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- Moving to a New Country
It’s been 2 months since I (temporarily) moved to San Francisco, almost a year since I left Germany to come to the US, and almost 5 years since I left my home country Albania to move to Germany.
Don’t ask me what home is to me, I don’t know anymore.
I believe that many of you have either moved to a new country or are planning to do so in the near future. This newsletter will be about all the phases and feelings you go through when moving to another country.
Some time ago, during a class at the Technical University of Munich, we were presented with the following graph, the U-curve of cultural adjustment by sociologist Sverre Lysgaard.
I remember when I first saw it, I felt like somebody finally got it right.
When I first moved to Germany, I fell in love with EVERYTHING: the people, the buildings, my university, the coffee shops, nature, and even the culture. Organized people, who are always on time? Loved it.
I even wrote articles about how much I liked Germany and Germans: The German Hug, How Germany teaches self-responsibility to its citizens, How are Germans, really?. I was fully in my honeymoon phase. Can you tell?
Why wouldn’t I be? I felt like a tourist in Munich, experiencing so many new things for the first time. Even though I had my challenges, as everyone who moves abroad does, for example, I changed apartments 7 times within one year, still, I did not miss my home country once. This lasted for a while, perhaps a year or two.
I even experienced a reverse cultural shock when I went home for Christmas after spending only 3 months in Germany. What is a reverse cultural shock? It is a term used to describe feelings of surprise, disorientation, and confusion when people return to their home country and find they do not fit as they used to.
After the honeymoon phase, I entered the cultural shock phase. Things I liked during my honeymoon phase, I disliked now. Sending a calendar invite to meet up with friends? Planning every day, even the weekends? Never being late? No, thank you.
I started to miss home, and that’s when I wrote: I Started to Miss My Home Country, and to my surprise, many people related to it.
You are maybe wondering what happened after the Cultural shock phase. Well, nothing, because I came to the US, and started my cultural adaption from the beginning.
I wanted to share this graph and my story with you, in case you are feeling Big Feelings at the moment and don’t know how to navigate them.
Remember, moving to a new country is not easy, and it doesn’t look the same for everyone. These phases take months for some, and years for others. I also hear often people going directly through the cultural shock phase, and skipping the honeymoon phase. No matter how cultural adaptation looks for you, it will turn out just fine in the end. It doesn’t have to be always perfect, and it probably won’t, but remember why did you decide to be where you are right now.
Sometimes I wonder how will I feel when coming back to Germany. In which phase will I be? Will I have to start the whole process from the beginning?
I will have to wait and see. I might even let you know.
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