The term “American Expat” was
made famous and fashionable by some very notable expats, the likes of Ernest
Hemingway, Mark Twain and Scott Fitzgerald to name a few, who all created a
vibrant community of expats in Paris. Although I really enjoy their writing,
especially that of Mark Twain and Hemingway, I did not know that they were
expats until I became an expat myself. I will refer to two books by these two authors
that have been very inspiring for my expat life, and partly my muse to start
writing these blogs. If you want to get an insight into the romanticized life
of these famous expats in Paris I will highly recommend watching the movie
“Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen.
Why Europe and why Germany? I
have been asked this question countless times since making this decision and to
be honest I don’t have a clear answer. My first motivation to start thinking
about living in Europe was a backpacking trip with my best friend in 2010. I
was very inspired by the beautiful sights, the long history and more importantly
the life style of most Europeans; even though this wa
s a trip of just a few
weeks it felt like I really belonged here. Second, it will be my career; I am a
scientist (immunologist), which basically means that I can move to any country
that uses a big portion of its GDP towards research, and Europe in general and
especially Germany invest a lot of money in research. My PhD mentor was a huge
career-related influence as well, she had performed her postdoctoral studies in
Japan and then moved back to the US to have a very successful career as a
scientist; having her as a role model I thought doing something similar would
be rewarding for me even if I only managed to accomplish half the things that
she has done. So, why Europe? Why not! I had everything and more that I could
have in the US career-wise and really nothing to lose. Why Germany? Simple
actually, they offered me a postdoctoral scientist position at the famous
German Cancer Research Center in the fairy tale-like city of Heidelberg and
they spoke German, I really wanted to take this opportunity to learn a third
language (Spanish is my native language).
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| Celebrating my first month in Germany! |
So making the decision was not
too hard, moving here and adapting to the German way of life was a bit harder
but fully rewarding. Actually becoming an American expat in Germany is very
common given the vast number of American military bases still active in Germany
that are here since the defeat of the Nazi’s by the American forces in WWII.
However, I think that the experiences that most of the military personnel have
and mine are quite contrasting, and please feel free to correct me if I am
wrong or if I have been misinformed. Most of the military expats in Germany,
don’t leave the base too often, get paid in dollars, have Taco Bells and
American movie theaters inside the base, don’t bother to learn German and more
importantly don’t care to assimilate the German culture, which is much more
than just drinking beer and eating sausages. Of course there are some exceptions
that I have met while living in Heidelberg, but based on my experience and the
experience of those soldiers that were the exception, most Americans in
Germany, sleep within its borders but don’t really live here.
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| First German winter! |
I moved here knowing no German
and knowing no one, both of which made my first few months in Germany some of
the toughest in my life. Yes, most people speak some English but you cannot go
to a bar to socialize or even to a soccer field to play soccer if you don’t
speak German. At the beginning I thought learning German would be easy for me,
after all learning English was not too troublesome, but I was of course wrong
and most people that have learned or attempted to learn German can tell you
this: German makes no sense and follows no rules, the grammar is horrible and
everything has a gender (male, female or neutral). What gender a noun is, makes
no sense at all, i.e. a little girl is an ‘it’ (das Mädchen) while a lamp is a
‘she’ (die Lampe); it particularly doesn’t match other languages that only have
2 genders, like the romantic languages, in fact, the genders are often the
opposite, the key word being ‘often’, hence you can not always assume it is the
opposite because there are always exceptions in German (examples of this are
the sun, in Spanish (he) ‘el sol’, in German (she) ‘die Sonne’, and the moon,
Spanish (she) ‘la luna’, German (he) ‘der Mond’. To make this more complicated
German grammar has 4 very defined cases, nominative, accusative, dative and
genitive, and depending in which case the noun is, the article for this noun
changes, sometimes in a contradictory way i.e. a female noun will change from
nominative ‘die’ to dative ‘der’, both cases are used very often, what
complicates this is that for a male noun the nominative is ‘der’, the same as
the female dative; do you get my point here? This is the perfect place to
reference the first book from one of my favorite American expats, “The Awful
German Language” by Mark Twain. He actually wrote this book while living here
in Heidelberg, where he attempted to learn the language and I think he managed.
He was definitely one of the many people responsible for the romanticized image
of this city and the reason why it is visited by so many tourists.
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The Awful German Language! Great book and a funny read!
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In sharp contrast to the
language, live in Germany is very organized and makes a lot of sense. From a
professional point of view they prefer quality over quantity, and when
something is done, it should be done perfectly or not at all. They really adapt
to the proverb, work hard and party harder, even if not literally. What I mean
with this is that Germans have perfected a socio-capitalistic government: yes
taxes are high, but this is not to bothersome when you know you have a great
health insurance (which everyone and not just the elite have), you have a great
retirement plan, amazing unemployment insurance, and more than anything 44 paid
vacation days per year (30 just normal vacation days and 14 holidays); that
means that you can take more than 2 months off per year of paid vacation. What
has surprised me immensely is that even taking those two months off per year,
an average German worker is much more efficient than an American worker that
works 12 months a year. I personally have noticed a huge improvement in my
motivation and productivity that arises from always having a fresh mind and
knowing that a hard two months of work will be followed by two weeks of
vacation. There is a paid maternal and paternal leave both of which could last
up to 2 years and just a great emphasis on the quality of life. In summary, the
quality of life in Germany is only matched by the quality of the products that
it exports, and the quality and strength of its economy; maybe an example to
follow for many governments in the West.
