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

[El Scorcho 51]

I was in various parts of Germany for 8 1/2 years, Moscow for 3 years, and London for 6 months. I immediately felt home in London and would have loved to have stayed there for a long time, if were not for visa and work permit issues. I never felt at home or even really comfortable in Germany or Russia. The first years in Oberfranken were the best, eventhough I didn't make a single German friend. Russia was good because the money was (very) good.

 

I have since moved back to my hometown in the US. It's very small and I love it! My wife loves it too, which was the most important thing. My two children are small and have adapted easily. My four year old is loving his weekly ski lessons! I'd forgotten what the night sky looks like with so little light pollution!

 

I applaud everyone who has made Germany their home. I spent most of my adult life there (so far) and learned an incredible amount and look back fondly at my experiences, the people I've met and the things I've accomplished along the way.

 

Home is where the heart is. Mine was never in Germany. I didn't know it was here till I moved back.

 

Good luck to all of you.

 

El Scorcho

[DanHessen 2,964]

21 years and does not feel like home.

[Maccka 204]

I've only been here for 18 months, but I still say, "I'm going back to my apartment". It's not home. However, in saying that, it took me about 5 years to start referring to Auckland as home after I had moved there. Now I don't think of where I was born and raised as home but rather where my parents still live.

[Guest]

It will soon be 12 years since I was last in the US, and the next time I go, it will be because one of my parents died.

 

We used to "plan" on taking a trip to the US "next year", but I always found a reason to push it of until "next year" yet again, and we eventually stopped even planning for it.

 

When my brother died, I couldn't make it as there was just too much going on and too many bills to pay, although even that was an excuse. I doubt I'll be able to get out of my parents' funerals, though.

 

The fact is that I never want to go back and, even though I didn't realise it at the time, I came here because I didn't want to be there.

 

This is more than home for me, this is me in exile, and I'll be here until the day I die.

[liebling 1,487]

I definitely feel at home here. It was a combination of having been in Germany a while (since '99 altogether, figuring out the language and customs, building professional and social networks) and having found the right place in Germany for me (Heidelberg). Each of these things was necessary but not sufficient. I could never have felt at home in some of the places in Germany I've lived, regardless of having had my partner with me, and despite my linguistic skills and cultural knowledge, etc. But here it all clicked. (Cue the music.)

[Aussie Girl 546]

I started feeling like Germany is home after I returned from a year back in my hometown, Perth.

 

Prior to that stint back in Perth (when I was first living in Germany), I always had in my mind, 'Why am I here?' 'Am I sure this is where I want to be?' 'I wish I was back home!' Then I went back home to Oz for career reasons, thought it was fine but a bit boring, enjoyed all of the positive aspects of living in Oz but was reminded of all the negative too and eventually moved back to Germany with a totally different outlook and feeling about it.

[Patricia52 58]

I've been here since `74 and it took me years to "get adjusted". Home is where the heart is and that is here with Mr. Patricia52 and my two kids.

[Keefy 3,577]

Been in Berlin for about 5½ years now. It's still not "home."

 

On the other hand, whenever I return to the UK, it feels less like home and more alien each time. I have no wish to live there again.

 

I guess it's all down to an inner attitude rather than where I'm living. How does a person gain a sense of belonging and real inner security? If I look back to the times when I have felt secure, they were when I was being creative and doing new things - things I wanted to do, not necessarily things I had to do for financial survival. So I need some kind of a project to get my teeth into. Not impossible challenges, but things which I can tackle quietly and confidently. When I'm doing things like this I tend to meet like-minded people, too, and my social circle widens. Life becomes exciting again.

 

Didn't know how this post was going to turn out before I wrote it. At least in the background of my mind, I now know what I'm looking for!

 

Online self-therapy or what?

[nashville 232]

So, I haven't read all the other responses, so forgive me if I repeat something. How long did it take until I felt at home here? Well, I've lived here for 13 years, and I still say I'm going 'home' when we go back to the states. Even though my parents moved an hour away from my childhood home a few years ago, I still call the states home. I think it took me about 3 years to feel like Germany was my home...when I stopped missing the little things on a regular basis and was really able to get by without ordering something I couldn't get here to make it more bearable.

 

As it is now, Germany is far more a place that I feel at home than anywhere else. I've lived more of my adult life here than anywhere, my children were all born here, and we've had the same house for all 13 years. My mentality is more that of a German than an American, however, I'd like to think I've taken the best of both countries to form my opinions and perspective. It seems sometimes that life is going along happily, I feel content, glad to be living here, like I fit in, and than BLAM! something happens that reminds me I am not German, not even European, and I was not raised with this culture or belief system. It's usually not earth shattering, but it's a time when you feel a bit jealous of those who don't even know these issues exist.

 

I like my life here. I don't think I would have the same standard of living in the US that I am able to have here. I appreciate that this tiny village has accepted me as one of their own, and that we have a good number of friends, both expats and Germans. I probably would not have nearly the international outlook had I stayed in the US. I would like to make another move somewhere else before I get too over the hill, just to experience another adventure and see another part of the world. That is the key to feeling at home...being open enough to try something different and making it your own.

