Our time in Germany was sweet as always. The thing is that I could have this life…it wasn’t just a vacation considering I continued to work most days. But is it the right time? Is it the right move?
More Than Vacation: A German Life I Could Get Used To…
Although we usually venture out for a few days here and a few days there, we base our trips to Germany in a small border city with Switzerland and France in the Black Forrest.
Here, the air is fresh, the hills are green, and life is a bit simpler than in California.
As always, during our trip we enjoyed lovely coffee…
…and ice cream.
But there’s more than that. There’s grocery stores filled with fresh food, gyms, and delectable restaurants. There’s parks and trails…and castles.
For someone who works from home (me), the quality of life in Germany may not be higher than in LA, but would cost a lot less.
There’s even Basel Airport which is just 20 minutes away, so it’s not like I’d have to go far to fly out.
It is not my intention to paint life in a smaller German city as overly-idyllic, but there is something so nice about being able to walk into town or walk into nature and enjoy the best of both worlds.
Central Europe Time is great for blogging…but not so great for Award Expert, in which most clients are in the United States and which most work and communication takes part in the latter part of the day.
Would I ever want to live in Germany? Oh yes. On a full-time basis? Probably not. I’m fond of Los Angeles too and as a lifelong Angeleno (with breaks in Washington DC, Philadelphia, and Frankfurt), it will always be attractive. Much of my family, church, and network of closest friendships are all in Southern California.
But I do hope for a day in which we can summer in Germany and spend the rest of the year in Los Angeles (or perhaps somewhere else in the States…we’ll see).
And of course it’s not my decision alone. Heidi is a big part of any choice of where we live. Any decision will be a mutual decision based on a number of factors.
She desires more time in Germany too, but nursing in Germany is not respected as in the the USA. Pay is significantly lower and if you are a nurse or know a nurse you know it is hard work…not something you want to do for menial wages (which is one reason Germany has such a nursing shortage).
CONLCUSION
I suppose my point here is that I always love my time and Germany. But unlike many places I go too, enjoy, but happily leave after a couple weeks, Germany is different…Germany is really a place that beckons me toward a more permanent stay.
Do you have somewhere in the world that you strongly consider spending a lot more time in?