I would say that most of the
cultural clichés about Germans that you have probably heard are for the most
part accurate:
They love beer,
although the variety of beer found here is very small compared to the US and
its new booming market of craft beers. In fact, the term craft beer is unknown
to much Germans and they are so used to the taste of their 5 varieties of beers
(Pils, Helles, Weizen, Export, and Dunkles), that their taste buds are not
accustomed to any craft beer, that doesn’t fit within these categories i.e. an
IPA or Chocolate Ale. The German beers
have been brewed the German-way for many centuries now, most were first brewed
in monasteries by monks that had nothing better to do, and are now a big part
of the German way of life. As most people know, drinking age for beer and wine
in Germany is 16, although I really like the liberal stand of the
German-government on this, I think 16 is a bit too young; in fact often I see
drunk kids that are not even 13 on the train stations and streets, and I think
that at this age they are more likely to do something stupid than an 18
year-old would. Somehow, there is not a lot of alcohol abuse as people learn
there limits very young and Germany ranks as one of the countries with the
lowest alcoholism rates in the Western world; then maybe allowing kids to drink
that young is actually a good thing.
I will conclude with what is my favorite aspect of the
German culture and one that, until I moved here, I never thought that it was a
German stereotype: for them traveling is a necessity, not a luxury. Again this
is only possible because of how well their government and system-as-a-whole
works, given that in order to travel two aspects are absolutely required, time
and money. Having a socio-capitalistic government, there are not extreme
differences in wealth between most people, yes there are extremely rich people,
like Dietmar Hopp the founder of SAP or the Quandt family that owns BMW;
however, even the cleaning people at my institute have enough money and paid
vacation time to plan a yearly vacation. It is probably not surprising to all
of you fellow travelers to always find Germans anywhere you go, this is because
there are 80+ million of them and as far as I know, every single one of those
80+ million will plan a vacation every year, even if it is just to Italy or
France for a week. I have assimilated this aspect of their culture (not that I
didn’t like to travel before) and now I always look forward while I am in lab
to my next paid vacation, which come here way more often than they did in the
USA. Finally the second reference to my other favorite expat, Ernest Hemingway.
He started a ‘new school’ of travel writing, to take this genre from a travel
guide to a work of art; the best example of this, in my opinion, is his book
‘The sun also rises’, which describes his travels in southern France and
northern Spain. A must read!
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| A masterpiece of travel writing |
The experience there was great, not many tourists; it
actually often felt like we were the only tourists there. I realized after the
first day that I couldn’t just speak German to everyone like people had
suggested, so that night I learned 10 or 15 phrases in Turkish that made the
next 3 days a bit easier. We wanted to
see the Turkish country side and rented a scooter with which we had two
near-death experiences, mainly due to other drivers (a bus and a truck) not
caring about a small scooter that they could just easily drive off the road.
Despite this, we did see a big part of the real, often-poor Turkey. In
retrospect, I think it was one of the craziest things I have done, once I
became confident with the scooter I was driving in the Turkish freeway/Autobahn
at over 120 kmph with my best friend riding on the back (she definitely had
also a lot of courage and literally trusted me with her life); definitely a
huge adrenaline rush. 
Turkish people were extremely nice and definitely avid sales
people, I was literally manipulated into buying way more stuff than I intended
to. The food was better than expected and often I went to bed so full and
swearing that I would never eat that much again, of course until I repeated the
same cycle the next day. Surely a highlight of the food was the breakfast that
was included with our hotel package, especially the cheese and honey, and more
than anything the fact that we had breakfast at the age of a cliff overlooking
the Mediterranean and across the snowcapped Beydaglari mountains. Our hotel was
right in the heart of the old city or Kaleiçi, which is accessed through the
Hadrian gate that was built for a time when this Roman emperor visited Antalya
when it was then part of the Roman Empire. The really well preserved ruins,
houses, narrow streets and alleyways appeared to have remained stopped in time
for several hundred years. The Kaleiçi had several mosques in it and waking up
to the 6 AM morning-prayers on the loud speakers was a very spiritual
experience. Opposite to the Hadrain gate at the other end of Kaleiçi was the
Antalya port and only access to the sea. At this port we spent a lot of time
seeing the fishermen come every morning with their daily catches, and watching
them play backgammon in their small boats. Everybody, everywhere in Turkey when
not working was playing backgammon, I sure need to learn how to play it. At
this port there were also many people fishing off the pier next to a very large
sign that forbid fishing off the port. In order to assimilate the culture we
bought tackle, line and some weird bait from a vendor next to the pier and
joined in on the fishing; both Rachel and I successfully caught one fish each
(definitely not sea monsters) in a span of 20 to 30 minutes and then gave our
equipment away to a local kid with whom we struggled to communicate. 
