Relocating to Berlin: The Cat

When I first started working with my relocation adviser in Berlin, she assured me that Germans in general, and Berliners in particular, love dogs as house pets, and that many Berlin landlords will make special accommodations for dog owners.

We have a cat.

Granted, our cat Isabella is an indoor cat.  She won't prowl outside.  She won't fight (or heaven help us all - mate) with the other cats in the neighborhood.  She won't stay up all night howling.  The truth is, at 14 years old, Isabella doesn't do much of anything other than take up space on the sofa and occasionally trigger allergy attacks in our house guests.

That is fine as far as I am concerned.  I will admit to having at best an ambivalent relationship with cats, and the less I have to interact with Isabella the better.  My wife and daughter provide her with all the love that she needs, and I have never been one to provide anybody or anything with more than the customarily required amount of overt affection.

But despite the fact that Isabella is a fairly benign indoor cat, we were warned that finding an apartment that accepts cats might be a challenge.  From what I understand, landlords are often reluctant to allow dander producing pets into their apartments because once that gets into the ventilation system, it's there forever.  We might be able to reassure any potential landlords that we will cover any cleaning costs associated with Isabella if or when we eventually move out.

Of course, this all assumes we can get Isabella into Germany in the first place.

In theory, this shouldn't be difficult.  Unlike Great Britain, Germany has a relatively open door policy toward the importation of house pets.  With its history of fighting rabies, Britain requires the long-term quarantine of animals coming into the country from certain parts of the world.  .

Germany is somewhat more welcoming to cats.  As there are essentially three requirements for humans to gain residency status in Germany (which I will discuss at some point in the future), there are basically three requirements to get a cat into Germany.  First, the cat has to be implanted with an RFID microchip.  This is essentially the modern equivalent of an ID tag that pets wear around their necks.  If Isabella gets lost, she can be identified and connected to us by anybody with an RFID scanner.  This chip also contains information about all vaccinations.  Isabella had her chip implanted a couple of weeks ago, and she doesn't even notice it.  Second, the cat has to be up to date with vaccinations.  That box is checked too.  Third, within 10 days of entering Germany, Isabella's veterinarian needs to fill out an international transport form that indicates that she is in good health.

Of course, this all assumes we can get Isabella over the Atlantic Ocean in the first place.

Here is where moving with a cat can get really tricky.  Some airlines (like British Airways, for example) won't let us on board with a cat at all.  Other airlines, if they do allow cats, require them to be stowed with baggage.  This option was strongly discouraged by many people we have spoken to who relate horrible stories of pets that have died in transit due to airline neglect.  Not wanting to face that danger, we have opted to carry Isabella into the passenger cabin with us.  Fortunately, some airlines allow this. 

But. . . you have to have the correct type of carrier, and you need to reserve a space and pay extra to bring the cat on board with you.

After jumping through all of these hoops, my wife candidly told me yesterday morning, "I was kind of hoping Isabella would be dead by the time we made this move."  She loves Isabella, but she has a point.  Unlike our previous cat who had been knocking insistently on Death's door from the age of 8 to when we finally gently nudged him through at 16, Isabella remains in remarkably good health considering her age.  We are hoping to have many more years with her, and we are hoping that she enjoys living in Germany and getting used to eating Katzenfutter ("cat food").  We just have to get her over there. . .

Relocating to Berlin: Getting There

Berlin is a surprisingly difficult city to fly to.  I know this because today I booked the final flight to Berlin for me, my wife, my daughter, and our cat. 

The main thing that makes Berlin difficult to fly to is that it has really crappy airports that can't handle large intercontinental aircraft.  They have been building a massive international airport that would live up to Berlin's status as a major world capital since 2006.  It was originally supposed to have opened in 2010.  Because of a wide burning swath of engineering and bureaucratic incompetence, Berlin Brandenburg Willy Brandt  International Airport will be lucky if it opens some time in 2014.  In the meantime, Berlin is left with two ancient airports, Tegel (opened in 1948 for the Berlin Airlift) and Schönefeld (opened in 1934) that together struggle to keep up with the demands of European travelers - never mind intercontinental travelers.  The most typical way of getting to Berlin from the United States is to fly to a major European hub city (London, Paris, Frankfurt, Brussels, Copenhagen, etc.), and then to fly a small or medium sized commuter plane into Berlin.

I will be flying between my present home in Washington, DC and my future home in Berlin twice in July.  The first flight was originally going through Moscow.  That is approximately 1,140 miles out of my way.  Fortunately, I was able to find a flight through Brussels, which is more or less between my origin and my destination.  The second flight had a few more interesting options.  The first option was to fly from Washington to Istanbul, Turkey, and then on to Berlin.  That is approximately 1,370 miles out of my way.  The second option was to go through Copenhagen, Denmark, which is only a stone's throw from Berlin.  Things were looking better.

