I just found this article in ‘Die Zeit’: Tuer auf fuer Akademiker.

How long will it take the politicians to really grasp the consequences and implications of some of the EU laws they helped define materially several years ago already?

Not just to be selective about their qualifications to obtain a work permit, but also be less regulating and bureaucratic when it comes to taxation of all aspects of private and commercial life and encouraging its people (citizens and migratory workers) to create value by i.e. owning their homes (have you seen the ratio of renters vs home owners in Germany?), establishing businesses, etc…

How does instituting semester fees at universities play into that picture, the de-valuing of the 3rd tier in the 3 tier school system to really be no longer an entry way into obtaining an apprenticeship. And at the same time make it contingent on a single teacher’s personal opinion and estimation as to whether a 4th grader is “suited” for the Gymnasium via the recommendation process at the end of elementary school!!! Let’s not even begin to discuss G-8!!! I could go on and on about that…

One more  point: the recently made decision to increase the transit fees for logistical and transportation industries to use Germany’s Autobahn system.

One can’t increase the milk quota on a cow, but ignore the fact that the cow does need quality sustenance to even be able to produce milk.

One could even draw a pretty extreme conclusion of the bigger picture: does Germany intent to prevent its own citizenry to obtain quality education at home and instead rather pay for migratory academically trained resources that it can be quite selective about in the first place? If so, they are definitely not doing a good job at that either.

P.S. Regarding tuition at German colleges: Focus article. Hessen just decided to abolish tuition again starting with the winter semester this year.

A common saying in the Midwest is as follows: if you don’t like the weather, wait 5 minutes and it will change.

Given the weather patterns over the last two weeks that made the news every time, even internationally, one could almost agree with the above statement. The fact that Tornado Alley runs right through the Midwest doesn’t help the matter much at all either.

In case you hadn’t noticed or heard on the news yet, the Midwest has been hit twice in the last 10 days with severe weather conditions up to and including tornadoes up to F4 strength. Just another one in Northwest Arkansas and Southwest Missouri yesterday evening.

We were headed back North from Branson, MO just as the announcements by the National Weather Service had just begun. Warnings of severe weather, tornado watches and warnings, sirens going off and people being told to see shelter. The supercell was making its way up from Arkansas and into Missouri quite rapidly as we were just coming up Highway 65 to meet I-44 to get around and past Springfield, MO. Not even 30 min after we had left Branson, the supercell hit the area between Branson and Springfield.

The sky takes on a green tinge, clouds are building up quickly and the air is just super still. Then suddenly all weather breaks lose. Rain so thick not even the fastest windshield wiper speed can get you any visibility, winds that take off roofs in a matter of seconds, debris falling from the sky, hail the size of baseballs, …. ugly. And very dangerous!

Tornadoes in the Past

Severe Weather from May 1st and 2nd, 2008 (a)

Severe Weather from May 1st and 2nd, 2008 (b)

Supercell from May 10th, 2008

It is the middle of March. We are aborting the move efforts and packing up the doggies to go back to the States. Will be tacking on a few more weeks with the family at home and fly back in April.

Closing in on the end of week 4 in Germany. The novelty is about to wear off and things are starting to go their regular order: get up in the morning, go to work, come home, eat dinner, sleep and start over.

I have spent the last weekends house hunting. All sorts of houses, all kinds of locations, all kinds of odd landlords… why should it be any different here??? Nothing so far that really catches your eye or holds your breath. And everyone seems to be on the edge as soon as I mention I will be bringing two dogs with me. As if their sacred hardwood floors would take irreparable damage when crossed by doggie paws… Ever heard of little children dropping stuff, playing matchbox on the floor, driving their bobbycar, spilling food and drink,… I guess not.

Starting to pay a little more attention to the cultural transition and the cultural details. One example that just floors me is Aldi. When I lived in Germany last, Aldi was the discount store that one went to in order to pick up the basics, like milk and some cans. Now, Aldi seems to be THE store of choice for most people as it carries almost anything at reasonable prices (boy, did I ever mention the DMark to Euro conversion before???). There are special flyers every couple weeks that list the specialties that will be for sale in the coming weeks. Depending on the season, it could be running shirts, grass seeds or school supplies. And guess what? As soon as the stuff is officially on the shelves, the stores experience this huge run. As soon as the doors open in the morning, a huge number of people already waits to get in and get first dips on the ’stuff’. By 9 or at the latest 9.30 am, the specially advertised items are gone; zip, zero, zilch left.

