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One of the hardest things for me to adjust to, mentally, was that I don't actually want The American Dream (TM): big house in the suburbs, picket fence, 2.5 kids, all that stuff. All my years growing up, I learned from the media, from books, from family and peers, that the outward signs of success were a free-standing house in a good neighborhood, or a townhouse if you had to, and that these were the things good Americans should aspire for and acquire.
So, I got the large house in a subdivision. And after about 10 years living there, I started dying inside. I didn't have contact to anyone that didn't require driving somewhere. I had to drive to the bar, to the grocery store, to the downtown, to the park. (The main good thing was that, being a subdivision with lower traffic, running on the streets where there weren't sidewalks wasn't particularly dangerous.) It was around that time that I started building my plan to move to Berlin, where I felt at home in a way I didn't feel in a lot of other places.
I grew up in Frederick, MD, about 50 miles from DC and the home of Fort Detrick. (It was almost literally in our backyard at the first house we lived in.) At the time (the 80s-90s), it was a fairly small city, but growing as a bedroom community for Bethesda or even DC, as housing prices went up and up in Montgomery County, and Baltimore, to a lesser extent. I've been back a dozen times since my mom moved away around 2004, because one of my uncles still lives there. It's grown very poorly. The terrible intersections around the mall are only worse. The main road into downtown from the south (off 270, at this same horrible intersection) is two lanes. You want a bus? Good luck. The only positive, I guess, is that you can get the MARC train, which will take you to Baltimore (I think) or to a station where you can transfer to Metro for DC. There are tons more subdivisions, many more people, correspondingly increased traffic, and nowhere to put any of it.
Even though I grew up there, I don't feel at home there. I have nostalgic feelings, I guess, for downtown and Baker Park, and the handful of times they flooded the empty field by our second house (by the covered bridge) in winter for an ice skating rink. Could I feel at home there? Maybe, but almost certainly not anywhere I could afford to live.
I like going into DC, because it's alive and has public transit (to some extent, even if the Metro is as old as I am and hasn't been kept up at all), and you can do things there. But you still need a car, pretty much, if you want to do things like get groceries or visit friends/family in MD or VA.
But after the divorce, when I was living in a 2-BR apartment, I spent a lot of time figuring out what I actually wanted. I want an amount of space I can reasonably keep clean/tidy on my own. I want a balcony, and I need a bedroom separate from the living room. I don't want to do yard work, but maybe have a container garden on the balcony. I want to be able to walk to a bus stop or subway station (or both), to grocery stores, and ideally to restaurants, but I'm fine with hopping on the bus to get to one. I don't want to need a car.
There aren't a whole lot of places in the US that meet that description, and the ones that do are unaffordably expensive. But Berlin meets those criteria (although the city has a lot of problems, usually involving a lack of money), and it just feels right to be there.
I'm waiting for this pandemic to be over, or at least under some semblance of control, so that the EU will let us plague-bringers in (because we won't be plague-bringers anymore). My American dream is in Europe.
So, I got the large house in a subdivision. And after about 10 years living there, I started dying inside. I didn't have contact to anyone that didn't require driving somewhere. I had to drive to the bar, to the grocery store, to the downtown, to the park. (The main good thing was that, being a subdivision with lower traffic, running on the streets where there weren't sidewalks wasn't particularly dangerous.) It was around that time that I started building my plan to move to Berlin, where I felt at home in a way I didn't feel in a lot of other places.
I grew up in Frederick, MD, about 50 miles from DC and the home of Fort Detrick. (It was almost literally in our backyard at the first house we lived in.) At the time (the 80s-90s), it was a fairly small city, but growing as a bedroom community for Bethesda or even DC, as housing prices went up and up in Montgomery County, and Baltimore, to a lesser extent. I've been back a dozen times since my mom moved away around 2004, because one of my uncles still lives there. It's grown very poorly. The terrible intersections around the mall are only worse. The main road into downtown from the south (off 270, at this same horrible intersection) is two lanes. You want a bus? Good luck. The only positive, I guess, is that you can get the MARC train, which will take you to Baltimore (I think) or to a station where you can transfer to Metro for DC. There are tons more subdivisions, many more people, correspondingly increased traffic, and nowhere to put any of it.
Even though I grew up there, I don't feel at home there. I have nostalgic feelings, I guess, for downtown and Baker Park, and the handful of times they flooded the empty field by our second house (by the covered bridge) in winter for an ice skating rink. Could I feel at home there? Maybe, but almost certainly not anywhere I could afford to live.
I like going into DC, because it's alive and has public transit (to some extent, even if the Metro is as old as I am and hasn't been kept up at all), and you can do things there. But you still need a car, pretty much, if you want to do things like get groceries or visit friends/family in MD or VA.
But after the divorce, when I was living in a 2-BR apartment, I spent a lot of time figuring out what I actually wanted. I want an amount of space I can reasonably keep clean/tidy on my own. I want a balcony, and I need a bedroom separate from the living room. I don't want to do yard work, but maybe have a container garden on the balcony. I want to be able to walk to a bus stop or subway station (or both), to grocery stores, and ideally to restaurants, but I'm fine with hopping on the bus to get to one. I don't want to need a car.
There aren't a whole lot of places in the US that meet that description, and the ones that do are unaffordably expensive. But Berlin meets those criteria (although the city has a lot of problems, usually involving a lack of money), and it just feels right to be there.
I'm waiting for this pandemic to be over, or at least under some semblance of control, so that the EU will let us plague-bringers in (because we won't be plague-bringers anymore). My American dream is in Europe.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-21 11:42 am (UTC)From:I hope you're able to get to Berlin soon. What are the restrictions now, specifically? I know American tourists are not currently allowed into Canada, but migrants with a visa are (some college friends moved there from Seattle last month).
no subject
Date: 2020-10-21 08:41 pm (UTC)From:This bit (from https://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/faqs/EN/topics/civil-protection/coronavirus/travel-restrictions-border-control/travel-restriction-border-control-list.html#f13919566) applies to my situation: