Considering we relocated halfway around the world for Andrew’s job, you would think he was the one who enjoyed travelling. Wrong. I met Andrew when he was 22, had never been on a plane and had barely been out of the state. The first proper holiday we took was to Egypt and it wasn’t until we were on the plane that I thought, ‘shit, we’ve got 14 hours until our layover and Andrew doesn’t do well in confined spaces’
Luckily, Andrew is incredibly adaptable and once he realized he could watch anime on repeat and alcohol was already paid for 14 hours flew by.

After that, we started talking about our bucket lists and not to anyone’s surprised, not much matched up. The one thing that did ironically, was moving overseas at some point. In the back of my mind I knew we could always end up in London, on a two-year working holiday visa that would allow us to work and still visit most of Europe on our off time so I didn’t think too much at the time of pursuing other options.

Andrew, an avid Twitter user (if anyone can explain his feed to me that would be great) was chatting to someone about some new program in IT. Apparently this is one of the fields that your company wants you to share your knowledge and help out competitors. Person A (because I’m not sure if he’s cool with his name being published) mentioned they had an opening at the company he was working for and would Andrew like to apply. Little miss (although I’m intelligent have some rather dumb moments) over here asked, ‘why would you fly all the way over to Germany for an interview? That just seems dumb.’ Oh the wonders of Skype.

For reasons I will never fully understand, not from lack of trying but when the sentence starts with ‘ I suggest everyone use Linux…’ my brain goes to mush, Andrew didn’t get the job. He got down to the final few and honestly I could not have been prouder of him. During the interview stage though, we began researching more about Germany and released it kind of had everything we wanted for our next place. The weather, while people complain it’s cold, is amazing for us. Having snow over Christmas and summers that around 25 is pretty close to perfect. Considering I would spend Australian summers hiding under an umbrella smothered in sunscreen, Germany seemed like a perfect fit.

Weird thing about IT is even if they reject you for a job, they still chat with you over Twitter. The more Andrew was talking with these people and seeing how IT companies were run in Germany, the more he wanted to make the move. It was around this time that we said winter of 2017 we would pack up and backpack across Europe and hopefully find something there to make it more permanent. Although our entire life was in Australia, we both wanted something different. The thought of putting everything off until your ‘golden retirement’ or working the same job for 20 years scares me more than all the animals in Australia that want to kill you. Note, we have a lot. 

About 5 months after the first round of interview, Andrew was contacted and asked if he wanted to essentially reapply because the person didn’t work out.  Pretty much on the spot, Andrew was offered the job on the condition that he could get the required paperwork. Although they hire a lot of people outside of Germany, Andrew was one of the first outside of the EU and understandable the paperwork was different. We decided at the stage to keep it a secret. Andrew, who keeps his life on the internet is incredibly private and me, who constantly thinks that karma and jinxes are real, we thought it was better to keep it between us to avoid getting ourselves into yet another contest of who could freak out more over something that hasn’t actually happened yet. 

The next week was constant back and forth with us, Australian Consulate, German Embassy and Andrews new employer. I remember getting a phone call from Andrew while at work saying he received an email from his new employer and he wouldn’t open it until I got home. Again, having a fairly dumb moment, I finished work, went to the gym, went to the supermarket, took some ‘post gym selfies’ returned some calls and finally strolled myself home. I remember coming through our apartment door and having Andrew bouncing with excitement because he had this feeling. Truthfully, I thought he had already read it and was drunk from a rejection email. 

Congratulations! See you soon.
That was the title of the email with some German attachments from the Government granting Andrew permission to work and stay. Just under 5 weeks later, we were on a plane. If you are looking for a way to lose weight fast, pack up your entire life in 4 weeks. You will be so stressed and overworked, you literally have no time to eat. But you will drink. And get so overwhelmed with stress you will wrap yourself in bubble wrap and roll around on the floor.

^^Accurate representation of how my now husband spent our evenings ‘packing’

That month is really a blur. To this day I can’t remember half of what we did. I remember a lot of running around, resigning from work, giving notice on our apartment, cancelling bills, cancelling memberships, move out cleaning, selling furniture, training replacements and trying to find time to see everyone before we left. My shoulders are tensing just thinking about that stress. In hindsight, finishing work on a Thursday, moving out on a Saturday and flying the following Tuesday was not the smartest idea we have ever had. On the bright side, you consume way too much wine when packing up and end up labeling boxes for storage ‘if not opened by 2020 clearly not important.