Long overdue update!
Monday, 13. October 2008, 17:26:16
I am now posting from the fair city of Düsseldorf, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.
As planned, I started my new job here in August. The work is more or less similar to my former position in Portugal so settling in has been relatively easy.
In many ways Germany has really exceeded my expectations! Like I told my mother once, a couple of weeks after I had arrived here, the weather is bad, the coffee is worse but the rest is all great!!!
Düsseldorf is a lovely city and having the Rhein close by makes me feel closer to home. I have always lived near the water and would miss it dearly. But here I have a lovely view of the river right out of my office window. I can even see sheep grazing across it on the green banks.
The people are also a lot warmer than I was expecting. I must admit that being from southern europe my expectations were rather low on that respect, but fortunately here they are quite used to foreigners (after all nearly 15% of the town's population is foreign). And even though English is not so widely spoken as I thought it would be, it's really easy to find someone who speaks a least one other european language aside from German. So when English is not an option I am usually still able to get by with my Spanish, Italian, French or sometimes even Portuguese, while my German skills are still... errr slowly progressing.
The hardest part, as I had expected, is obviously being away from my children and my husband. I knew that coming over would mean being away from them for at least a couple of months. The plan was that I would come over and prepare everything for them, whilst my husband searched also for a job here and they would come once he had got one. There was no way we could forsee just how long it would take us to be reunited, but we gathered our strenght and hoped for the best.
And now our efforts are just about to be rewarded. Bruno has been offered a position here, starting next November and in just under two weeks now we are going to be together again, all four of us.
My German adventure is now turning into our German adventure. Samuel is really excited, he has already come over on a visit for a weekend and is even eager to learn German and make new German friends. Julia is still a little too young to understand the concept of a foreign land or language for that matter, but just because of that I think she will even adjust faster than her brother.
There is a quote from an old Greek historian, Thucydides I believe, that states that "the secret to happiness is freedom and the secret to freedom is courage" and I find that we are living those words. In fact I cannot remember a time that I felt happier, or freer - and that I owe to one moment of brave clarity when we dared to believe that we could take on this challenge, and work to make our lifes better instead of just sit around wishing that things would miraculously start to go the way we hoped.
One thing I have learnt is that the old saying that "good things come to those who wait" is not entirely true. Waiting is a part of life, and wars are seldom won in just one battle but a truer statement would be that "good things come to those who go after them" and persevere in their goals!
[more photos here]
As planned, I started my new job here in August. The work is more or less similar to my former position in Portugal so settling in has been relatively easy.
In many ways Germany has really exceeded my expectations! Like I told my mother once, a couple of weeks after I had arrived here, the weather is bad, the coffee is worse but the rest is all great!!!
Düsseldorf is a lovely city and having the Rhein close by makes me feel closer to home. I have always lived near the water and would miss it dearly. But here I have a lovely view of the river right out of my office window. I can even see sheep grazing across it on the green banks.
The people are also a lot warmer than I was expecting. I must admit that being from southern europe my expectations were rather low on that respect, but fortunately here they are quite used to foreigners (after all nearly 15% of the town's population is foreign). And even though English is not so widely spoken as I thought it would be, it's really easy to find someone who speaks a least one other european language aside from German. So when English is not an option I am usually still able to get by with my Spanish, Italian, French or sometimes even Portuguese, while my German skills are still... errr slowly progressing.
The hardest part, as I had expected, is obviously being away from my children and my husband. I knew that coming over would mean being away from them for at least a couple of months. The plan was that I would come over and prepare everything for them, whilst my husband searched also for a job here and they would come once he had got one. There was no way we could forsee just how long it would take us to be reunited, but we gathered our strenght and hoped for the best.
And now our efforts are just about to be rewarded. Bruno has been offered a position here, starting next November and in just under two weeks now we are going to be together again, all four of us.
My German adventure is now turning into our German adventure. Samuel is really excited, he has already come over on a visit for a weekend and is even eager to learn German and make new German friends. Julia is still a little too young to understand the concept of a foreign land or language for that matter, but just because of that I think she will even adjust faster than her brother.
There is a quote from an old Greek historian, Thucydides I believe, that states that "the secret to happiness is freedom and the secret to freedom is courage" and I find that we are living those words. In fact I cannot remember a time that I felt happier, or freer - and that I owe to one moment of brave clarity when we dared to believe that we could take on this challenge, and work to make our lifes better instead of just sit around wishing that things would miraculously start to go the way we hoped.
One thing I have learnt is that the old saying that "good things come to those who wait" is not entirely true. Waiting is a part of life, and wars are seldom won in just one battle but a truer statement would be that "good things come to those who go after them" and persevere in their goals!
[more photos here]
!
WIDGETIZE