Glückliches neues Jahr!

As the year winds down, Noah and I finally took time off with NO travelling!  After a whirlwind year of sightseeing, it’s been really wonderful having almost two weeks off work with no real plans.  So how did we pass the time between Christmas and now?  A good 4 solid days went into this:

Yep, that is a 5,000 piece puzzle (technically 5,040… we did the math).  Sadie now uses this as a nice spot to relax. 

Besides puzzling with either Home Alone or Kevin Allein zu Haus (the German version that plays on TV) on the television, we also made it to Tollwood with Ellen and Rüdiger to see a Finnish-inspired Czech circus, Slapstick Sonata.  It was definitely interesting, as you can probably imagine.  After the show, we dragged them out in the rain over to the Bavaria statue to try to get some photos of the Tollwood festival, but instead we only ended up with a good one of Bavaria.

On Christmas day, after spending the morning trying to recreate our Danish Ebelskivers without American buttermilk, we went over to Ellen and Rüdiger’s for a lovely Christmas dinner.  She made a venison stew, which was a real treat neither of us had tasted before.  It really is great having family in town for the holidays – especially when the town is thousands of miles from where you grew up.

Friday we were met with some unexpected visitors – a friend of ours we met in Arizona but who is also from Texas and went to UT.  Jennifer and her family are touring Europe, and decided to make a quick visit (really quick – I’m talking 5 hours total) to Munich.  And since we had no plans for the week, we were gladly available to be their tour guides for the afternoon.  

Yesterday the pups got a late Christmas present when Ellen and Rüdiger drove us out to Bernried at Starnberger See.  First we stopped at Wilhelmina Busch’s Castle Höhenried.  She was the co-heiress of the American Anheuser-Busch beer company.  She clearly lived well, and her estate is absolutely gorgeous.  Now it is home to a heart clinic, but her beautiful house remains separate - probably used for events.

Next stop – Bernrieder Park!  This was also owned by Wilhelmina Busch’s, and left to the public after her death.  All I can say to that is danke!  

And with that we will ring in the New Year tonight with the family – nothing too big, but then again that is how we wanted it for our vacation at home.  Happy New Year Y'all!

Pangea Party

With the departure of our American friends back in October, we have making an effort to be more social and meet new people.  Being internationals ourselves, we mostly interact with other internationals in and out of work.  So we straightened up the apartment and invited over our eclectic group of acquaintances for an international potluck dinner party.  We asked everyone to bring a representative dish from their home country so we could all share a taste of the world.

We invited a diverse group of people, and in the end the turnout was even better than I would have expected.  We had a total of 18 different countries represented, which meant an amazing spread of food and some really fun conversations.

We had arepas from Columbia, guacamole/salsa/beans to go with chips from California, Hungarian liquor and cakes, tiramisu from Italy, Turkish food from Turkey (yeah, we can’t remember the name), spanakopita from Greece, empanadas from Argentina, muhellabi milk pudding from Jordan, roasted duck from France, chicken nuggets/cookies/cupcakes from USA (us!), sushi from South Korea, potato and carrot stew from the Netherlands, liquor and cake from Estonia, and some filo dough pockets from our one German guest.

All in all, it was really cool to know we are not the only ones trying to figure out our way in a foreign county while learning the language.  Lucky for us, English tends to be the medium for most foreigners!

Shoot for the moon, you will end up in space, or something like that

Today I stumbled upon an email from my previous-manager, dated December 9^th, 2009.  The subject title was simply ‘Germany Office‘, and it was her letting me know that there are at least 4 finance people working in Munich under the manager Brian C.  The reason she sent this email to me?  We had been discussing my 5-year plan, and apparently I had mentioned Germany to her. 

Fast forward 3 years (almost to the date) – I am living and working out of Munich, Germany, and am coming up on my 1 year Germanniversary.  And no longer do we only have 4 finance people: we have closer to 60 with the 2011 acquisition of Intel Mobile Communications (from Infineon).  And wouldn’t you know it – That Brian C. she mentioned is now my manager.

So what’s my point?  I don’t really know.  But it does resonate with me that for the longest time, Noah and I kept mentioning to people that we might want to move to Germany one day- including, apparently, my old boss.  And instead of just being satisfied with how our lives were going on their own (which, by the way, Phoenix was still fabulous) – we decided to make our strongest effort to move to Germany.  That way, if it didn’t pan out for us, we knew we gave it our best.  Plus we had to try to avoid looking like we were full of it since we had mentioned a potential move to so many people.

When we found out we both found work in Germany, and knew it would work out for us, there were so many people who told us how lucky we are.  Sure, luck was part of it.  It’s true that being an American with a good education (thanks mom and dad!) definitely gave me a leg up.  And the fact we both were able to find jobs?  Definitely some luck in that.  Oh, and Intel recently acquiring a company in Munich – 100% luck for me.  But if we only left it up to luck, I guarantee we wouldn’t be here. 

A casual remark to my manager that I would like to work in Munich one day didn’t get me here.  There was a lot of hard work behind the scenes required to take full advantage of our good luck.  I had to brush up my resume and interview skills, use my acquired network with Intel to reach out to people, and fly myself (yes, I paid) out to Munich to meet everyone and land myself a position in a newly acquired company.  And if necessary, I was ready to approach companies outside of Intel as the next step to get me here.

Also – I couldn’t keep track of the number of times either Noah or I wanted to throw in the towel and go the ‘easy’ route – staying where we were.  Frustrating calls in our broken German to set up our Internet (and often getting hung up on); moving to an apartment that was completely stripped of everything – including lights – in the middle of winter; trying to coordinate moving our dogs 3,000 miles away; I could go on.   Sometimes the challenges made us lose sight of why we chose this crazy route in the first place.  But looking back – these are amazing ‘problems’ to have, because they accompany a move to Europe! 

I am not saying everyone should go make a vision board or anything like that, but maybe I am trying to remind people that if they have a dream, why not go balls to the wall trying to make it happen?  Yeah, you might fail, but you fail knowing you tried your best, and you won’t have to think ‘what if?’.  Also – you might actually succeed, and find yourself in a completely new and exciting stage of life that you would have never imagined yourself in.