Today marks one whole year since Franzie, the kids and I left Australia and flew to Berlin for a planned 7 year stint. It’s probably been the craziest year of our lives, so I hope the next 6 years here in Germany will be much more settled! In overview:
Three weeks after we landed we moved out of our temporary holiday unit and into our rented 2nd-floor apartment in Gesundbrunnen, Berlin. It’s a lovely bright unit that gets lots of sun, with excellent train connections and lovely people (if you look close enough, you can see me with M on the balcony - sorry, picture to come). We had to wait another month-and-a-half before our belongings arrived from Australia (and even then, we only just managed to get them off the truck which initially refused to stop to unload).
I’ve worked for two companies here in Berlin (The Otherland Group and then Metaversum - makers of Twinity) doing lots of interesting stuff with Django, Rails and virtual worlds, before finding my dream job: helping to make Ubuntu Linux the number one operating system (working for Canonical on Launchpad.net). So job-wise, it’s involved lots of changes throughout the year, but the changes have also enabled me to meet lots of people.
We’ve had lots of friends and family visit throughout the year, which has been excellent, obviously to stay in touch with people from back home, but it’s also helped me to learn Berlin like the back of my hand (I’ll do a personal 3hr bike tour of Berlin for 20 Euros). Some of my bests memories of the past year have been taking family and friends around Berlin on my bike.
To say that it’s been a very full year would be an understatement - it’s been a year of transitions in terms of homes, jobs, kindergartens and even friendships, which will soon settle down when we move outside of Berlin later this year to Luckenwalde (F’s hometown) where we hope to settle for our time here in Germany.
We’re all missing our friends and family in Australia - as great as it is to be able to talk with video calls, I miss *being* with friends back home. My German has been coming along slowly, not quite quick enough to build real friendships in German (but then most of the friends I’ve made here speak near-perfect English).
So, lots of learning through a crazy year, with hopefully a more settled year to come!