Homesick for Britain

[Maninadirndl]

Hello there,

I live in Bavaria, I am a SAHD with two lovely kids who are bilingual. I have a big place and garden and I shouldn't complain. However I am very isolated here. It's hard to connect with locals here on my wavelength. I don't think it's a language issue as I am fluent in German now. My parents have been out here recently and made me miss them and UK more.

Please tell me I am seeing Britain with rose tinted glasses and that life in UK is better in some ways than in Germany. I always tell my wife that we in Britain are generally more polite and less direct for example. My problem is I am stuck here as I haven't worked for four years since becoming a SAHD so at 42 my career prospects are virtually over. Maybe that's not the case in UK but I feel it to be true here in conservative Bavaria where the mother stays home for the kids and the man works.

There's one thing I do appreciate about Germany which I know isn't so in Britain. The absence of idiots on the streets. I can leave my car unlocked whilst doing shop/KG runs and not worry, even leave the front door unlocked overnight in absent mindedness. There doesn't seem to be the underclass here in Germany that we have/had in Britain.

Please convince me that if I came home I'd want to fly back here.

lol!

I'm a bloke SAHD Lillian! I've never worn a dirndl, nor even lederhosen which I think culturally belongs to the local people. I love seeing the locals in "Tracht" on special days here though.I think the Dirndl on women here is beautiful.

I'm lucky that my inlaw family are quite lively and sometimes funny, but generally its all a tad serious here.

I always found it therapeutic to get together with other foreigners to chuckle about German idiosyncracies (their obsession with nudity (in Berlin at least) and barbeques - to the extent that a "No bbqs" notice is required on the Holocaust memorial, are two that spring immediately to mind). As I have stated before on this thread, I love Germany and Germans, but there are some things that it takes another non-German to appreciate.

I'm a Brit living in Rome. I first moved over here in 1995 and spent the next few years being torn between loving my life here and missing the UK (which wasn't helped by the Cool Britannia thing going on at the time-Italy seemed very dated compared to what was being promoted back home). In the end I went back to the UK with Italian DP in toe, stayed there for a good few years and made the most of all the choices it has to offer-buying a house, moving up the career ladder, dp walking into a job easily (a concept which doesn't exist here). We finally moved back to Rome when I was pregnant with ds, by that time my rose tinted glasses had been well and truly and permanently removed. Although I look forward to the few weeks a year I spend in the UK I am always glad to get back here. There are a million things wrong with Italy but at this stage of my life I would much rather be somewhere I can push ds in a pushchair safely through streets after an evening in a restaurant, sitting outside in the warmth, where he has been spoilt rotten by all the waiters. I contrast this to the nice little market town my parents live in where you don't walk to the corner shop after 6 and a selection of restaurants have "no children and no dogs" signs on them. Having said all that it probably helps that I still freelance for a UK company so haven't had to confront the reality of the employment situation here. And the fact that I don't have a daughter so don't have to confront the fact that wanting to be a showgirl seems to be a career choice for many here

gio I flew to Saudi Arabia in 1994. I can remember that time in the Gulf among the Brits. Saudi as an expat destination was drawing to a close - there are still people there but the freedom we used to enjoy of easily blagging our way onto compounds for a pint has gone. What was it like in Italy when Diana died? I remember nice Saudis coming up to me and saying "Sorry about your Princess" genuinely sad for me, and in 1997 my Filipino colleagues who were like brothers, calling me Tony Blair! It was a great time to be in Britain, when I was on repat leave. I'm no city fan but London seemed to have a post Thatcher buzz about it. In 1999 I vowed that if I didnt leave the Kingdom then I'd be there for ever. I flew home - didnt help that my Lebanese boss had ripped out all my computer gear from my office - another story.

I ended up setting up an intranet for some crummy ruppenny Welsh small company whcih went pear shaped in the end - Rhyl in North Wales isnt exactly quite as exciting as living in a semi war zone as Dhahran was - I saw the Patriots cocked for action in 1998 when they bombed Iraq on Desert Fox.

So my hunger for adventure led me to Mongolia - Ulan Bataar where I met my wife who comes from Bavaria. The rest as they say, is....

We've been in Germany for three years now and there are certain things I miss and certain things I don't. Here is so much cleaner - apart from the dog mess on the pavements (!) - and more efficient. I love that there is a little park almost everywhere you look.
The autobahns are insanely fast and people don't smile as much but there seems to be much less fear of random violent crime than in the UK.
I do really miss what could be described as a sense of unconscious competence, when you don't have to think about what the exact translation of something is, but on the upside, you can tune out a lot of the pointless gibbering around you, on adverts or whatever, because it's in a different language.

