New Location: Schweinfurt, Germany

In May of this year I was suddenly informed that the school I had a three year contract with in Vietnam was letting me go due to not having enough funding to continue paying me for my administrative role.  This occurred with no warning, and was effective immediately.  

To keep the story short, without details of the ensuing chaos, I immediately focused on a job hunt.  I opened all of my job hunt sites, made contact with friends throughout the world and made myself available on LinkedIn.  Due to the cycle in international school hiring, I did not expect to get many opportunities and thought I would have to wait for something to fall into place. Amazingly, within two weeks I had ten interviews and four job offers with relatively good options and salaries:  2 in China, 1 in Hanoi, and 1 in Germany. 

As I have been wanting to return to Europe for a while I accepted the job in Germany. The location being closer to Latvia and in a small German town, becoming a part of the German social insurance system with a future German pension all seemed attractive,. The school being very small with the offer of being the Diploma Coordinator for only 24 students (instead of the one hundred I am usually responsible for) seemed a great opportunity for me to take on a less stressful role to be able to have a better work-life balance. 

Schweinfurt

Sharing my new location with friends and family was humorous because of the name of this town. It literally translates to pigs' ford (crossing).  My mother kept asking me how she was going to tell people where I lived without laughing out loud.  The town is located in Bavaria, and quite centrally in Europe.  I will be able to travel quite easily to many European locations once I get around to traveling again. (On the map below, the heart is Schweinfurt).

I left Vietnam in mid June and returned to Latvia to sort out moving to Schweinfurt.  I stayed in my Mum's apartment from June to September and almost daily I went to my storage to sort out belongings that I had not seen in a long time.  Some had not been sorted since my last sort in about 2013, and others not since their delivery from Thailand in 2018.  It was interesting peeling back the layers and deciding what to take with me to Germany in the Berlingo that my sister and her husband loaned me.  Three months, 9 suitcases, four boxes, 10 Ikea black and white rectangular bags, one coffee table, and two oak chairs later, I was packed and ready to go.  

I had already secured my apartment at the beginning of August, traveled to my new home town for a few days while staying with a new colleague.  While here I purchased a bed for myself, a fold out couch for my son (more on that later) to sleep on, a yellow arm chair, a clothes washer, and a balcony set for my small balcony.  I was able to move into my new apartment on the same day my work started. 

However, in order to make the move I had to drive two days from Riga to Schweinfurt:  Latvia, Lithuania, Poland (stopping overnight in Warsaw), Germany.  While driving, I realized that the last time I had taken this trip was in 1989 right after the Berlin Wall had fallen.  I drove together with three other friends from Berlin to Riga to what was still Soviet Latvia.  The trip then was very different with poorer road conditions and the need to stop at every border. This time the trip was completely uneventful, just long, with me as the only driver. 

I have slowly settled into the new apartment and job. There have been bureaucratic challenges that I will write about in a separate blog post, but overall I am enjoying living in my new location.  My apartment is located in the center of the city, right next to the old town and the river.

The street is Fischersteig and was likely a street where fishermen lived in the past.  Who knows, maybe the bridge near me is the place where the "pigs crossed" in older times.  Close by is the last working fishmonger, the Rathaus (City Hall), the market place, and the old town which is a walking area only. My grocery store, pharmacy, and all other necessities are within a five minute walk.  The street I live on is relatively quiet and the street behind is quite quaint with older city buildings and cobblestones. My building is only 100 years old in comparison.  The apartment is nicely refinished with a built in kitchen. My son and I often notice the crookedness of the walls and floors - although you wouldn't notice it unless you follow the lines of furniture in the room.

Today is a good example of the uniqueness of my surroundings.  D and I walked to the grocery store to do our shopping, and then we went to the market place to buy some local wine.  Unbeknownst to us there was a fall market selling special items along with the regular local produce market.  

After the market D and I sat down to have some gelato at the local Italian cafe.   It was so good to be able to get German/Italian gelato again and it brought back good memories of eating the same thing in Munster when I went to high school there.  This is what the walking street looks like, and we were at the cafe behind this one.

On the way home we heard the bells ringing from the church pictured below.  These peals are a regular part of our days as we live just around the corner.  On the weekends the sound greets us regularly almost every hour.  Sometimes it seems to be for a service.  Other times we wonder if it is for a wedding or funeral, as the bells do not match a specific time. 

It is still hard to believe that these are the sites and sounds of my new life.  But here I am, enjoying them along with my new job.