Hey you! Getting sick of seeing that photo of a steak on the top of this flog for 2 weeks straight? Yeah, me too, but a lot has transpired here at expat HQ over the intervening time that made me hold off writing new posts. I will continue with the Barcelona entries soon enough, and maybe even tell the tale of B's brush with the byzantine German health care system for her owie, but the elephant in the room can now be revealed:We're heading home. In record time. As in 7 weeks from now.
The short story is that B's home office had an opening that was just too good to pass up. I'm simplifying a lot of details here for the sake of a compact entry, but suffice it to say it was still a very difficult decision to make. It wasn't so long ago that we were discussing staying in Europe long term (the vagaries of German taxation and retirement benefit laws force non-EU workers to make the decision to stay or leave by the 5-year mark), and we even seriously pondered a posting in Southeast Asia. But... assorted freelance projects aside, I was getting antsy doing the Hausmann thing here (something which would have continued in Asia), B had progressed up through her company's ranks thanks to this German posting and was getting noticed by the right people, and then this plum job opened up in our beloved Portland; there was no guarantee that a similar position would open up in 2012 or 2013-- which is when we planned to look into heading home. There's more-- a LOT more, but that's the absolute bare-bones abstract of it. I've taken to calling this a perfect storm, but that's not necessarily in a good way.
Figures. I just had my first full, coherent, complete and grammatically correct conversation in German with my local merchant unaided by hand gestures (my charades game will positively slay when we get back), I've been getting more and more work projects including an offer of a long-term position in a downtown office, we were making early plans to host more guests and relatives, not to mention picking out our next holiday destination here (Amsterdam? Copenhagen? Sevilla?)... but Murphy's law had other ideas. I swear, this must be the contractual expat equivalent of washing your car just before it rains.
Do I have to rename the blog now?
5 comments:
Sigh. I absolutely am thrilled to head back to Portland, but will really miss our European adventures. Nobody better to do it with than you though G. And I think The Accidental Repatriate sounds nice.-xo/b
I always have mixed feelings when I think about whether to stay in Europe longer or head back to the US. I'm sure no choice would have been the wrong choice. All the best to you guys!
Amazing how quickly life can change. All the best to you as you transition back to the US. I'll stop by to read about both the old and the new adventures.
Uh oh! You guys are the second expat bloggers this month that have announced a super-quick repatriation. One more and it's officially a trend.
Too bad we never got the chance to host you here in Regensburg! I hope you have a great trip back and congratulations on the new position, B.
Blogging peeps: thanks so much for the kind words. We're still working through the news ourselves-- sometimes we get all giddy and look up our old neighborhood haunts; other times we curse the fates that pushed our preferred timetable for this sort of thing forward by at least a full year, and the regrets come tumbling out. We definitely have conflicting feelings about this-- we know we had to head back sometime, but this was a bit sudden. On the flipside, the idea of 24 hour supermarkets, bottomless cups of coffee, free WiFi in public places, trashy tv, and the ability to jaywalk across an empty street without getting the stink eye all sound pretty cool.
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