[Gwaptiva 7,116]

I guess technically I have two homes, one by birth (Netherlands) and one by adoption (Scotland). I've lived outside of my birth home for 17 years and every time I visit it I'm more convinced I hate the place/people/culture. It took me a few years to get the feeling of 'home' in Scotland (buying my own house helped), but 5 years on in Germany, I'm still feeling like I'm camping abroad.

 

Of course, I volunteered to leave NL for Scotland, and moving to Germany was kind of forced on me by economic circumstances, and when I got to Scotland I was 12 years younger, and landed relatively softly due to the huge number of expats living in a small town and all being in the same situation: single, away from home, and thirsty.

 

A decade on, and after 5 moves in 5 years I landed in a tiny town out the east of Hamburg because that is near the only friend I feel I have here; and I've known her for 15 years. I know it might have been more helpful to move to a place with more amenities, or even into the bustle of the city itself, but at least here I feel that if I have to, there's a close friend only 5 minutes away.

 

I suppose therefore the time it takes to feel at home somewhere is influenced big time by the reason you came here. The second time I had to start my life from scratch (without actually having to redo childhood) is turning out a lot more tricky than the first time.

[FDG 372]

 

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.

 

Yeah, the connection with "nature" you develop as a kid is sometimes hard to translate in another setting, if this setting is really different. Of course, it helps if you grew up in a beautiful place - I imagine I wouldn't have the same feeling if I grew up in a shanty suburb of Paris.

[FDG 372]

 

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.

 

Well, Bielefeld might be a bit extreme in this matter, I think. I work in Wuerzburg and if you go to a random Weinstube, you will 99% start talking with all your "neighbors". They won't hug you (unless they're really drunk ) but they'll definitely talk to you.

[kristyandpaul 348]

We've just started our 5th year here, and this doesn't feel like home - it never has.

 

We're renting the same lovely place, filled with our lovely things, and that's where my man and my dog are - and that's home - but Germany isn't home.

 

I've had a dose of the blues for the last week or so, and I've had time to think about it more. I think it's because I'm essentially a friendly and happy person, and I'm living in an area of unfriendly, unhappy people - it's doing my head in. Apparently my part of Germany is known for having sullen, rude people and we've certainly hit the jackpot in our little town.

 

Whilst I know we're lucky to have this experience, and to live in interesting places around the world, I hope that this year sees the back of our time here and we can move on to somewhere where the people are happier.

 

I know there's things we will definitely miss (lack of crime, no littering, cheap beer!), but it worries me that I might start to permanently modify my happy nature to fit in here, and I really don't want to do that.

 

The place where I felt the most at home (apart from my home country)? Bangkok. The instant we stepped off the plane. That was a fantastic 18 months and we get back as often as we can.

[john g. 37,776]

I was feeling really at home this morning ( early ). Then the rain storm came and I changed my mind... :angry:

[JOSHTRUS 48]

Strage, I on the other hand felt like coming home when I moved to Germany about two years ago. I know it sounds strange...but I feel like I have lived here before...like in a previous life or something. It's strange. I do have German family though and I spoke German before I came to Germany.

 

So I guess it depends who you ask.

[FDG 372]

 

I was feeling really at home this morning ( early ). Then the rain storm came and I changed my mind...

 

But aren't you british!

[Bobloblaw2020 8]

I miss mexican food in the good old USA and a bit more Lebensraum but not Walmart and Home Depot and the like... endless pointless world-destroying motoring through ugly landscapes. That shit makes me depressed as hell and remember why I don't want to be there. Now, I'm off to Kaufland... :blink:

[dessa_dangerous 13,315]

I started feeling at home here after my first visit back to the city I grew up in, 4.5 years after I arrived in Germany. When I left in 2005 I wasn't sure how long I'd be gone, so it was nice to go home, see all my peoples, and finally cop to the fact that I was permanently settled in Germany/not coming back to Seattle for a long, long time. The tying up of that loose end helped immensely--to finally say "goodbye" rather than going off to Germany for a pack of cigarettes and not coming back for five years. Closure of that chapter of my life was more important than I'd realized.

 

It also helps that the neighborhood I live in now is a.) the only place I've lived in Berlin (indeed, I've even lived in the same building the entire 6+ years I've been here) and b.) basically the Berlin equivalent of the type of neighborhood I preferred living in back home--working class, heavily black/brown/immigrant-based, with a couple of brave hipsters thrown in for good measure, and a place that normies are afraid to visit though it's just as safe as any other neighborhood in town. As a matter of fact I've felt at home in my neighborhood almost as long as I've lived here, it was the rest of the city/country I wasn't so sure about. I'll never be as German as Krieg but I definitely prefer the way of life here to anywhere else I've lived or visited.

[john g. 37,776]

 

But aren't you british!

 

I have EX-standards, FDG!! California, Latin America, Spain ( South ), Asia!! AARRGGGHH!! What happened???

[muchado 158]

Really nice to read all these responses.

Lot of people mentioned "home is where the heart is." Well, my heart is with my kids and spouse and they're here but this ain't home for me. I have been here 18 months and it does not feel like home at all.

I hope I don't have to wait 10+ years to feel like this is home.

A trip back home to the States prompted this question because I caught myself saying, "I'm going home for a visit" for the millionth time. So, my German family/friends looked puzzled and asked why this place is not home for me.