Let’s talk about Germany!
The three most common questions we get about our move are:
How long will you be there?
Are you going to sell your house?
Are you bringing your pets?
For the first question, the basic answer is that we will be there at least 3 years, which is the minimum length of the tour. Since we work for the government, there are also other rules and regulations about the length of stay, which means we probably won’t be in Germany for more than 6 years. There is also a chance we could split time between Germany and another location, in which case we could be overseas for up to 8 years. It’s all really complicated and depends on a lot of factors we can’t predict or control — which is why we usually stick to the easy answer of “at least 3 years.”
The bottom-line for us though is that if we’re going, we would like to maximize our time overseas and stay as long as we’re allowed. At least in theory. Neither of us have lived overseas, so there is a chance that we will be ready to come home after 3 years, although neither of us thinks it will be like that. No matter what though, once our tour is done overseas we will almost certainly be coming back to Maryland, which means we need a place to live when we get back. That factor, plus the fact that there is a strong rental market in our area, means we are definitely not selling our house when we leave. Instead, we’re going to use a property management company to manage the house and rental process for us while we’re gone.
The third question tends to annoy us, because of course we’re bringing our pets…. Well, mostly anyway. They are our family and we would never leave them behind. In fact, we never would have pursued the opportunity to move in the first place if we didn’t know they could come with us. We actually first started thinking about the possibility of moving overseas back in 2014/2015, but our old dog Tank was a pit bull and wasn’t allowed in Germany or the UK, which were our top choices for a move. Then for a while we had 4 dogs and 3 cats, which was a ridiculous number of pets to try to move no matter what. But, between 2018 and 2019 our older pets began crossing the rainbow bridge, and by mid-2020 we only had our two Frenchie girls Ghost and Minnie.
Of course, since life can never be simple, once Chris accepted the job in Germany and we had committed to the move, the universe introduced Catticus to our lives, and Catticus is where the “are your pets going with you” question gets complicated. For those who don’t know the story, earlier in the Fall we noticed a cat hanging out in our neighbor’s back yard for several days, but we took him in when we realized that he was starving. Several months and many expensive vet trips later, he is in much better shape, but it turns out that he has advanced heart disease and the best we can do is medicate him and hope that it slows progression. We also realized over Christmas break that we wouldn’t be able to take him with us since the stress of having guests and a few too many encounters with the dogs left Catticus near death. He bounced back once the house quieted down again, but we realized that he could not make the move, which means he will go live with our friend Ray and her family until it’s time for him to also cross the rainbow bridge.
So that’s it for now — the three most common questions we get about the move!
((Other questions we get, which I will answer later: do you guys speak German? Are you bringing your cars? Where will you live in Germany?))
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