Global Gateway

Last Saturday I gave a little party in a cologne bar named Beehive. Around 20 people showed up and we really had a great time enjoying ourselfes over Kölsch (Cologne beer) and other alcoholic beverages. We managed to drink a 10 liter keg and additional 97 glasses of Kölsch. This makes around 30 liters of beer drank by 15 persons. Not bad! I´m very glad that I managed to get together friends from all over the place; not only from the Cologne/Bonn area but also from other places of Germany. BTW, thank´s again Tobi for organizing the party place. As a present I got a digital photo frame loaded with 500 pictures. What a great idea. Now I can refresh my memories even without switching on my PC.

Unfortunatly, every party finds an end so we had to say goodbye for a longer time. Hope, we can meet again in the US or Germany. Come and visit us in DC if you like to.

Sarah called me in the middle of the night to let me know that she got a full time job as a program officier. I couldn´t really talk but was able to congratulate her for the great interview she must have done. Before she did a three month internship to get to know people that may act as contacts at CSIS. Nevertheless, now we have enough money to pay for the apartement and extra expenses. The good thing is that I can take my application procedure more relaxed. Great job, Sarah! I´m very proud of you.

At the moment we have multiple shows on german TV showing people that emigrate to foreign countries. Many of them aren´t even prepared to face the challenges that lie in front of them. Some don´t even speal the language of the country they move to. Especially when it comes to a business context you should be able to express yourself in an appropiate way. What I did is that I attended a three month business english course end of last year. Based on the Cambridge Business English Certificate one learned to give presentations in english, speak freely, write business letters and get used to business vocabulary. I also attended the offical certification procedure testing every purpose of language skills: reading, writing, speaking, listening. As a conclusion I must say that I feel much more confident after attending this course.

Furthermore, my english teacher Marie helped me a lot with my resume and cover letter. She´s also american, lived in Germany for some years but now went back to Chicago. Thanks again. Hope we can meet again in the US sometime.

Last Saturday I organized a Mercedes Sprinter for moving my furniture to my parents house. Fortunatly, they had decided to buy my kitchen and couches. Otherwise, I would have had to sell them with many of my other stuff at ebay. After selling about 70 different articles I became very sick about it. It´s just to much work to do. Moreover, my guess was that I don´t get an adequate price for the furniture. The big beneficiary of that deal is my youngest brother who still lives in an own apartment beside my parents house. He inherits all that. Now he has a quite new IKEA kitchen with every interior you need and a huge landscape of couches.

We were really afraid that not all of my belongings would fit in the van. However, we made it but had to stack it up to the root of the vehicle. While both of my brothers and me carried the furniture and packed them in the van, my dad disassemled every little piece of the kitchen. After packing everything up we also colored three of my apartment rooms. This helped a lot. Thanks again for the help.

Finally, after driving for another two and a half hours we arrived at my parents house at around midnight. That day was stressfull I have to say. The next day we unload everything from the van and I drove back to Bonn for give back the van to the rental service. Huuh, we made it.

Unfortunatly, I didn´t find the time to write posts in the last two weeks. Be prepared to find some flashback posts on this blog.

One week ago I gave a farewell party for all my colleagues at the office. For about one year I worked for T-Systems Enterprise Services in Bonn as a software engineer and architect. Since I also knew a lot of former colleagues from my time at T-Mobile Deutschland, this party was the perfect place to bring all of them together again. Even our indian development partners, being trained and mentored by us for some weeks in Bonn, came by. The office became quite crowded when all of them had arrived. I guess I had around 30 people in one place. We had some cake and champagne. Thanks for the nice and relaxed time we had and of course not to forget the survival package they gave me as a present. This package contained all I have to get used to in the US e.g. marshmallows, popcorn and a pack of Beef Jerky (who really eats this disgusting stuff – I always thought this is dog food).

This also was my last day at work in Germany. What now lies ahead is moving my belongings to my parents house and cleaning/renovating my apartment. I really hate this. In most of the cases people have to color the rooms because the can move out. Maybe this also is the reason why germans do not move that often or change jobs.

In the evening I met with Markus, Emily, Frank and Axel in the hausbar having live music that evening. Even though I thought that many of the people were a little bit too overdressed and bigheaded, we had a nice time enjoying  some well-mixed cocktails.

Hi, do we really need another blog online? Yes, I need it to document my upcoming new life in some form. I not only do this for myself but also for family and friends. The story is as follows: In about two weeks I´m going to transfer my life from Germany to the US. This means quitting my current job, leaving all people behind that I got to know in my life and building up social and professional environment abroad. For me this is easier than you would normally expect for people emigrating to a foreign country. My wife Sarah is American so it was relatively easy for me to get hold of my green card allowing me to live and work in any American state. Furthermore, everything is set up when I’ll arrive in Washington DC because Sarah already found a job and an apartment. Let´s call it emigration light.

Why do I call the blog “global gateway”? On the one hand, because DC is known to be one of the worlds biggest international airport hubs many people from other countries have to pass before they can go to their final destination. On the other hand, because this blog is supposed to be my own private window to the world to let people know what´s going on here in DC or wherever I will end up.

For all you guys wanting to know what´s happening over there this is the place to check out. I´m trying to keep all the posts in English to improve language skills but you´ll never know.