Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Deciding to make the move

Since coming back from my year of travel, I got back to Ireland just right bang in the middle of the recession. So getting back on the career ladder has been proving extremly difficult. During my year away I had a lot of time to think and figure out what I want to do with my life (ok, I still don't really have a clue), but one of the things I realised was that I still think about my German ex boyfriend a lot. We'd broken up three years earlier after a three year relationship when the long distance got too much. At the time I had just started a new job in Ireland and was getting on brilliantly, and he was still in college, but had another three years to go- higher qualifications. Not to mention in Gemany, people stay in college much later than anyone else- you get people not graduating till they are in their 30s sometimes, it's crazy! But I digress. So I decided to go visit my German Ex for a few days.

During my visit we both realized that we still have feelings for each other. I visited a lot over the next few months- that's one advantage to being unemployed, you have time to go for long weekends, and we got back together. This time he was finally finishing his studies but since the job situation was so bad in ireland, and also because he wanted to have at least one year work experience on his CV, and since I was unemployed, he asked me to come to Germany and move in with him. The logical solution- this time we didn't want to let the long distance break us up and we wanted to give the relationship a proper shot. Even though it made sense, I still resisted the idea a bit- I'd only just come back from a year travelling and was enjoying being home, I'm quite a homebird at heart, and not to mention I hadn't spoken German in years!

So over the next few months, we continued our long distance relationship- visiting each other as often as we could, and I started revising my German and applying for jobs over in Baden Württemberg. The German was tough, but I gradually started getting it back. I borrowed some language learning tapes from the library and chatted to the GerMann in German over skype.

So finally I was called to an interview. This one was in a town that was quite far from the boyfriend, so we wouldn't be able to live together, but seeing eachother at weekends would be better than only every few weeks and it was a good company. However the place was really in the middle of no where and really hard to get to and going to the interview I has a feeling I'd be really lonely living there. Despite all our email correspondence being in German the interview was in English. It went quite well but I didn't end up getting the job. However, I wasn't too disappointed as I knew it wasn't for me!

Now I'm over in Germany again for two more interviews and if I get a job, I guess I'll just stay! And just go back some weekend to bring more of my stuff over. We've also been searching for apartments together, looking for one big enough for the two of us. I am finding this move quite scary to be honest- missing my friends and family and worried about how I'll get on working through German. I know the first few months settling in will probably be the difficult.