Since the conversion to the Euro (or the Teuro, which is a play on words for ‘teuer’ = expensive), everyone is so intent on saving money. Not because they would want to for any exzessive rational reason. No, because they really have to. The absolute price tag remained the same, say 1.50 for a stick of butter. While before it was in DMark, it is now in Euros. Not much of a deal, you would think. All that changed was the unit symbol. Well… far from the truth. When the conversion took place, 1 Euro was set at 2 DMark. So in effect, everything had doubled in price over night, while salaries and wages got split in half, nominally. While I am not sure that this is really completely accurate (I haven’t been in Germany for the last 10 years, other than for vacation), it is the strong perception of a lot of people I met. Both my age group as well as older generations. From my limited perspective, I would tend to agree with the perception personally. I used to pick up Focus quite regularly when I still lived in Germany. If I remember correctly, it had run at 4.50 DM or there abouts. Nowadays, it runs 3.20E. Perception…..

Anyway, it is now just amazing how cost conscious everyone has become. Not sure if it had made the front page of all international papers. But the OECD has just published a study of income vs tax burdens within the EU. Germany ranks right up there, but behind Denmark and Sweden, I think…. According to the study’s calculations, German workers receive about 48 cents net for every 1 Euro gross earned once all taxes and other required contributions had been deducted. Interesting…..

Came home today from work. It is quite normal for people to take the bike to work, either the train station or straight to the office. Including me, nowadays. Came home the usual way down the main drag. Had just pulled off of it and into the side street that the house is on, stored the bike in the shed and walked in. Had just picked up my cup of hot tea when a loud noise flew over the house. We all thought it probably was some sort of military helicopter (they do fly about every now and then). But this one was quite loud and really low. Passed, didn’t think of it any further.

About 5 min later, the last family member comes home. And announces that at the junction of the side street with the main drag, a bicyclist had been run over by a car going relatively fast…. the noise had been a lifeflight helicopter coming in and leaving again. Police and ambulance abound, road closed. Not sure yet whether the car was speeding or just had not seen the bicyclist in the misty gloomy afternoon weather. We’ll have to see what the newspaper says tomorrow morning…..

Well, week 3. Been house hunting for quite a while now and not much of interest so far. Had a pretty promising townhouse, but the landlord rescinded his ‘Ok’ at the very last minute…. Almost sounds as if he was ‘convinced’ that two dogs would wreack havoc and irreparable damage to his ‘artisan’ wood floor. Well…. Talk about little kids and associated daily accidents….

Moving on. Also taking the train to my parents’ house pretty much every weekend to visit the girls. Initially, I was somewhat concerned with their speed of getting adjusted (not…), but they seem to have settled in quite nicely. No wonder, given that they are feed beef bones once a week, including the broth, as well as pig ears and other assorted ‘dietary supplements’ on a regular basis. They also do get a daily 90 minute walk… (yeah, they didn’t quite get that with us every day….), including a daily stop at one of the creeks. Regardless of the weather, the Fat one takes a bath every single time. Even if there is a sheet of ice covering the creek.

Talking about the weather. I can’t remember if this is normal for this season, but the weather does indeed fluctuate quite a bit. We have already had several days in the 50s and 60s in February, but also lows of 25 and colder, Fahrenheit that is. The early flowers are already peeking their heads out. According to the weather service, it should snow tomorrow… which would be the end of most of the early flowers.

Last weekend, I had planned to take in a little bit of culture. All prepared, even had a digital camera to take some ‘evidence’, but the weather had to turn into this awful nasty windy rainy cold something all weekend long. In fact, the wind gusts went up to 200km/hr in certain areas, including ours, causing some pretty significant damage all over. I had originally planned to board my customary train in the afternoon on Saturday to take the scenic route across the state border after my cultural outing. Starting out at the local S Bahn station, I took it to the main train station, thinking I would board my train about 10 min early and just settling in and taking a nap. Well….. 

First, I get to the platform and a different train occupies my train’s spot…. Not good. No announcements, no nothing. That train’s departure time was listed with 10 min after mine. Strange. I’ll wait. 5 min till departure time, finally an announcement. Train X usually leaving from platform 8 is now ready to board on platform 15, mine! Same announcement 3 minutes later. Train X finally leaves. Another 10 min pass. Another announcement: the train originally planned for platform 15 going to Y has been cancelled, all passengers please visit the service point for further information. By then, rumors had already spread that last night’s storm and this morning’s nasty weather might have had a more significant effect on public mass transportation than originally anticipated. Unfortunately, when I had purchased my ticket that very morning, no message or announcement had been visible on the Deutsche Bundesbahn’s website. Might have been helpful.

