describes his feelings when he's been abroad and re-enters the UK. He says that he feels that everything there is just right: the street signs are right, the houses are right, the road markings are right, etc. I remember for the first few years of living in Germany I felt like that too: when I went to the UK I was surrounded by familar fonts, and the houses were not two storeys higher than I was used to. Everything seemed more in focus: in Germany it felt as if I was looking through a sheet of warped glass that made the things around me smaller. And it smelt right - later I identified this as mainly being a smell of mould (grass mould, rotting wood)!

 

Not sure how long it took - quite a few years - but now the German fonts also look fine, and the house heights, the colours, the little yellow diamond signs and all that. Still kind of miss the smells, though; things don't smell that much here. (Is it the climate?) For a while I then had the same problem others have described of things looking incredibly busy in the UK, especially in the supermarket, but I think that's worn off a bit now, too.

[FDG 372]

 

We just got David Mitchell the comedian's autobiography the other day and he describes his feelings when he's been abroad and re-enters the UK. He says that he feels that everything there is just right: the street signs are right, the houses are right, the road markings are right, etc.

 

That is a good insight, and I think it's what makes most people feel like their home country is "home". It's a similar feeling with your mother tongue - you just look at a piece of text and understand immediately, without having to think for one second.

[nina_glyndwr 4,748]

Oh, I don't know. I have always found the houses in the UK to be deadly depressing and ugly. Pipes everywhere, windows too small or sutck right under the roof. Not enough trees or greenery in the town centres. Bars and railings everywhere. I always felt more at home and relaxed on Mallorca (i.e. Wales with sunshine) than I ever did in Manchester or London.

[anne k 3,643]

The first house I saw in Dresden back in 1992 had a tree growing out of its roof :-)

[Justanne 996]

Great comments on this thread. A lot of wisdom. AnneK, chaos_amoeba, AmandaUCSC are some that resonate for me. Like most expats, I've thought about the question of "home" a lot.

 

Weirdly, I actually am on the verge of moving back to my very own hometown for the foreseeable future, something I already tried for a year last year as an experiment. I find I'm deeply attached to that area, a feeling I connect with the landscape itself. It's the land, the mountains, the trees, the way the light falls in that place... It's just very powerful for me. I've returned for a couple of long-term stays in my adult life, and now have new friends and new pursuits there, too, so it's not just an (impossible) return to the past.

 

Apart from that deep connection to the land -- as well as my absolute joy in being able to riff in English with just about anyone -- the rest of my concept of "home" is a more fluid thing. I've definitely experienced moments of "home" during my extended life abroad too.

 

I read an article recently about love in The Atlantic. OK, you might react differently to that article than I did, but what strikes me is their definition of Love in terms of moments of deep connection, which can come and go and don't necessarily have to be exclusive. I think Home is a bit like that too. I have, over my many years in Europe (France, Germany) felt profound moments of connection and rootedness. Coming home to my flat and neighborhood after a trip away, hanging out with friends at an outdoor cafe in the summer, having a chance moment of fluency in the language, oh, I could just go on and on... So many moments of saying, "Hey, I love it here. This is Home! I belong, I have a place here on my own terms, even if I'll never be German and never be fluent." In France, where I really did achieve fluency, this feeling came even more often, but I've certainly experienced it in Berlin, too.

[ovalle3.14 162]

I guess after 2 and a half years I am not exactly an "elder" here but I get the feeling I have not moved a centimeter forward in this subject. I can speak the language fluently, have a job in my field, a German wife and great in-laws, and yet there is something about this place which doesn't click for me. I think that life here is like eating a rice cracker: gray, bland, slow, silent... tasteless. All houses are weißer Putz, everybody wants to be left alone, it's cloudy 80% of the year.

 

Germans are very friendly on an anonymous basis: they keep their gardens neat, don't litter, are not loud, respect the laws of driving, BUT people in Latin America embrace you, invite you, ask you, kiss you, hug you... and I prefer a hug to a nice garden any day.

