How (and why) I came to Germany
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- Опубліковано 4 сер 2024
- People sometimes ask me how and why I moved to Germany. So here's the answer.
Video about Herrenberg: • Destination 2019: Herr...
Chapters:
00:00 From the beginning
00:25 University
01:16 The original plan
02:04 The flaw in the plan
03:13 Plan B
Music:
"Style Funk" and "Hot Swing"
by Kevin MacLeod incompetech.com/
Creative Commons Attribution licence
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Germany
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Hey! I was actually, genuinely interested in hearing about Glastonbury! Not cool!
I have an embarrassingly old video about Glastonbury: ua-cam.com/video/Gq8ODk2kQLQ/v-deo.html -- uploaded in the days when 360p was all UA-cam could manage.
@@rewboss Nice throwback. Yeah, the image quality is very 2009 but we can already hear the kind of good narration you further developed in the following years.
To make it short:
Wo die Liebe hinfällt.
Glastonbury is full of hippies and witches who all drink too much and smoke a lot of drugs, let’s all be honest 😅😂❤
Since this is UA-cam, I thought you were going to give a detailed explanation of *how* you got to Germany, as in the specific trains you took.
Trains, ferries, taxis and if they're wheelchair accessible or not...
Reading aloud all 500 waypoints from Google Route Planner 😄
He probably just flew there.
Parts of your story sound very familiar, Andrew. I came to Germany in 1990 with the idea of spending a year here and here I still am, 32 years later.
Sounds as if Germany is not that bad as British media's usually report.
Hi Ross. You are a great teacher! Greetings from a former student.
@@juergenseeholzer6802 Dunno what British media you're looking at - most of it is very positive to Germany. We're told everything works, runs on time, is efficient, and if you can afford it, buy a German car!
It's only when you start talking to Germans you find out the reality!
@@rogink Well, if you listen to English football fans, you'd think it's 1943.
@@rogink Hi, regarding political themes English media often work with stereotypes like Germans-no humor, Germans-wearing Wehrmacht helmets in English newspapers, Germans-still targeting dominance over Europe etc. Oh yes and the German cuisine only consists of sausages, sauerkraut and beer and German sounds awful. If English politicians in the house of parliament try to gain public agreement by pushing anti German emotions I don't have many doubts anymore. They wouldn't do that if there weren't many English loving to hear such quotes. English win WW2 over and over again even 77 years after which tells more about the English than the Germans.
I went to Berlin to study in 1994 and stayed for nearly 15 years - it was an exciting time, but now I'm back in my small hometown (15k inhabitants) and am so glad that I hear cows + chickens instead of cars and airplanes. But every now and then I try to remember all the things I could do and eat there, I try to remember how Vietnamese food tastes or Mongolian or Indian...
Sehr angenehm erzählt.
Ein ❤ für Andrew.
"I had to get out of the habit of speaking German with a Swabian accent" I've been there. After living for some time near Stuttgart, I found myself coming back to UK speaking something that was technically German but not quite. People were mildly confused. 😅
We had a Japanese exchange student when I was still at school and she was 'unfortunate' enough to come to Saarland. Only after several months she realized that quite a bit of her vocabulary was Saarländisch dialect. But then again, she loved it so much here that she regularly comes to visit, even 11 years later. Her husband (also Japanese) used to live in Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg and Berlin and she lived in Munich for a while. Both said that their favourite state to visit is still Saarland, although it's not really the most beautiful or exciting. That really warmed my heart and after having lived in Schleswig-Holstein and Baden-Württemberg now, I can say the same (tho Schleswig-Holstein was pretty cool too, but I'm not made for Swabia apparently).
I thought I might be be your oldest subscriber, being born in 1949, but the person who is 30 years your senior easily beat me. I lived in Munich 1967-69, and it was a fantastic experience. Have vacationed in Germany too, and still speak passable German.
Thank you for sharing your story. I was curious and really enjoy your channel.
Are you still alive? I hope you have a few more years ahead of you , crazy how time flys by , Life isn't fair
Hallo, Andrew! Das mit Herrenberg hat mir sofort gefallen! Ich verbrachte meine ersten 4 Lebensjahre dort, bis ich 1967 nach Leonberg zog, wo ich heute noch lebe. Herrenberg hat sich an bestimmten Plätzen nicht verändert, was mich sehr froh macht. Übrigens: es wäre mal lustig, Dich auf Russisch zu hören. Kannst Du es noch?
Eine Herausforderung Andrew, Großartig! Greetings from The Netherlands!
Thank you so much for sharing this with us! I have found over the years (I'm 30 years your senior), that life is about unexpected opportunities and having the good fortune of making the right choice. I have been blessed in that way. Stay safe and stay healthy because we need your wisdom and knowledge for years to come (I hope)! Happy holidays to you, your family (yes including your cat) and your friends!
Cool story.