So we all trott inside to the service desk called service point. Already two lines had formed, about 100 km each… A handful of service personnel is trying to address passengers’ concerns while they wait in line. Poor staff. Some of the passengers had been sitting on their respective trains for several hours somewhere in the middle of nowhere waiting for the tracks to be cleaned up. One train even had been sitting for 5 hours…. I vividly remember the middle aged lady who loudly explained her plight to everyone in the entire building. Since we were all bored to tears anyway, it proved to be some rather entertaining side event. Poor staff…. Finally, it was my turn. After I had already found out that my track direction had been adversely affected by the storms (all service was suspended), I just wanted to have my ticket stamped to be eligible for a refund… The lady at the desk probably had been dealing with a huge mass of more or less disgruntled passengers already, so her mood and service committment did lack a little bit by the time I got there. Nevertheless, I convinced her that all I needed was her blessing in the form of a stamp to get my money back. I won’t go into further details about the fruitless conversation I had with her in trying to obtain a good customer service address (to mail the ticket to) and trying to convince her that the address listed on the ticket is nothing more than a business address…. required by law to be printed on each ticket. Same thing as the customary footer of each official business communication letter. Finally, I got what I wanted and made my way back to the platforms outside. Since there was no way of leaving the city, I decided to just take the S Bahn back from where I had come from.

According to the schedule, they run in 30 min intervals. I should just about come up on the next one. Get there, again, another train… The display still shows the train from 1.5 hrs ago…. strange. The wind again had picked up… My ears started to really get cold. So I waited for the next scheduled interval. Needles to say, the S Bahn didn’t show up. What else could I do than wait??? In the meantime, I had started a conversation with another passenger just as tired as I was about the ineffectiveness of the Deutsche Bahn to spread information to its passengers in a timely manner. The main train station that afternoon was a MESS…

Finally, about 1 hour later, my S Bahn finally arrives. I get on, sit down and just wanted the thing to move…. It seemed as if it took its own sweet time that late Saturday afternoon, deliberating whether it indeed would be going down its scheduled train track. 30 min later I was in the same spot I had departed about 3 hours earlier thinking I would be at my destination 80 min later…. And it had started to rain again, too.

Once at the house, I had a hot cup of tea, a little bit of food and went straight to bed. I think it was 6.30 pm. Had a monster headache, frozen ears and cold throughout. Didn’t need another flu episode…. Got up at 8 am on Sunday.

In order for our two girls (2 dogs) to not be quite as stressed as a transantlantic flight might cause them to be, we decided to leave the country via a direct flight. Booking a one way ticket from the US to Germany for that very purpose turned out to be not as easy or as inexpensive as we thought. A one way ticket during our timeframe would have amounted to somewhere in the neighborhood of $2k (through various web sites). Thinking outside of the box, we tried a regular round trip ticket during the exact same timeframe and were quite surprised. A regular round trip ticket only ran about $400 for the exact same route out. Not quite sure why that would be the case, but the round trip ticket quite obviously was a LOT less expensive. So, we booked the RT trip.

Outbound was to leave at 10.30 pm at night, getting into Germany the following afternoon. I had booked that flight previously for a family trip and it was almost empty. Who else would book a red eye flight?? After our girls had successfully made the trip to the airport, I wanted to check them in as early as possible. The ticket counter personnell was quite helpful, but for some reason decided to quote me a completely different price than the phone reservation agent had about 2 weeks prior ($100 / dog). And what a difference it was. Each of the girls was quoted a price of almost $250. To boot, it appeared that only one dog had been referenced in my booking, and for the fact that it had to be reserved and planned for by the airline in terms of space and availability, the agent at the counter also indicated a slight risk that the second dog might not be allowed on board. Nice!

After expending some of my award winning charm and negotiation skills, I was able to book both girls, but had to bite the bullet on the price. Well, so be it. At least the airline has the best reputation for dog / animal safety and also maintains a dedicated veterinary station at our German destination.

Going on board, I had to mention to the main steward that I was traveling with two dogs and whether there was any way he could double check that they had been loaded properly, the AC and pressure adjustments had been turned on. They actually did that and reported back shortly before take off that my two girls were fine and ready to go. After almost 9 hours, of which I slept about 7, we arrived in Germany on a foggy afternoon. The steward again called down to the cargo hold and reported back to me even before de-boarding that my girls had made the trip safely and would most likely already be waiting in the baggage are by the time I made it down there.

And indeed, they slid down the belt at about the same time I got there. The horse was doing just fine and didn’t appear to have had any issues during the flight at all. The fat one, always the more sensitive one, was visibly shaken. She didn’t care for the ride down the conveyor belt at all. After having moved the two kennels onto those standard airport luggage carts (one for each kennel), both girls sat kinda tilted in a corner. Walking up to Customs, the two bright representatives had seen us coming down the hallway for at least 100 m, yet as we approached the pass through, I might as well could have kept going right on through. If I had not opened my mouth and asked them if they wanted to see papers for the girls. At that point, some lightbulb must have turned on and one of them finally piped up and yes, I needed to be seen by the local vet……

The vet was called and came by fairly quickly, took a look at the papers and the girls. Asked me to bring out the first one to check the microchip. She pulls out this scanning device and begins to tell me that this one is a cheap replacement because the primary scanner was broken, and most likely this replacement would not read the microchip after all anyway. Well, and it didn’t. What a waste… But, not to complain, the two girls got through Customs without another glitch and out we were in Germany!