The final option, and the one that I chose, was that rarest of rarities: a direct non-stop flight from the United States to Berlin - albeit on a relatively small plane flying at the furthest extent of its operational range. 

"Why Peter, it's a miracle!"  I hear you saying.  And indeed you would be right, if it weren't for one thing.

This rare direct non-stop flight to Berlin leaves out of Newark Liberty International Airport.

Newark Liberty International Airport and I have something of a history.  Twice in my life, I have completely given up on flying and have rented a car instead to get to my destination.  The first time was when I was threatened with being snowed into Milwaukee's General Mitchell International Airport, and so I drove to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in order to get home.  The second time was on a return trip from Berlin that had the misfortune of stopping in Newark on the way to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

An interesting thing they don't tell you about Newark's airport when you schedule flights through there is that only the truly lucky leave from there within a day or two of their originally scheduled departure time.  As I understand it, this is because the airlines have scheduled their arrivals and departures so densely that if a flight somehow misses its slot to take off, it has to go to the end of a very long and always increasing queue of other planes that have also missed their takeoff slots.  Of course, arriving planes can't circle the airport forever, so they receive priority for any open slots that may appear over departing planes.  On this particular layover in Newark from Berlin to Pittsburgh, we sat through more than half a dozen delays that added up to more than six hours, before we finally gave up and drove the rest of the way.

And so, despite my previous blood oath to avoid Newark at any cost, our final trip from the United States leaves from there.  I suppose there must be some sort of perverse poetry in that.

Relocating to Berlin: Selling the House!

At various points during this process of preparing to move to Berlin, my wife and I have looked at each other and said, "Well, there's no stopping now!"  First it was when we told our families of our plans.  Then it was when we told our friends.  Then it was when we told our employers.  Then it was when we told our daughter's school.  Then it was when we hired a relocation adviser.  Then it was when we started to sell off our stuff. 

Today our house went on the market.

Well, there's no stopping now!

Up to this point, we always soothed our jittery nerves by telling ourselves that we could always change our minds.  While we might not have jobs by the end of July, we can always find new ones.  While our daughter might not have a place in her German school any more, we can always put her in our local public school for a year and reapply next spring.  While we might not have a house full of furniture, at least it would look less cluttered.  But now, with the house officially for sale, we will essentially be homeless once it closes if we don't leave.

I will admit to a certain sadness that we're leaving this house.  We moved to Vienna from Arlington, Virginia when our daughter was about 10 months old.  While Arlington was awesome for a couple of DINKs ("Dual Income, No Kids"), it was less satisfactory for a family with a young child.  Housing costs were high, few of our neighbors had children, and those who did were often too busy with their high-powered careers to have any interest in interacting with us.  Vienna was perfect.  Our neighborhood had a seemingly endless supply of kids almost the exact same age as our daughter.  There are excellent public schools - although we opted not to use them.  We managed to find a house that could fit us, our two cats, our two cars, our thousands of books, movies, and CDs, and my growing number of historical reenacting impressions for a very reasonable price (well, reasonable for the Washington, DC metro area).

The only downside of our house was that, when we bought it, it was in awful condition.  Other than having new windows, almost nothing had been updated in the house in years.  What updates had been done were done cheaply and poorly.  The house - like a few others we also found in the neighborhood - was like a 1970s version of Angkor Wat.  Trees were growing from every crevice of the property, covering the driveway and roof.  Wood retaining walls in the back yard were collapsing, while ivy tendrils crept over every corner of the backyard, hiding a menagerie of dubious and potentially threatening fauna and flora.

It took us seven years, more money than I can even calculate, and legions of top-grade contractors to make the house almost perfect.  As we were wrapping up our total renovation of our library and family room at Thanksgiving time last year, my wife and I looked at each other and only half-joked, "Well, now that that is done, it's just about time we moved."

And so, here we are.

Considering how hot the real estate market is in our neighborhood, we anticipate that it won't take more than a week or two to sell our house.  We are hoping to get at least asking price, although a long drawn-out bidding war between competing buyers would always be welcome.  After all, the profit that we make off of the house is what we will be living on in Berlin until we can find - or create - permanent jobs for ourselves there.

Fingers crossed!

UPDATE:  It took all of 72 hours, but we sold our house.  Other than making us enough money to live on until my wife and I can find work, the BIG bonus of this sale is that most of our furniture is conveying with the house.  We are excited for the buyers, who are moving into a house and a neighborhood that we dearly love.  We are even more excited for us because now we are in the home stretch of our move to Berlin.

