That foreign feeling: ten years in Europe

Warning: this post is going to gaze squarely at my navel. Like, even more than your average post on a personal blog. I apologize in advance.

As of this summer, I have spent ten years of my life in Europe – ten out of the last fifteen, with five international (plus a few domestic) moves in that time period. I’ve changed cities on average about every two years.

I feel like I should reflect on this milestone, about how I’ve chosen to live my adult life. But what is there to say? I like living in Europe. I’m OK with being a foreigner. I could try to say something deeper than that, but I’ve never been one for sentimentality. So I’ve spent most of my adult life as an outsider looking in. That’s not so odd, given I spent most of my childhood feeling foreign, too.

I’ve been a little bit foreign almost as long as I can remember. When I was a child our little nuclear family moved from New Jersey to the Deep South. My first indication that this was a bigger deal than our move from one street in the neighborhood to the other was on the airplane. It was an early-morning Delta flight, back when airlines still served food and Delta was still Southern. Breakfast consisted of biscuits smothered in white, gooey, gelatinous ickiness with little specks in it. I looked at my mother questioningly. » Read the full post

Tags: Europe, expat life, personal

Expat eats: in search of salsa

Maybe it’s all the Mexican food we ate on our recent trip to the US, but I’ve had enough of the crappy salsa offerings in Germany. Standard German grocery stores tend to stock one brand of salsa, usually Old El Paso. My attempts to find alternatives have not been good. I once joyfully bought up several types of salsa from a small Mexican store near Pariser Platz, only to discover at home that every single one of the jars had expired. A long time ago. (I ate them anyway.) And then this, the last straw:

Don't buy this.

» Read the full post

Tags: Americana, cooking, expat life, food

Things I did and did not do this week

I DID host a Thanksgiving dinner for 20 people, and it was wonderful.

I DID NOT make a turkey. The lovely and multi-talented Headbang8 and Kim tackled that task. Everyone was quite impressed with the outcome. I hear the job involved sawing off necks (alas, no photos of that).

I DID make a couple pumpkin pies from scratch, meaning I started with an actual pumpkin. Four of them, actually. And I made NPR’s most unusual cranberry relish, which people seemed to love, horseradish and all.

I DID enjoy the fact that Munich’s Christmas markets are finally open. We started the season with some gloriously flaming feuerzangenbowle at Tollwood.

And last but not least, I MOST CERTAINLY DID NOT participate in this week’s Moment of Starlings flashmob, even though there’s a photo in Friday’s Münchner Merkur of someone who looks curiously like me gleefully stopping traffic by stringing tape through an intersection. I also did not waltz in front of the US consulate or participate in a sleep-in at the Haus der Kunst. But I imagine the whole event looked something like this.

I’m looking forward to the next flashmob on Wednesday. If you’d like to play along, you can sign up to participate on the Urbanauten website. I did.

Tags: expat life, Germany, holidays, Munich

4th of July with the expats

I can’t remember the last time I observed the 4th of July, but who can resist a BBQ by the river with friends?

The banks of the Isar River are extremely popular in the summer, especially in the area near the Tierpark. There were multiple groups of Americans out celebrating their independence here yesterday, and finding our way to the right gathering wasn’t so easy to do. But completely worth it, since I’m sure our group had the most fun.

The spread:

The beer fridge (Em got a better photo of the bar, before the sun went down):

The view:

Tags: expat life, holidays, Munich

Scenes from an early spring weekend in Bavaria

While Germany was busy swooning over our new president, we were out enjoying Germany.

We squeezed in one last sledding trip with the Rendenii (which is where we spotted this guy);

rang in the beginning of asparagus season in a beer garden on the lake;

and then got the balcony garden started.

Tags: Bavaria, day-trips from Munich, expat life, Germany

Ask the Expat: temporary or permanent?

Hey Jul: I see that you have lived in some of the most difficult countries in Europe to obtain citizenship (Switzerland and Germany). Are you planning on making your stay permanent or are you planning on coming back States side?

