Just Another Millenial Travel Blog

Technically I am aware that this not exactly the post you might expect on a travel blog – but as I am kind of an experienced immigrant now I thought I share this anyway. If you are interested in my trip alone, just skip.

So what is it actually like living abroad? Is „Goodbye Deutschland“ accurate? So first of all, and I am sorry I have to be honest here, if you are not successful and content in your home country you won‘t be both abroad, either. You always take yourself, as actually the only proper home you will have, with you. If you are notoriously dissatisfied by German politics (and I can absolutely understand why!) try to make a change, but don’t move abroad.

Besides that living abroad also is, to some extent, like a horcrux because when you have started once, you will become emotionally fragmented and never be completely at home in one place anymore. If you belong everywhere you belong nowhere at the same time. You will feel at home in many places but everywhere you leave behind a shard of yourself. Yes, I could move to the Netherlands next year and fit in smoothly but if I should ever move back to die Heimat (which is not planned, but you never know) it won‘t feel like a complete home anymore.

Moving abroad will make, and that is for sure, make your life more difficult. You will experience bureaucracy (sometimes bureaucratic nightmares keyword hunting licence), problems nobody can really relate to, loneliness and sometimes even a hostile environment. So choose wisely if you really want to so.

After this utterly pessimistic introduction what are drivers on why to move abroad anyways? You have a sense of adventure, you can figure out uncertainty, you like to find creative solutions for unforeseeable problems and get to know in depth different cultures and people in your target country. Than it is probably one of the most exciting and exhausting experiences you can make. You will have those days when you feel glowing, and vividly alive but also those days of absolute exhaustion. So living abroad increases and decreases your amplitude of life. Your live shrinks and expands with the amount of risk you are willing to take, so keep the upside and downside in mind.

Why have I self-chose homelessness (okay tbh my actual home is the office) and a vagabond live across Europe, and eventually out of Europe one day (and still thriving in it)? I do believe for me the main driver is curiosity and, I have to admit, ambition. Home to me has always been more about people and not that much places. Even though I like Franconia now I could have have grown up in Hanover and that wouldn’t have changed anything for me (I know Bavaria is the best federal state).

What you should also take into consideration moving abroad is, that you are very much on your own terms. You won‘t have that dense network of family and lifelong friendships, like at home. You have to be high functioning all the time and cannot allow yourself to be very emotional or sentimental but instead become a tough doer. You will adapt and become harder as you can fly higher without social bonds and responsibilities but you can also fall deeper. Also take into consideration, and that was a mistake I made during my first time moving abroad, for you everything is new and exciting but for the locals it is their usual environment and they know everything. And nobody has waited for you in the new country so keep going every day and never surrender. I am deeply convinced that one foundation for a good life is hard work and persistence and living abroad takes both to a extreme (working on weekends, studying at night, crying and doing it anyway welcome abroad; no shortcuts available).

The picture in this post is btw my first student dorm abroad in Groningen in the Netherlands. Or to quote my brother „the prison“. Sharing a kitchen and bathrooms with 30-50 people from across the whole world is only romantic for a week and afterwards you become harder and more assertive (and less sensitive to all kinds of smell!). So it was absolute no glamours student life but one I would never want to miss. Learning how to bite through and on top receiving a free education as a drug sniffer dog (in addition to a proper degree) are values that are crucial for me. It thought me that internationalism can work when everyone behaves decently and sticks to rules and you have a clear hierarchy (which wasn’t given in my student dorm or to sum it up: „Where are the hoover’s?“). So it was more like an anarchy but you adapt to everything quickly. By the way being extremely flexible in many aspects (not all) and able to accept different kind of „truth“ are in my opinion key success factors for living abroad successfully.

In case you want to know how the rest of my room looked like:

Most prisons might be more comfortable today, right? Fun aside: what do you think about living abroad? Have you lived abroad? Feel free to share your experience!