Living in a foreign country (Part 1)
"la puerta de bisagra" the entrance to the old city in Toledo, Spain.
By Karin.
This is my story, and on this site I will share with you my personal experience.
I am German. Germany is a nice country with lots of nice people, its just not for me. I never quite fit into the German way of life. That means nothing bad about the country, I'm just saying, I don't belong there. Three years ago, I finally got it together (with my husband, who was my boyfriend then), and we moved to Spain. The main reason why we chose Spain, was naturally the weather. I like sunbathing and blistering hot days. You just don't get enough of them in Germany.
Originally we were going to move to Madrid, because I love Madrid, its a magnificent place, and it seemed like a good place to start. We didn't really plan this very well, so starting right in the geographical middle of Spain seemed like a good thing to do.
When we got there, with our whole household plus two rabbits, a cat and a horse, we realized it was a bit pricey in and around Madrid. To rent out a decent apartment in Madrid was about 1500 Euro a month. Buying an apartment of that price range was out of question. We looked through the newspapers and went to Real Estate agencies, to find out how far away from Madrid we had to go to be able to afford a place. By the way, at that stage our horse was in a stable and we were living in the horse trailer on the side of the road.
Free camping on the way to Madrid. Left: just outside Nimes (France). Right: Horse trailer by day, our bed by night.
Finally, we came to this little town about 100 km out of Madrid, and we bought a piece of land.
We moved here as soon as we could and pitched our tent. At least the horse could roam free now and wasn't confined to a tiny room.
It took us 2 years, allot of sweat and great difficulty (dealing in a foreign language that neither of us spoke very well) to get to thie stage that we had a constructed house, water and electricity connected, and all the required paper work, of course. Our house still isn't officially finished, but we are building a swimming pool now. In the blistering hot Spanish sun its simply a necessity.
We physically built the house ourselves, my husband and I. We were slowed down a bit in the mean time, because I got pregnant and gave birth to a little boy.
The first thing I would say in general about living in a foreign country is, regardless of whether or not you speak the language (it can work for or against you sometimes) and no matter how nice your neighbours are (they are great around here), you will always be a second class citizen. They don't do this intentionally, and if we think about it, we do the same thing to foreigners in our countries. Everybody here is very nice to us, and people love us, because we are different and therefore interesting. But its moments, when you have a small disagreement with someone (of the same nature you would have at home), you do feel the slight implication in the other person's voice: 'in my country I am right, and if you don't like it, go back'.....
Apart from these little things, it is a fantastic experience. You have to start from scratch with everything. You have to learn the new system, how to open a bank account, what companies provide Internet etc, etc. Quite cool actually, even though sometimes annoying. But after you have mastered all the difficulties, you feel really great. I went through the whole experience of pregnancy and giving birth in Spanish, I learned all about their view on certain things, and the best thing: my son is going to grow up multilingual.
I am really happy here in this little town. Its a place where Spanish people have their weekend houses, so Monday to Friday its quiet, but in the weekends its going off...We go round to the neighbours every weekend and their normal days are just big parties. They come here with their entire families (god knows where they all sleep) and have big meals and lots to drink. They are great fun and extremely helpful. Actually everyone we know personally here has been very helpful, its only the anonymous voices on the phones who work for big companies like Telefonica, who can be quite nasty. Same as in Germany really.
I will tell you about these experiences in the following pages. I will also talk about:
I hope you enjoy reading about this.
Karin. |