Feck Gio, I hadn't thought about the showgirls........How long do you reckon before dd is asking for implants?

(my American friend over here is terrified her ds is going to want to be a priest...just to even up the showgirl thing...)

I am a SAHM in Bavaria and really miss the uk too. DH reminds me we have a great house, no dodgy drunks or violence on the streets etc. but some days, like today, I really miss a good old matter.

sorry to scare Bucharest
hopefully by the time your dd is old enough Berlusca and his whole showgirl circus will be behind us, or am I being naive??
hadn't considered the priest idea - am off to channel hop for showgirl type progranmmes to pollute his mind against the possibility from an early age

I have been away from UK almost as long as I lived there. I left at 19yo to work as an aupair for a year in Germany, met DH (the first day!) and the rest as they say...

IMO, the only way to get over being homesick is not to brood too much on life back home and what you are missing. I found that once I stopped getting mum to send me smoky bacon crisps and started appreciating the German food more, that my homesickness wore off a bit.

I do sometimes still miss home, but I know that we would not be able to afford the life we have here if we were to move back. I would certainly have to get full time work to be keep the high standard of living we have here on the continent.

And the strange obsession about paedophiles would drive me mad.

And the fact that people walk around in strappy tops in June, even if it is only 14° because it is summer.

I would like 24 hour Tescos though.

agree mmelindt, only way is not to think too much about it. My first time in Italy I think I spent too much time idealising the UK and what I was missing. It took going back to show me that so much of what I missed was in my head. Now I look forward to going back to see everyone and to stuff my face on M&S food but I accept that my life and my home is here and that is fine. Also think it is a lot easier now than when I was first here due to the difference in communications. First time around I had no internet, mobile, cheap phone package. I called home using a 10000 lire phonecard once a week and that was my lot. A flight back to the North of the UK was with AirIndia at 350 quid or BA at millionaire prices! Now with skype etc I can call every day if I want, I work with the UK market and Ryanair and Jet2 mean that cost is never a barrier to a trip home.
Manina was actually in the UK for the summer when Diana died so experienced the circus from there rather than here.

Someone said earlier re supermarkets offering too much choice in the UK, completely agree! I find it bewildering now to shop there. Am also put off by the suspiciously perfect looking fruit and veg (that tastes of nothing!)

Yeah, (about the perfect fruit) but I'd quite like to find a non-battery-egg.....

We nearly moved back to UK. In fact we decided for sure to do so. Then we visited, went to check out places to live. And woke up pretty quickly. I looked around at the local See we'd just cycled to, sitting in a beer garten and thought we would never ever have this quality of family life in the UK, well, mabybe in some parts, but not near where we need to live. The kids have freedom they would never have in the UK, in the winter they can go skiing every weekend. They can cycle or walk to the local school (well, as of next week), the one that everyone automatically goes to, no nonesense scrabbling for places to get into the 'best' or horrors of being forced to go to a 'failing'.

If your dc are still little, you may not yet be at the point of enjoying many of the benefits, but they will come. We thought long & hard, and came down on this side of the fence.

Still, it can be hard, and lonely and not without it's problems. But moving to the UK is not necessarily going to fix them, probably just bring you bigger more depressing ones.

Scootergrrl - funnily enough things here that might get on your nerves here are entertaining as they are all shown through a different prism. Take their "Pop Idol" - Deutschland sucht den Superstar", It's always fun to compare their "Simon Cowell" - Dieter Bohlen and figure out if he is nastier or nicer than his British counterpart. Their commercial TV here tickles me - the Werbung (adverts) are awful compared to ours. Wife watches our British adverts and often laughs as ours are more attention grabbing and funny but they only sell rubbish stuff. I don't think the Germans are as hooked on TV as we are. Advertising jingles are deep in our culture - "they reach the parts others don't reach" for example.

abroadand miunderstood - where in Bayern are you? I'm trying to drag people to Blindham Tierpark.

glo: the choice in the supermarkets comes at a huge price. Packaging, waste and energy used to transport from all over the world. Bring on the Transition Towns! (mind you our Buggermeister isensuring we transition to a high not low carbon economy!)