Relocating to Berlin: Speaking the Language

While I'm reluctant to say this in the presence of my British friends, the main reason why I chose to live in England in my late teens and early twenties rather than somewhere else in the world was that I already (more or less) spoke the language.  Sure, the British have that lingering fondness for extraneous "u"s (colour, valour, labour, harbour, neighbour, etc.).  But otherwise, I could usually figure out what my British friends were saying - unless they were from Lancashire.

Germany is an entirely different kettle of fish.

So, of course, people ask me and my wife if we speak German.  The short answer is: Well. . . . . . .

The slightly longer answer is that we have been trying for years to learn it.

My first experience of trying to learn German goes all the way back to Winnetka, Illinois in the mid 1980s.  My own school gave us the choice of learning up to three languages: Latin and French were offered starting in 7th Grade, with the third option of Spanish added in high school.  Given the choice, I chose Latin.  I figured that it would give me a good basis for learning the whole panoply of Romance languages, or at the very least that it would give me a head start in the lucrative field of law.  But what I really wanted to learn was German.  As it wasn't offered at my school, I saved my pennies (which, as an unemployed 12 year old were few and far between) and enrolled in a night school German class at the local public high school.

That first exposure to the German language lasted all of one lesson.  The rest of the class consisted entirely of middle-aged and retired adults.  To say that I felt out of place is an understatement.  As I recall, I walked home at the intermission half-way through the class.  I did learn one German phrase from that one German class that has stayed with me to today: "Was machen Sie hier?" ("What are you doing here?")  In retrospect, that seems like an appropriate question.

After my wife and I were married, and had shared the experience of singing in the Washington Sängerbund for a couple of years, we decided that maybe the solution would be to learn German together.  Again, we applied to attend a night school at our local public high school.  This time we got through German 1, and then promptly forgot most of it because we never used it.

Then we got German lessons on CD.

Then I attended a German class at the Göthe Institut in Washington.

Then we got Rosetta Stone.

In all cases, it's not that we didn't learn.  It's just that we couldn't retain any of what we learned for very long because we never had occasion to use it consistently.

Then we had our daughter.  And as we had our 10-Year Plan, and as we were obsessive about meeting our targets, as soon as she was old enough, we enrolled her at a German school just outside of Washington.  Starting in preschool, our daughter has used no language other than German during the school day.  Now, four years later, she can speak it fluently.  And for us, after four years of dealing with the school administration and teachers, after helping with homework, after watching movies and reading books, after supervising play dates and attending birthday parties, we have finally started to retain what we have already learned.

Unlike our daughter, my wife and I are still nowhere near fluent in German.  We are, at least, functional in it.  Just as I eventually learned how to understand and speak British English - even in Lancashire - I have no doubt that we'll quickly pick up German.

Ultimately, we will have no other choice!

Relocating to Berlin: Getting Rid of S**t - ahem - Stuff

One of the first things that people ask when my wife and I mention that we are leaving the country is, what are we going to do with all of our stuff?

The short answer is that we're getting rid of it!

Although, that's not really true.

My wife and I have lived in the Washington, DC area for over 20 years, first in separate households (before we were married), then in progressively larger apartments and houses as our salaries at work have increased and as our family has grown.  Along the way, we have gathered an impressive array of what can most politely be referred to as "stuff".  My wife and I are collectors by nature.  She collects books.  I collect books, music, movies, militaria, sports jerseys, and antiques.  Until we made the final decision to relocate in January of this year, I notoriously never got rid of anything.  I come from a long line of low-level hoarders.  Admittedly, nobody in my family ever got bad enough that they were buried alive in the accumulated flotsam and jetsam of their lives.  But more than a few of us in both my and my wife's families like to hang on to whatever crosses our path because "it's always better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it."

However, when faced with the prospect of moving from a 4-bedroom split-level suburban house to a small urban apartment, it was immediately obvious that something was going to have to give.  All of the stuff that we have accumulated over 40+ years of life and 16+ years of marriage would have to go.

And so began a months-long stream of moving sales, charity donations, sales to second hand/antique stores, gifts to friends, and sales on craigslist and ebay.  We only had to stop ourselves from selling all of our furniture, so that the house would look occupied when we sold that.  But all of the stuff that has cluttered our lives was up for grabs.

After a lifetime of collecting, how did it feel to get rid of things that had been a part of my life seemingly forever?  Surprisingly enough, considering how compulsively I have collected stuff for so many years, it has been wonderfully liberating.  For the most part, neither of us really needs all the stuff that is in our house.  But, like an anchor, we have felt the need haul the dead weight of all this stuff with us everywhere we moved.  One thing that has made it easier to decide what to get rid of is that anything that runs on electricity has to go.  After all, without buying huge numbers of power converters, none of it would work properly anyway.

