Berlin in Frankfurt

Exactly 365 days ago, we touched down at Frankfurt International Airport. I remember looking out the windows as we descended. I saw the Main River, the famous Frankfurt skyline (“Mainhatten” as it is fondly called) and tried to spot our neighborhood based on my sleuthing on Google maps. As I gathered my belongings in preparation for landing, I remember thinking “we live here now; we are landing at our new home.” 

Anyone who has moved overseas for any period of time can understand the chaos of the last days before departure. So many goodbyes, checklists, and neurotically making sure you have your passports with you at least twenty different times. 

The chaos has thankfully blurred from memory but I do remember plopping down in the United lounge about 90 minutes before our flight. Our bags were checked, we were through security, and there was nothing more we could control or check off our lists. Jeff and I toasted our strong gin and tonics and collectively let out a heavy sigh of relief and anticipation.

It seems like each year of life goes faster than the next. Jeff and I celebrate our fourth anniversary in a few weeks, a year of living in Germany has gone by. How? In celebration and reflection of a year of living in Frankfurt, I wanted to share a few memories and thoughts. 

Some highlights and some learning moments 

• Creating a home: When our household shipment arrived in late October, my thoughts were swirling. Why did we bring this? Where will it fit? Does this look terrible? After the initial chaos, I have enjoyed creating a home that is cozy and functional and also comfortable and conducive to entertaining. We’ve hosted themed cocktail parties, game nights, soup potlucks, baby showers, and going away parties. Truly, there is nothing we enjoy more than inviting people in and practicing hospitality and I am glad to be paired with someone who enjoys hospitality as much as I do.
• Visitors: We’ve had six different sets of visitors in just a year! Yes, it was crazy but also fun to be able to show them our new home and neighborhood, take them to the neighborhood grocery store to pick out local produce for dinner or enjoy a walk in the large park near us.
• New friendships: When we arrived, I knew I’d be starting over with relationships, despite staying in touch with friends and family back home. One thing I tried to remember is that everyone here had been in the same boat. I think this reality creates an interesting dynamic that is different than the normal day-to-day. Here, you need each other. I am so grateful for the people (you know who you are) who reached out, asked me to lunch, and immediately included me in group outings. There is nothing sweeter than a text just checking in on you because they know you exist. On the other side of things, I am deeply grateful for the friends and family who have chosen to include me in their lives, support our decision, and stay in touch even though we are physically apart. A great article on that here.
• Deutsch Lernen: As I mentioned in an earlier post, I took two months of German in February and March. The night before my first day of class, I was so nervous as I packed my fresh pencils and a sharpener into my owl-patterned pencil case (because I am an adult). I hadn’t been in a classroom for nearly a decade and besides that, German seemed hard! Spoiler: it is hard but I enjoyed the mental stimulation of going each day and building my knowledge. Plus, it’s kind of a hilarious language. One of my favorite examples is the word for a garlic clove “Knoblauchzehe” which literally translates to “garlic toes”…which makes me immediately imagine a bunch of garlic heads dancing on their tiny garlic toes in a circle. As my German teacher wrote “Knoblauchzehe” on a blue index card and added it to the hundreds of overs in our vocabulary stack, I snickered and said “You know that’s funny, right?” and she agreed “Ja” with a little smile. I had won her over.
• Unexpected enjoyment: Also referenced in previous posts – my journey from working full-time in D.C. to the place I find myself now. After teleworking until the end of last year, I found myself in cold, dark January with no place to report to work for the first time in about fifteen years. I knew I had to come up with a plan to stimulate my brain. Part of that came from completing the HTML essentials course on Codecademy’s Web Development path. I got about ⅓ of the way through the CSS course before I started full-time German. Since then, I’ve traveled extensively, started leading a local chapter of a refugee outreach group, managed our house from finances to chores to medical bills, read about twenty books, and built friendships here. But this is not a paragraph about how much stuff I can pack in while not working. What I am here to say is that even those most Type-A, tightly wound, always busy person can find great joy, fulfillment, and intellectual growth outside the 9-5. I feared it more than I can say but I am fully embracing and finding enjoyment in it now.
• New places, tastes, experiences: Rather than a list of the places we’ve been, I wanted to share a few specific moments that stick out in my mind. Unsurprisingly, most of these involve food. 
  • Having a can of cold Apfelwein in the neighborhood park with our first guest – my old roommate Elizabeth. We had arrived only six weeks before and our household items had not arrived. Her visit was a welcome taste of home. 
  • Drinking huge bowls of hot chocolate with Jeff and my mom on a blustery night in Bruges, Belgium. Our Air B&B host owned the shop with his family. As my mom said, “we are adults so we are allowed to have this for dinner.” Mine was the “Winnie the Pooh” with dark chocolate, honeycomb, and lavender. 
  • Eating piping hot Schaschlik (basically meat on a stick) at the Nuremberg Christmas Market with our friend Mike. It was POURING rain for hours and we walked around the market, shielding ourselves with huge umbrellas. The Schaschlik revived us! 
  • An escape to sunny Malta in January. After dinner, Jeff and I climbed up on a stone wall above a park to watch the setting sun over the Mediterranean and also FaceTimed his parents to say hello and share the view 
  • Waking up in the Sahara desert in Morocco and sleepily stumbling over to my assigned dromedary (like a camel but one hump). We rode for about 20 minutes then sat watching the sun come up over the dunes. Nothing prepared me for that moment. 
  • Wandering around Paris solo. I have traveled alone many times but there was something especially fun and challenging about navigating Paris on my own. After a long day, I cooked a simple dinner and had a few glasses of Bordeaux with the window open, enjoying the sounds of the city. 
  • Wandering down to the Valencia Arts and Sciences area with Sam as the sunset. The architecture was breathtaking and afterward, we found ourselves at a tapas bar having cocktails that came with a small bowl of gumdrops so it was a win as far as I’m concerned. 

If you’re still reading at this point, you’re probably my mom or some other dedicated reader. It was fun to reflect on the last 365 days and even more, fun to think about what I’ll be writing about next year at this time. Prost!