The countdown has officially begun. A few more days, but still several mountains to move.

Most importantly, the girls (dogs) are all set. Last shots and pills were picked up on Saturday.  Started packing clothes, started sorting out the “stuff” into three categories (stays, goes and give away). The adrenaline is slowly raising, the house is getting emptier and emptier. Lots of lunches and happy hours to go to and say goodbye to lots more people…

Keep the faith

My frequency of posts had dramatically decreased over the last several weeks. One big contributor to my tardiness is the fact that we were working on a possible return to Germany. Until that was all done and buttoned up, I just didn’t want to put the word out there…. 

Well, as of this week, it is now official. We are returning back to Germany. Currently hot and heavy in the preparations: the movers’ representative was here earlier this morning to take a pre-move survey, we are sorting through our “crap” and deciding on what goes, what stays and what goes the way of the dodo bird. Our stack intended for Goodwill is growing by the minute. The silver lining of the effort is that we are doing a thorough review of our mess, which has been overdue for quite some time now. We haven’t quite made it to the category of “pack rat”, but we sure weren’t very far off either

Approaching this new chapter in life with a laughing and a crying eye, really. I know it is the right decision (we are moving for family reasons), but we are also taking on additional risk, losing some of our “stability” and trading it in for quite a few ‘ifs’ and ‘maybes’. Blood is thicker than water. We will have a strong family support structure already over there that will make the adjustment and the culture shock somewhat smoother, I hope. Having been gone for roughly 10 years (I “left” initially for my first practical term during college and came home only for about 8 more months thereafter) does mean that a lot of what I used to know / do / was comfortable with has now changed and “evolved”, just like I have.

People in similar situations, I think, who are expecting to return to their “old” life are in for a rude awakening or the surprise of their life. Every time I had gone home in the past for a few days for vacation, catching up with family and friends on what they had been doing so far was very much intriguing. In those circumstances, I really had no tie or connection to the “stories” I was told as I was not there to live through it with my family and friends. That forced distance could be considered a savior in some instances, in some others it was a hinderance I felt very clearly. Now, with our move, that constant balancing act will not change, I am just switching sides, so to speak.

Another two weeks….

An all diejenigen Leser hier die bereits einige Jahre in den  USA gelebt haben. Habt ihr desweilen Gedanken darueber, nach DE zurueckzukehren? Sei es aus beruflichen Gruenden oder familiaeren Gruenden…

Natuerlich ist die letztendliche Entscheidungen eine sehr persoenliche Entscheidung, jedoch wuerde es mich interessieren, was so durch eure Gedanken zieht wenn das Thema angeschnitten wird. Ich bin Mitglied, wie so viele von Euch auch, in diversen Foren und lese natuerlich auch die gaengige Debatte in DE ueber Auswanderungszahlen, wirtschaftliche Lage und Beschaeftigungsdiskussionen im allgemeinen.

Ich bin immer noch am Kopfkratzn, um zu verstehen, ob die groessten Probleme  mehr mit den handwerklichen oder servicebedingten Berufen zusammenhaengen. Wenn ich mir so manche der Auswanderungsshows im TV anschaue, scheinen die meisten der Auswanderer in diese Kategorie zu fallen. Natuerlich zieht es auch eine Menge Studierter, Akademiker, Ingenieure, Aerzte, etc… ins Ausland, aber das war ja schon immer so, nur ist es eben nie so stark in den Medien portraetiert worden, da die Zahlen relativ gesehen wohl nicht so ins Auge der Oeffentlichkeit fielen. Nur meine Meinung oder ist da ein Stueckchen Wahrheit mit dabei?

Ich bin nun selbst schon fast eine Dekade im Ausland und der Gedanke an eine Rueckkehr kommt immer oefters in Gespraechen auf, sowohl mit anderen Expats als auch mit meiner Familie selber. Viele gehen zurueck, da sie kleine Kinder haben (kurz davor stehen), und nicht gerade begeistert mit der Idee von Kindertagesstaetten hier in den USA sind. Ganz zu schweigen von den horrenden Preisen die verlangt werden ($1000 / Monat und aufwaerts scheint so der Durchschnitt zu sein). Da koennte man sich ja eigentlich auch um ein AuPair bewerben, vor allem wenn man dann mehr als ein Kind hat. Die Alternative dazu ist dann natuerlich die traditionelle Oma-rolle in DE. Kostenlos mit Familienanschluss…. Auf der anderen Seite gibt es natuerlich auch den beruflichen Aspekt. DE hat noch immer eine grosse Zahl sehr interessanter Unternehmen, trotz gaengiger Lohnsteuer und kuerzlicher Mehrwertsteuererhebung.

Any thoughts???