Glad I’m here
In June, we moved to Mönchengladbach, Germany near the Dutch border (picture below) to be closer to my wife’s family. This morning, I finally had my appointment with German immigration.
A street in Mönchengladbach.
I came out with a six-month extension on my application. My case is easy, since I have a German spouse and children. But I have six months to prove I can earn my way here, which means I need to build my practice on this side of the Atlantic, too.
For my final presentation during my coach training in 2020, I mentioned my goal of wanting to move to Germany, something I thought was a pie-in-the-sky aspiration at the time. The pandemic and the adoption of my second son in 2021 delayed our plans, but somehow, somehow, we made it.
And it was extremely difficult. Not only did we have to navigate the physical move, but we also had to transition my two sons, work through the challenges of the German immigration and tax systems, and rebuild our professional lives on a new continent.
All of these transitions, and many others, are ongoing, and we have no idea where things will lead.
Still, my wife and I are coming with tremendous privilege and resources, and we both say all the time we don’t know how we would have made it this far otherwise.
We think frequently about migrants who don’t have these resources, who had to leave everything behind, who have to risk their lives on rubber rafts instead of flying on planes, who are fleeing war and violence, who don’t have family waiting for them, who have to navigate the German system on their own, who don’t have a common German last name, who struggle to pass their German language test, who can’t get health insurance, or who aren’t coming from a country like the United States.
If this transition feels insurmountable for us, how must it be for them?
In the coming weeks, I hope to write a bit more about what I’m learning from the move to compare my experience in Germany with the United States. (Spoiler alert: Germany is great!)
All the while, I’ll be grateful I’m here.
