Posts Tagged ‘Frankfurt’

It began to snow here in Germany last week. I actually love the look of fresh snow on the streets, but I hate what snow does to your daily life. I commute to Frankfurt every day by train and it just doesn’t work. My train didn’t only have a 30 minute delay on one day this week, I also had to wait at the platform for 40 minutes, which is not very nice, if it is minus 10 degrees.

Even if I like the cold sometimes, I don’t think that I will miss this weather in California. Since I was a child I always wished for a white christmas, but I only want the snow on the actual christmas day and not months in advance or after it.

We swore both our parents to try to come home every christmas. This means we might have the best of both worlds: Nice weather all year long and snow on christmas. The only bad thing about this is, that not only the train stations, but also many airports have to close up due to the weather. So every christmas trip home may end in long long stays at some airports, cancelled flights and a lot of organizational problems.

Sometimes I feel bad these days, because I do not enjoy the snow enough. This may be the last snow I see for a long long time, but maybe a very common saying applies in this situation: You only begin to appreciate certain things when they are gone. Ask me if this is true in 12 months…

So we came back from our last holiday trip to California yesterday afternoon. I am going to tell you more about the ten days we spent there later, but first I have to say reality hit me hard when arriving back home. The hardest thing actually was our flight home. We arrived at LAX pretty laid back and happy, but fast realized that our flight got canceled. And after waiting for a lady from the United staff to finally rebook our flight, the relaxation we gained in the last two weeks slowly faded away. Long story short: We had to wait five hours to finally fly to Washington, than to Frankfurt and finally to Duesseldorf.

The whole vacation actually steadied me a lot in my decision to move abroad. I know that we are doing the right thing, I know that this is our once-in-a-lifetime chance and I know that I love California. But: I also know that the next three months are going to be so hard. Not only, because we have a lot of stuff to do and because we have to part from our family and friends. But mostly, because I want this so bad that I don’t want to wait another three months.

Right now I feel so ready to move and I just can’t. I think that the whole breaking up with your old life thing is really important for the emigration experience, but I don’t like that it will take three months of time. Three months are not much – I know – and I also know that these 12 weeks will fly by in a second. But waiting is one of the hardest things to do in life. And waiting for your new life to begin is even harder than waiting for christmas or anything “normal” like that.

So: I welcome myself back to my german reality and welcome you to my own private rollercoaster that I expect the next three months to be. Fasten your seatbelt and let’s face the hard times!

For this is our last official holiday before the big move, we decided to relax most of the time and just take little baby steps regarding our actual move. One thing we definetely wanted to get done over here is applying for the Social Security number. We actually thought about doing it in Germany, but you have to do it at the consulate in Frankfurt. For me this wouldn’t have been a huge problem, because I work in Frankfurt. But Flo would have had to take a whole day off from work to do it. And: If you apply for the Social Security number in Germany it takes them up to eight weeks to send it to you.

So we decided to take the chance of being in the US now and applied for the SSN on Tuesday. We got up early, because we had no appointment and arrived at the Social Security Administration Office at 9 am when they opened. We only had to wait about ten minutes to get called up by an officer. She actually scared us first, because she looked like a tough officer, but turned out to be really nice. We only had to hand her our passports, Greencards and the filled out application forms and she began typing.

Flo went first and was kind of shocked when she announced that he had to answer all questions of the upcoming interview clear and truthfully. Interview? We actually didn’t know about an interview at all. But don’t get too scared right now: It is kind of basic questions and not that bad. I actually understood the woman very good and Flo guessed some of the questions and sticked answering “no”.

After our interviews the officer handed us two letters saying that we applied for the SSN on Tuesday and told us that it would take Flo’s number two weeks to arrive and mine a bit longer.

So, in a few days we both will be proud owners of our very first Social Security numbers. This is a baby step in the whole process, but feels pretty big and good!