What are we keeping?  Our daughter - while she has been a real trooper in selling off many old toys that she no longer plays with (she had the incentive of getting to keep the money for any of her toys that she sold, which she used to buy her own iPad) - will be taking most of her bedroom furniture with her.  We don't want to wrench everything she has ever known away from her.  We will be keeping some of our dishes and some pots and pans.  We will be keeping our guest bedroom set (it's much smaller than our master bedroom set), and a few smallish custom or heirloom pieces of furniture from our living room.  And we'll keep at least some of our books.  Well, we are humans with needs after all. 

Best of all, from both a monetary and a space perspective, we will also be selling both of our cars.  In their place, we will keep our bicycles.  Berlin has limited parking.  But Berlin is considered an urban bicyclist's paradise as it is absolutely - almost preternaturally - flat.

Ever since this project to get rid of stuff started, I have become something of an anti-clutter evangelist.  I have been singing the praises of getting rid of the things we don't use to everybody who will listen, and even to more than a few people who have eventually gotten tired of listening to me and stopped returning my phone calls.

Speaking of which, does anybody want to buy some of our stuff?  It all has to go!

Relocating to Berlin: On Background

My wife likes to tell people that we are on Year 11 of our "10-Year Plan".

The 10-Year Plan was hatched over our anniversary dinner, back in 2002.

It would be a stretch to say that my wife and I are world travelers.  While I had lived in England for two years in high school and college, my wife had never been abroad until our honeymoon in Cornwall, England.  However, I had always cherished my time in Europe as a teen, and had had the opportunity to see bits and pieces of Europe, Africa, and the very tip of Asia while in school, and my wife's career was giving her increased opportunities to travel to Europe and South America - trips that I eagerly tagged along on when possible.  We both craved travel.  And we both wanted to figure out a way to live overseas.

And so, on that late September evening 11 years ago, we committed ourselves to live overseas within 10 years.  From that point on, everything that we did personally and professionally would have that ultimate goal in mind.  We would do everything that we could to shape our careers to give us opportunities for international work.  We would go back to school to gain professional credentials that would make us more attractive to hire anywhere in the world.  We would go places and meet people that would give us the best opportunities to create networks that would help us to live overseas.  And finally, we would travel as much as possible, so that we could find a destination where we could build a new life.

And so, within weeks, I was applying to business schools so that I could get my MBA.  My wife, who was working for a renewable energy trade association at the time, took every opportunity to attend conferences in the far corners of the world.

But with the plan in place, we still needed a destination.  At first, the destination was a secondary concern.  We thought that we would simply take any job that we could get that would move us anywhere in the world.  After I completed my MBA, I received a very interesting job offer that would have taken me to a remarkable variety of places.  Unfortunately, I would have often had to travel for long periods of time without my family (my wife and I had a daughter shortly after I graduated from business school), and I thought the work would have been too dangerous for somebody with a brand new baby to look after.  So, we continued to look.


Through all of this, however, one destination always stuck in my mind: Berlin, Germany.  Since very early childhood, I had always been fascinated by the city that at the time was still divided between the Communist east and the Capitalist west.  I read every book, and watched every movie and TV show that I could find about Berlin during the inflationary and industrial 1920s, about the intense bombing of Berlin and occupation by Soviet troops during and immediately following World War II, and about the subsequent division of the city and eventual construction of the Berlin Wall.  Despite never having been there yet, I cried tears of joy when the Berlin Wall fell while I was living in England, and I listened intently as my English teacher told us stories of how he and his wife had driven from England to Berlin overnight to see the Wall coming down.  When my wife was sent to Berlin for work, and I had to stay behind at my own job, I was crushed at missing the chance to go.  But I was indescribably excited when she came home and told me stories of how stimulating and interesting she found the city.

One year later, I finally had my chance when my employer rewarded my work on a project by telling me to "Take your wife and go anywhere in the world you want to go for a week."  Berlin was the obvious choice.  It more than lived up to my expectations, and we have been back numerous times since then.  More than any other place that we have visited, Berlin has an energy, an attitude, a style, and a history of overcoming the most horrific odds to become a world class city. 

And now, 11 years after coming up with our 10-year plan, we are in the final stages of our preparations to move to Berlin on a (semi?) permanent basis. 

Since we announced our plans to move to friends and family, many have said that I should write a blog about the experience of giving up an entire life built in the United States to move to Berlin.  Not being one to turn down an invitation, here it is.  As we go through the final stages of packing up to leave, I will discuss the things that we have needed to consider - both for shutting down life here, and for starting up life there.  Once we get on the ground in Berlin, I want to keep this blog going so that I can share our experiences, our trials, our triumphs, and perhaps even to lament all of the things that we will inevitably miss that we never thought we needed from our previous lives.  I hope you will stay with me over that time.