And Ernest, for us Oct/November is cycling time. Almost every weekend we load them on the car, and mountain bike the Alps a load then. Its warmer then than UK, and the ride is punctuated by a wonderful beergarden meal. This winter my almost 4yo will learn to ski and so my dream of us being a skiing family will be complete.

On balance all I miss about UK is British people and humour, Thank you people for contributing to this thread.

Ernest and I are hoping to meet and would like to get others along as soon as this bloody rains stops. Anyone else up for it?

I am 20 mins outside of Munich.

I am sitting here with a cup of tea, staring at this unbelievable rain and craving a British cost pub.

I admitted to DH at the weekend that what I crave the most about the uk is not even possible now with two small children. A lie in on a Sunday, then stroll on down to the local shop for The Observer. Roast chicken for lunch in a cosy countryside pub then a walk.

Most of that is possible here yet there is something vital lacking here. I had 50 German lessons but lack the confidence to try to chat in German.

Sigh... I certainly don't want to go back to our house in Bristol city, not when there's a forest at the end of our road now.

Damn this rain. I need some sunshine to boost my mood. Baby has woken, got to go.

abroad: I am also outside Munich. 30 mins down the A8 Salzburg. EtB lives somewhere down here too. I miss a Friday night pub hopping catching up on gossip in my village.

A "Lie In" A What???? I usually have to drag my hung over body out of bed 8.30 Sundays when the babies (3 and 5) wake me up then cycle to the bakery for fresh Semmel (cycle not car - if only to get fresh air). Aha nice leisurely two hour read on an Observer - have to be happy with that online nowadays.

I've been here 8 years and its only recently that I forgot how crap my German is and just got on with it. It somehow clicked - after eight long years I am afraid. I was down my allotment and was gossiping with the next plot owner and they were so nice, trying their English which was a struggle for them that I lapsed into Deutsch to make it easier for them. My advice on German is to go for the Zertifikat Deutsch at the Goethe Institut in Munich if you can. I did a "Superintensiv" course which stressed the hell out of me but i learned with other foreigners like Brazillians who couldnt speak English so I had to chat in German with them. It helped that the room was full of gorgeous girls in my case!

abroad, lots of great beer gartens tho where the kids can play.

come and have a cuppa here. It's due to rain forever still.

You've only been here 5 minutes. the language thing just takes lots of time & exposure.

our tv is always off in this weather Don't watch a lot, but don't like to miss the little I do watch

Aye dear. Fix a date with Abroad and I'll come over. When is it convenient?

Morning

Dh and I have been in Austria for nearly 4 years now, and have been homesick for quite a long time too. We work from home, dh is a musician and we have apartments, children are 1,7 and 9, and it's the isolation which gets to us too.In October we did one of those tv programmes "no place like home" about expats deciding whether to move back (still to be shown on ITV) and we decided to move back, since then we have changed our mind regularly, but at present we're back on the let's move back train of thought. Our place is up for sale, so now we're in limbo whilst we wait. I think it will be a long wait!

Making the decision to move back is even harder than moving here, and i know that when winter comes and dh gets sking again he won't want to move back. Older boys are split, ds1 doesn't mind, ds2 wants to go back and ds3 is way too young for a vote!

Just want to say you're not alone, and if you decide on a meet up between Munich and Salzburg count us in, we're 45 mins south of Salzburg and Ernest and I have been hoping to meet up for abopt a year now!

If we have a meeting between Munich and Salzburg, then it should be in my town!!

Ernest pretty much summed up the reasons why we are still here as well.
The only reason why we would go home is the schools. My children are bright (we are a very academic family), yet they never seem to be able to make the grade here. We now have very good German training for them, based in Munich, but the whole issue's still in the balance.

Maninadirndl, I do think you have a difficult situation, because there are so few SAHDs here. I can understand how isolated you must feel. For your career, have you considered doing some Open University courses to update your skills, or even change career? They cost double what you'd pay in the UK, but they are very good value for money, ime. (Ive done a couple). Have you been to any toytown meetups? I go through Holzkirchen on the train regularly, and there are always English voices on the BOB, so there must be meetups there, I'd have thought.

If you need some more reasons to stay here: grotty tiny houses, dirty streets, crime, lack of public transport, cost of public transport, supermarket monopoly, few independent bakers, butchers and fruit shops, soft bread, expensive to cross the Channel, hard to get place in decent school, swearing, bad behaviour, binge drinking, can't let children walk to school, can't let children go to shops, no rivers to swim in, mountains too far from jobs, no open air swimming pools, cycling too dangerous, earn less money, house prices exorbitant.....etc.

