Two and a half days to go until we get on a plane for our move to Germany.
We’ve already been out of our apartment for two days, with seven suitcases overflowing around my mum’s house. I know there are people out there who can live for six weeks out of a single carry-on and a small envelope or something, but I’m not one of them.
Having done this before, including living in corporate accommodation far from where you will eventually find an apartment, I know a few things will happen not long after we get there:
There will be an hour-long grocery trip in which I will maybe start crying, and at least two people will stare at us for speaking with an accent/different language. Just so you know, this happened in Maidenhead, a town just west of London, when we first moved to the UK. I will also come home with maybe ten things, one of which will be something completely other than what I thought. It will take three more trips to sort it out.
We’ll watch TV in total incomprehension, but delight in the total bonkersness of our new country. And will quite quickly learn the words for car insurance, savings, act now, and the days of the week.
We’ll kind of forget one morning that we moved to Germany until we hear someone pass by our window chattering away in German.
One nearby restaurant will become our favourite, and the staff will be kind, recognizing us after the second visit. If the staff are immigrants as well, we’ll discuss visas and work permits and who we left behind. And then they’ll tell us where the best place to buy light bulbs is and not to go to that bakery down the road because everything is stale.
Wish us luck, and here we go!