Stephanie Bollmer says the benefits that come with living in Germany aren’t worth the hassles and high cost of living.
Courtesy of Stephanie Bollmer
Stephanie Bollmer moved to Germany from South Korea about 18 months ago.
Originally from Sacramento, California, Bollmer said she experienced culture shock in Germany.
She experiences weekly microaggressions and misses being closer to family.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Stephanie Bollmer, a 34-year-old freelance marketer from Sacramento, California about moving to Germany. It’s been edited for length and clarity.
I was living in South Korea, teaching English, when I met my now-husband in 2021. He works for the US military, and I’m a freelance marketer who also runs a travel blog. We’re both originally from the US. In January 2022, my husband got restationed in Germany, at which point we made the joint decision that after he moved, I would soon follow.
When the opportunity first arose, I was excited to start calling Germany home — to travel to other European countries and experience the local culture. Unfortunately, I completely regret my decision to move abroad to Germany. It’s been one of the most difficult culture shocks I’ve experienced in my life.
After 18 months, I still feel completely unwelcome in Germany
I feel seen, and treated, as an outsider. I’m half Korean and half white, and I do notice I’m treated differently based on my looks, unfortunately. I also experience weekly microaggressions in the form of rude looks and comments about my shaky German. (I still know enough German to understand when I’m being talked about.) And I feel almost no support from the country as an expat, in terms of resources for handling taxes and other residency matters.
Although many Americans have found remote work viable in other countries, my husband and I are already planning to head back to the United States by the end of this year or early 2024. I can’t wait to feel welcome again in my home country and leave this experience behind.
I feel like I’m straddling two worlds, and I don’t belong in either of them
Here I just feel like a trespasser, like I’m straddling two worlds. The first is the US military community, which my husband belongs to, but I don’t. The second is the German resident community, which I’m reminded on a daily basis I also don’t belong to.
We live in a small German town called Otterberg because of my husband’s job. Also, we can’t afford to live in a city like Berlin or Frankfurt, where there are more young people and other expats.
Our town is mostly older Germans, who don’t seem to enjoy chatting about the weather with a beginner-speaker like me. One time, I was at a government office doing some paperwork for my first visa when the man behind the counter remarked that my German should be much better. I had been there for only a month.
It’s a comment I’ve gotten from many people, unfortunately. I’d heard Germans were blunt, but these kinds of interactions feel different. In the US and South Korea, I was used to people being friendly toward visitors trying to learn the language.
While I do feel physically safer in Germany than in the US, which has seen a rise in anti-Asian violence over the past year, I feel distinctly less welcome. At times, I’ve even felt like a failure.
The benefits aren’t worth the hassles and high costs of living
Germany is beautiful. When we go for a drive, I look forward to the rolling green countryside in our town. What stings is the price of admission. I earn mainly US income from my freelance marketing gigs, and the exchange rate to Euros leaves us with less buying power.
For example, gas is the equivalent of $7 to $9 per gallon in Germany, depending on what kind of car you drive. And out in our rural town, the regional public transit isn’t very accessible. It feels like a lose-lose situation.
Also, learning German is incredibly expensive and time-consuming. There are few people in my small town that speak English, so I’ve taken it upon myself to take classes and learn the language. Each course in the sanctioned six-course program can cost upwards of $500 apiece and requires almost as much time as a full-time job. This high cost of time and money has prevented me from learning it as quickly as I’d hoped.
In other countries, such as South Korea, state-sponsored integration programs offer language classes for free.
Then there’s the inconvenience of daily living
In-person shopping takes forever because there aren’t big-box stores, and online purchases (excluding Amazon) take up to a week to arrive. Coming from the US and South Korea, where same-day or next-day delivery are more common, this has been an adjustment. And while food doesn’t cost too much more, certain products, such as electronics, are considerably more than in the US. Taxes here are extremely high compared to Korea and the US.
Last but not least, I miss being closer to my family. Living in South Korea, I was much closer to my dad and stepmom who live in the Philippines. I was also in a more forgiving time zone relative to my family in California. Here, the window of overlap is quite inconvenient, and after all these months I’m ready to be only one or two time zones away.
I’m excited to experience the comforts of home again
One aspect of living in Germany that’s been nice is the healthcare. I spend next to nothing on insurance, and I can expense most of my visits and prescriptions so that they’re essentially free. This is undeniably better than US healthcare, and I’ll miss it. But coming from South Korea, where the care is even better than Germany, I recognize it’s the care, not Germany, that I’ll miss.
I’ve heard it’s nice to have kids in Germany, too, but my husband and I don’t plan on having any children here because we will move back to the US by early next year at the latest. I miss the comforts of being surrounded by people like me — English-speaking working professionals who come from diverse backgrounds— and the foods from those mixed communities.
Germany offers cuisines from other cultures, but it’s nothing like the Asian or Mexican dishes I grew up with. These familiarities are hard to replicate abroad, and I’m grateful my time in Germany has reminded me what I value most. The experience was worth it in that regard, but it’s just not the home for me.