On Moving Abroad: Six Months Later

On my tram ride home from Mauerpark Sunday evening, I realized that it had been exactly six months since I moved to Berlin. That moment of realization immediately overwhelmed me, because it just goes to show how quickly time can pass when all you’re doing is living.

You see, I never anticipated feeling so comfortable and so at home in Berlin so quickly. I didn’t feel this way all along. But the feeling of comfort, and of ease, immediately came over me the second I left Berlin for my winter trip back home to New York a few weeks ago. When I touched down in New York, there was something so familiar and nostalgic about being there, about being home — the skyline reminding me of exactly how unique and unreal it is to have grown up and lived my entire life somewhere so intense, so extraordinary, and so desirable. But when I left New York to go back to Berlin two weeks later, I felt the same way about Berlin as I did about New York, the TV Tower glistening right as I got off the S-Bahn reminding me exactly what and where I was going back to. It felt normal. I felt comfortable. It was like I was coming home.

Because Berlin is home now, too.

Sure, I might be romanticizing the feeling. I might be naive in my observations and regard for a city that everyone visits and becomes enamored with. I know I’m not the only one. There are tons of immigrants to Berlin that feel this way, too. Wide-eyed and optimistic, so in love and so infatuated that even when things go wrong, they still try and justify that ‘it just happens’ or that ‘that’s just the nature of the city.’ Even still, I can wholeheartedly admit that I am romanticizing being here and that I am naive to think this way of a place; because a city is just a place and there’s nothing other worldly or admirable about another place in the world. But even still, I have no qualms about my feelings, and having felt them too quickly. Six months isn’t very long, but in a city like Berlin, one that sucks up so much time, moving here in September feels like last week.

Most people who know me and knew I was moving out of New York never thought I’d be moving to Germany. Or that it’d be Berlin where I’d find comfort. It had always been London in the back of my mind. There or some other random city I’d visited and wouldn’t shut up about when I got back from traveling. It was also on everyone else’s mind, too, at some level. Regardless of what happened, everyone said that I’d eventually make it back to London to live, some time in the future. And sure, a part of me still believes that deep down. But not right now. And especially not in my 20s — but that might be because I’m #poorbutsexy, just like Berlin.

It’s so strange for me to think retrospectively like this about cities I loved and wanted to live in so badly, because the feelings aren’t as strong anymore. Maybe I’m not so naive as I was at 19 then. But as I mentioned, a new home was never going to be Berlin. It was never the place I thought I’d find comfort in. Or a network. A job. A community. Connections. Friends I absolutely adore. Until it became Berlin.

For all the right and wrong reasons. I have a close friend who told me that she’d like to stay in Berlin, ‘not forever,’ but definitely for the majority of her 20s. Because a city like this makes it so easy to stay. Or to go. It doesn’t matter. The city doesn’t care. You can do or not do as you please and that’s what is so remarkable about this place to me. For the most part, no one cares who you are. What you do. Where the hell you’re from. Trust me, I’ve tried using the “I’m from NYC” card way too many times for people to shrug their shoulders and tell me how dirty, noisy, overcrowded, and expensive it is. Because in Berlin, it doesn’t really matter.

And I say this every time, but I’m not going to pretend that moving and living away from home is the easiest thing to do. That there are not any super high highs or really hard low lows. That I don’t have a financial and life crisis every other day. That the language barrier doesn’t affect me. That the rudeness of the people is acceptable. That the uncertainty of my career path in a country that I don’t speak the language doesn’t intimidate me. That I don’t second guess every single thing I say and do fifty times a day. The list of my insecurities can go on forever and they haven’t disappeared just because I left America. But, why would I lie about the struggles of moving somewhere so damn far from what I knew and what I was familiar and comfortable with. From what was my life for 20+ years?

There’s no use in that. Moving and living away hasn’t been the easiest decision I’ve ever made, but is it the best one?

With 100% certainty: absolutely. For someone like me, someone so frivolous, so annoying, easily bored, spontaneous and impulsive, I had to make this move and it’s been worth every shitty and shining minute by far. The prospect of being here for two years seemed so scary at first, but I don’t even think twice about it anymore. I even forgot it was six months since I’ve been living here, until I paused on the tram and had that, “holy fucking shit” moment, it’s the 11th of March.

Again, what I did and what I feel isn’t the same for everyone. In fact, I have many family, friends, and acquaintances who will never do and have no desire to do what I did ever in their lives. And that’s okay; to be honest, sometimes I wish I had the capacity to sit still, be comfortable in where I am, and not think of a life five years forward every second or have so many thoughts constantly clogging my head. I can do well without the overthinking and the uncertainty, thank you very much. Yet, I wouldn’t change a single thing.  The amount of people who have reached out to me — people I know closely and people I never had the chance to — to tell me what I’m doing is ‘inspiring,’ for lack of a better word, even if they don’t have an iota of a desire to do it themselves, is still just as humbling and rewarding as it was when I was living in New York, planning to make this move over a year ago. It’s validating in a sense, too, even though I moved away from what I knew and what I loved not for a single person, but myself.

With all of this, I sleep well at night. And so I say now: bring on the next six months and the next and the next and the next. Bis dann.

♡