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.
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