[MrsD 407]

I've lived in 4 different countries in the last 10 years and ideally, I'd like to take something from each of them, then mix it with a big slice of UK to create my perfect place where everything would be super comfortable for me. Sadly, not to be

 

I still feel at home when back in England, but I notice lots of niggly things which would never have bothered me when I lived there. Also, I find that loads of stuff that people complain about is not so bad at all - it's actually much worse in other places. I think that I've changed more than home has changed.

 

I don't feel at home in Germany per se, but as others have said, I feel very comfortable in my house and enjoy coming home to that after being away. Because we move so much, that's so important to us. I've also learned to adapt reasonably quickly and try to enjoy the good things about each country as much as possible and attempt not to dwell on the annoyances too much (can be difficult). It's better to live as if you're going to be here forever, viewing everything as temporary (even when it is) often means that you don't throw yourself into life as much as you would otherwise do. I don't want to keep deferring my life, I want to make the most out of it wherever I am.

[Guest]

Good question. In the mid-nineties, we still hadn't decided whether we would stay here or not. Between '97 and '99 I was working in other European countries, so this was only technically home for me. We moved out of our in-laws' house in 1998, though, and stopped making sure that our electrical appliances would work on both 110 and 220 volts, as we had been doing up to that point.

 

For me, I have to be where I'm happy, then that is automatically home. My "professional" life was shit between 1993 and 1995, as I was working as a tractor mechanic, making shit money for hard, dirty work. The wife couldn't work, since she got pregnant during her final year of gymnasium and had to take care of our first child, so when both of us weren't 5000 DM into our Dispotkredit, that meant we had money.

 

When I got a job at a hotel in 1995, making pretty good money for a job I loved and the wife started an Ausbildung as well, I was happy, but I was still homesick. I even took a flight back for 10 days in February of 1996, just me and our then only child, since my wife couldn't get off work. Flights were cheap and I felt I needed to go back, so off me and Guest, jr. went.

 

When I started working in IT in 1997, and really making decent money, I was generally happy, but with my family even less than I am now. This was back before cell phones were common, and there was no facebook or skype, and I was only able to call once a week on the company phone card.

 

The wife and I started drifting apart by the time Guest, jr. #2 came along, and were probably headed for a divorce, although we never discussed this. We just had our completely separate lives, at that point.

 

I caught it in time, quit my job and found a job near home, for a couple of years at least, starting in late '99. That was probably when I was at my happiest. I was doing an outstanding job as a project manager, making good money, and home every night. That's probably when Germany really became home, and there were no further thoughts of moving back.

[tedesco 88]

I felt home in my sixth month here. I went back home for the vacation and after the first week I started getting homesick about Germany.

 

It is the first time I live alone, plus in a different country. Big move. Maybe what I was really missing back home was the control that I have here about my own life.

[GertyMeTurty 403]

Whilst Germany is only a stop-gap for me and my half German/English boyfriend, I feel comfortable enough here. Or so I thought. Went to my first German party over the weekend, and I felt like a COMPLETE outsider. My German is barely passable B1, and in a loud room, I simply could not understand the conversations or attempt to make conversation. It was the same in reverse for the German speakers trying to speak English with me, so I spent the night with a pasted smile on my face but wishing for an English party... Whilst I am no social butterfly, to go to a party and not be able to just make conversation was startling. So, after that, I definitely do not feel at home here and don't think I ever will.

[ant3269 14]

Germany and Wales are both home to me.Wales and my home town will always burn with a passion in my heart (even after 25 years in Germany) but Germany and more so Bielefeld are also my home now.

Get involved with your local community,go and support the local Football team (I´m a die hard Arminia Bielefeld fan now and it helps me to connect with the city) I help run a local Rugby club (Welsh and rugby always find each other) and it makes me proud of living in Bielefeld.

I get back to Wales once a year and it will always be my home and the Land of my Fathers but I also feel "At home" being a Bielefelder.