Nightbynight shut up!

I shall talkwith you maybe Monday! We'll exchange emails and phone numbers.

Take care,

MIAD.

Just popping to say it does make me feel just a little better that there are others out there like me, because I am sooooooo homesick too.

I am in Brussels. I have been here 3 years. I hate it. I've always hated it. I know the arguments in favour of the place. We live in a much bigger house than we would do in the UK, the public transport works, there are lots of amenities etc. But it's just not where I want to be. And I reserve particular dislike of what I would describe as "European English". This is something that abounds in Brussels. It is very correct but accented English, which just isn't "right" somehow. And it catches. I have started speaking European English sometimes and I have a deep seated fear my children may speak it too.

But in the end the problem is I miss HOME. I miss my mum and dad. I miss my friends. And I miss everything from M&S to knowing what to do or who to call when something goes wrong with the washing machine. I miss a postal service where things occasionally turn up (Belgian post is an entirely aspirational affair).

I can even say I miss aspects of the NHS - "free on the point of demand" healthcare has something to be said for it. The Belgian system is apparently wonderful, but the paperwork is mindblowing. And my son got C-Difficile in hospital here too! Everyone says its only in the UK you get superbugs and that's a lie, it's just in Belgium they don't tell you ... I happened to read the file when nobody was looking and was incredibly angry to have been so grossly misinformed (and I speak very fluent French and a passable bit of Dutch, so it wasn't as though they didn't have a chance to own up.)

I was back in the UK last week. Driving through the fields of Kent and East Anglia it looked really beautiful, in all its summer Englishness. I went swimming in the sea, sat out at the pub where Adnams is on tap, just cool enough and very slightly cloudy, overlooking the beach. I marvelled at the choice, and the cheapness, of Sainsbury's. I saw my friends from home. I pottered around the house, watered the garden to help my dad out, read the local paper. I bought a huge bag of funky baby clothes in the sale for the price of one pair of petit bateau trousers.

Then I came back to Brussels and I still hate it. And I told my husband, who is not British, again, that I want to go home, and he rolled his eyes and I could see he was thinking "here we go again". And every time we have this discussion it kind of drops back a year or so, becuase my husband doesn't want to move and I don't want to be solely responsible for the decision to move our whole family. And I really fear we could somehow land up stuck here in 20 years time.

It's a REALLY difficult situation. I guess it's my own fault, I should have dug my heels in and shouldn't have come in the first place.

Commiserations to all feeling roughly the same way. I'm going to put the kettle on and have a cup of Yorshire Tea that I bought half price in Sainsbury's now!

rushin I wrote a long missive about being homesick but I am too fatigued to rewrite it so forgive me.

I also feel a complete idiot getting the simplest of things done. The locals who are born here don#t have the first clue how exhausting it is living abroad, doing simple daily tasks is an achievment in a foreign country.

Ahhh rushing - your post struck so many chords with me, it brought tears to my eyes I can relate to everything you say, although I am in a different country.

"...to knowing what to do or who to call when something goes wrong with the washing machine..."

So, so true. I feel so helpless living here, (Spain) simple tasks are such a chore and as Manina quite rightly says can be exhausting.
Nothing is straightfoward, the amount paperwork and the jumping through hoops is so tiring.

I would give anything to get back the feeling of familiarity of just being able to hop in the car and go anywhere I want to without having to plan the route first and worry about what I´ll do if I get lost, take the wrong turn, miss the motorway exit etc...

My husband is also non-British and we´ve got to the point where I no longer mention how homesick I am and how much I want to go back, he is tired of hearing it and has told me that we can´t, not for a few years at least...and I wonder if I can hold out that long...

Hope you enjoyed the Yorkshire Tea. I have my Mum arriving on Tuesday with a copious supply

Babespain - of all the things from home its tea which seems crap abroad. You have to adapt to the local stuff and I can normally - I even drank UHT milk when we hada house in a small hamlet in Dordogne in the 1990s.

I have to admit to being utterly shattered today and not sure why. I bought the plant St. Johns Wort for my melancholy (would never call it depression) and it definitely helps. When bad thoughts come as they do - somehow it doesnt seem to go deeper. It really helps.

I went to the local DIY shop and had to push round two hyper kids after fighting with one to get out of the car when she didn't want to get out, and we were going to buy playsand! Pushed this unwieldy trolley miles then lugged sand on top and came home. If that isnt exhausting I don't know what is!