I really don’t know if we’ll ever move back to the US. We have no plans either way. Certainly if we do stay in Europe for a longer amount of time, EU (or Swiss) citizenship would make parts of our lives easier (and allow us to vote in local elections), but it’s not essential to staying here long-term. So far I haven’t lived in a single country long enough to become eligible (the number of years required for eligibility varies from country to country – from a few years in Ireland to over a decade in Switzerland).

If we did live in Germany long enough to become eligible for citizenship, I doubt I would apply for it. Germany would require me to give up my American passport, and I don’t think I’d ever want to do that. Permanent residency will just have to do.

The main reason I don’t want to to return to the States just yet? I’d have to find a new name for this blog.

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Ask the Expat is a new feature I’m trying out here at the blog. If you have a question for me, go to this post to find out how to submit it.

Tags: ask the expat, expat life

Celebrating the new president, expat-style

Oh happy day! While I decided against attending the Munich Inaugural Ball, I definitely felt the need to celebrate yesterday. So I threw a little party of my own, and soaked up the inauguration with some American and European friends. Obama’s swearing-in was at 6:00 pm our time, perfect for some champagne prosecco toasting.

We also enjoyed some American-themed foods, such as this patriotic cake made by Heza. Had I had access to an American party-supply store, I might have had fun going over the top with the decoration; as it was we made do with American flag napkins and toothpicks, and some patriotic balloons.

The party is over but my heart is still filled with joy at the direction my country is taking. As an American abroad, today I feel I can hold my head a little bit higher.

Tags: Americana, expat life

Expat Thanksgiving rock’n'roll!

Over the years, I’ve been to every type of expat Thanksgiving imaginable. The potluck with other expats. The ‘American’ restaurant. The Italian-restaurant-tries-to-make-turkey. The expat housewife extravaganza. The potluck-with-mostly-Europeans-who-bring-shit-like-cole-slaw. But never did I expect to see the day where I’d spend Thanksgiving at the Hard Rock Cafe.

The venue was chosen because of its promises of 1) Thanksgiving-like food and 2) American football shown live on eleventy-billion screens. Personally I would have rather watched the Macy’s parade. I hear there was a Smurf balloon… But I digress.

I skipped the dinner part (I had an art class, and restaurants tend to have no idea what to do with a vegetarian for Thanksgiving), but the reviews of the meal ranged from “at least the turkey wasn’t dry” to “the cornbread had less texture than the pumpkin pie”. Ah, the pumpkin pie, the one part of the meal I actually did sample. This pumpkin pie was amazing… in all the wrong ways. While it managed to look somewhat like pumpkin pie, at least from the top, it had the texture of rice pudding and the flavor of key lime pie. I don’t believe it contained any pumpkin at all. How gloriously fucked up is that?

How was your Thanksgiving?

Tags: expat life, holidays, Munich

Partying with the Dems Abroad

Another first for me today: I took the first subway of the morning home, at around 4am. We got home in plenty of time to watch CNN call the election for Obama at 5am. I knew it was coming, but still I was surprised how emotional it made me to actually hear it.

I barely made it through McCain’s concession speech before I fell asleep. Still, this was the closest thing to an all-nighter I’ve pulled in quite a while.

It was a long evening. We arrived at the Democrats Anonymous Abroad party around 7pm to have dinner with friends. There was an, um, interesting program of live music on offer, but by around 10pm or so we were all itching to re-glue ourselves to a TV, even though we knew it would still be hours before any news came in. We moved upstairs to the bar area and found some prime seats in front of the big projection screen showing CNN. Thanks to my new toy (which I will tell you more about later) I was even able to get online and chat with friends and family back in the US, to find out what they were hearing on their end.

In the hours before the polls started closing, we entertained ourselves by watching a little Nailin Paylin and making up election night drinking games.

The crowd cheered each state as it was called for Obama, and for Democratic House and Senate members who were declared winners. It was especially satisfying to see Elizabeth Dole go down, after having seen this. Unfortunately Al Franken’s race was still too close to call.

Not everyone managed to stay up as long as we did.

Tags: Americana, expat life

Bring on the hugging*

A funny thing happened to me today. For the first time in eight years of living in Europe, I walked around wishing that everyone around me knew I was American.

Thank you America. Well done.

* The title is in reference to this fab video

Tags: Americana, expat life