Relocating to Berlin: Goodbyeee

When you add up all of the sleepless nights, the panic attacks, the upset stomachs, the moments when you believe that you are making the biggest mistake of your entire life, you get to the point when almost everything you own - including your house - has been sold, you have quit your job, you have withdrawn your child from school.  All you have left in the world is your family, your life's savings, and a plane ticket. 

On July 23, 2013, that is all I had left.

To be overly dramatic, I was reminded of my own ancestors who came to the United States under similar circumstances.  They too were leaving behind all they knew; their home; all their friends; most of their family; to start a new life in a new country where they didn't know the culture and they didn't know the language.  Of course, we have certain advantages now that my ancestors did not.  We had been to Berlin before many times.  We have ample professional skills and enough money to live comfortably until we get settled in.  And best of all, we have a really top-notch relocation adviser.  That, and our voyage wouldn't last several weeks confined to Steerage.

Although, we were booked to fly coach through Newark.  So that is the rough modern equivalent.

And so, with one suitcase and one carry-on bag each - one of which containing the heavily sedated cat - we locked up our house for the last time and hit the road to Baltimore, where we would begin the first leg of our journey.

Of course, any time a trip goes through Newark, you can rely on something going wrong.  And we were not disappointed.  Immediately upon checking in, we were informed that our flight from Baltimore to Newark would be delayed by at least one hour.  We had a two hour layover in Newark, so we were already cutting things pretty fine.  And if prior experience was any guide, this one hour delay could turn into a cancelled flight in the blink of an eye.  We would have nowhere to go if we could not make our connection in Newark, and with a cat in tow, we could not be assured of finding a hotel that would take us in.

Visions of running for the Acela train from Baltimore to Newark ran through our heads as we tried to come up with alternatives.  If we left the airport right now, we might just make it in time.  But we would have to leave all of our luggage behind.  It was not an appealing option.

But fate smiled on us that day.  The weather briefly cleared.  Our flight to Newark was assigned a very small window through which to fly.  And, after six months of planning, we were finally off.

Baltimore to Newark was otherwise fairly ordinary.  We had adequate time in Newark to find our departing gate to Berlin, and to use the restrooms, although not to get a drink to help calm us down for the next leg of the journey.  Newark to Berlin was similarly uneventful, although sleep on the red-eye flight was fitful at best.  Even the cat, whose kitty Valium had worn off long ago, seemed surprisingly mellow and content with her new adventure.

And on the morning of July 24, 2013, we finally touched down at Berlin's Tegel Airport.

We quickly retrieved our bags and passed through Tegel's remarkably casual Customs and immigration line.  Our cat's paperwork, painstakingly assembled and certified by my wife, was barely glanced at.  Ellis Island, it certainly wasn't.  But at least it was quick, relatively tuberculosis free (as far as we could tell), and we didn't have to change our names.

We were met at the airport by our relocation adviser, who immediately whisked us to her office to sign several dozen forms relating to banking, schools for our daughter, immigration, residency, work permits, and health care.  And from there we were dropped off at our hotel, where we would stay until our apartment would become available on July 27.

And through all of this, what was our first impression upon arriving in Berlin?  My God, it's hot!!!!  We arrived just at the beginning of over a week of 90+ degree temperatures (that's 32+ degrees to my non-American readers), with temperatures hitting almost 100 (38!!!!) for a couple of days, and almost nobody here has air conditioning.

But after all we had gone through, we weren't complaining. . . well, not much anyway.

Relocating to Berlin: Packing for The Great Migration

I would like to start by apologizing to my dozens (handful?  couple?) of readers for not posting in such a long time.  On July 23 (just over a month ago), my family and I packed up the house, locked the door, drove to the airport, and left the world that we knew behind.  It has taken us this long to get Internet.

Now that we are here in Berlin, and are more or less established, I will make a flurry of posts to describe the moving experience, and to try to bring everybody up to date on what all has been going on for the past month.  I may occasionally have to refer to my notes, as they have been action packed days.

Way back on July 9, the movers came.  On July 10, they came again.  Over those two days, everything that we were keeping, but that we thought we could live without for the next 4-6 weeks, was wrapped up and crammed into a shipping container.  A word to the wise: unless you move internationally on a regular basis or are in the military, if you think you know what you can live without for 4-6 weeks, you are wrong.

Granted, my wife, daughter, and I were each limited to one suitcase and one carry-on bag, so our choices of what to ship and what to carry would probably have been about the same.  But we quickly realized what we find important in our day to day lives.

First:  Bedding.  We were selling our old master bedroom set and a futon with our old house, so we all could sleep at least moderately comfortably until the day we left our house.  But pillows and blankets take up a lot of space, so they had to be shipped.  Let me just say, no matter how warm it is or how much you think you can live without a pillow, if a pillow and blanket are what you are used to sleeping with, not having them is misery. 

Second:  Pots and pans.  Anybody who has ever met me can tell immediately that I like to eat out in restaurants.  Anybody who has ever been to Berlin can tell you that the city is full of excellent and cheap(!!!!) restaurants.  But eating at restaurants three meals a day for four weeks gets really old really fast.  My wife and I became experts in finding foods that could be prepared at home with little more than a paper plate and a plastic spoon.  Frozen pizzas are excellent.  Cold cereal is another good option.  After a week, my wife bought a slow cooker (all of our American appliances had to stay behind), so we had lots of soups with very roughly cut (broken, torn, pulled apart) vegetables and little seasoning beyond salt.

Third:  Office machines.  From the moment that we landed in Berlin, everybody has been requesting that we e-mail scans of documents; passports, registration permits, residency documents, insurance statements, bank account statements, etc. ad nauseum.  The problem was, we had no Internet, no scanner, no printer, and the one laptop that we brought with us only had some files that we needed on the hard drive.  Everybody who provided us with services needed payment via bank transfer (that is the primary way that everybody gets paid in Germany).  But without Internet access we couldn't get onto our bank's website.  If we took the laptop to an Internet cafe, we would also need to bring all of our written PIN numbers, passwords, and security question answers (to understand why, you need to experience German online banking first-hand) with us, which we decided was far too insecure on an open network.  If we went into our bank in person, the account ATMs are only in German, and few of the tellers speak enough English to help us.  The mobile application that we accessed using our iPhones is worse than useless.  And God help you if you try to call your personal banker on the telephone (yeah, we've got one of those).  I'm still on hold for a question I had three weeks ago!

As it turns out, it only took about one month for all of our things to arrive at our new apartment in Berlin.  Our first night with blankets and pillows was the best night's sleep I have had in years.  Just the simple act of cooking pasta is a joy.  As for the office machines. . . well, that took a little longer.  But I'll talk about that later.