I was an economic migrant moving to the Netherlands for work in 2000. Then I met a Dutch woman, the work ended, so I started a business with my Dutch friend, learnt Dutch fast, being in a shop and talking to customers all day long will help.
Now I have been here 22 years and am the proud owner of a Dutch passport. Still have the British one too, but will never use it.
Well we're glad to have you here :)
Would you please post the gibberish part too? :)
Don't feel old - not everybody watching your videos was born in the 90s and later.
1967 here :)
1962 here 😉
1962 again
@@fastend 2002 🤣🤣
Very interesting story especially your experiences in St. Peter during the late 90s 👍
Would be interesting if you could make a video how it felt in Berlin during that times 😊
Slightly less orderly than St. Peter, but with fewer trolley busses.
You’re the voice of reason. Glad to have you with us. Keep them coming
Good job, joung lady from the utmost north-western corner of Bavaria, you secured one of Britannia's finest sons for ze Vaterland! 😉👍
I'm honestly surprised you didn't have a video on this already
This is an interesting video.
I did go to St. Petersburg around this time to teach English. It was very hsrd: language schools kept collapsing financially and i was out of work for periods of time. It was lonely as i was trying to avoid ex-pat and English-speaking environments. I stayed there a couple of brutal but interesting years and i still csnt speak Russian very well 😂
That's interesting. Never knew you lived in Berlin so long, but that's explains the ponytail I guess haha. Very romantic you moved to that small Bavarian town for love. Well, at least it's near here to Frankfurt.
And then you blink and suddenly you are married, have kid(s) and mortgage :)
Sounds very familiar ;) greetings from Ireland :)
THIS is the most wholesome life-story i ever heard! :D Greetings from just southwest of Bremen
:) Similar story at my side: Went to Ukraine to study, met with a nice young lady and now we're in Germany. at the northernmost tip of Baden-Württemberg. :)
I was wondering what you were telling in the sped up part. Thanks for clarifying.
I'm almost the complete opposite!
In '87 I moved from Berlin(West) to Birmingham planning on spending a year or two there and I'm still here with wife and children an' all.
Funny how you can get stuck in the weirdest places. One difference is that I still have regular if rare contact with most of my German friends.
True friends always remain friends, even with great distances separating them.
Awesome. Germany (and Aschaffenburg) is lucky to have you. Keep making videos, they are very entertaining.
I came from the US in 1986. Still live in a small town just outside of Stuttgart.
Thank you for sharing your story! :)
Very interesting indeed. Thank your for sharing.
Thank you very much for this insight!🙂👍
Fabulous story! Made my day!!
I'm following your channel for years now, but (as a native of Baden-Württemberg) I have just been to Herrenberg last Saturday 😂 -- glad to have you here and three cheers to the lady who made you stay! Greetings from Wiesbaden 🎉
We are very fortunate and happy to have you here Andrew :-)
I'm 1 year older than you, Andrew. Double-majored in German and physics, spent a semester at the Uni Mainz studying in Fachbereich Germanistik, and graduated in 1991. I finished a doctorate in physics in 1998, then moved cross-continent (I'm in the US) to finally be with my then-long-distance boyfriend of 5 years. We married in 2011, and are still going strong nearly 30 years later.
Reading your comment I kind of got an inferiority complex 😅
@@idraote Stop. That.
Stop that right now! I actually have a complex where _I feel ashamed_ of my academic accomplishment because of people freaking out over them and acting with hostility towards me due to their own insecurities. (Not accusing you of doing that, BTW.)
I double-majored for 3 reasons: (1) Physics was my passion since I was 13. I wanted to know how everything worked. (2) I wanted to study in Germany for a semester, which more or less required/caused me to convert a minor in German into a major; (3) Being a language major got me into a better dorm my sophomore and senior years. 😁
I had motivation. A lot of it. And I discovered a passion for language & linguistics along the way.
And, frankly, I'm just plain weird.
@@John_Weiss I am sorry, I had no idea you had faced such hostility. It's sad.
I am indeed a little jealous of people who have focus because that's a quality I lack, but I have been working on that in the last few years and I now try to appreciate what I can do instead of regretting things 🙂
P.S. I like weird. And I like linguistics. I kind of suspect the two go together. Correlation is not causation but... 😄
@@idraote Don't worry about my hangups. It's not your fault.
I just need to find better people to be around, people who don't go after others because of their own insecurities. 😁😉
And you're right that you need to look for things you're good at! In grad school, we learn _very fast_ that there is _always_ someone who's smarter than you, is better at research, is better at General Relativity, is better at …
So you learn some humility _real fast._ _But:_ to also discover, from those people who you are better than you at, say, General Relativity, think that _you_ are better at giving papers at conferences, and admire you for that. So, we also end up having to unlearn "false humility," as well, to _not_ beat ourselves up for what we can't do and acknowledge what we can.
Also? I'm *_53_* … I've had 25 years since I finished grad school to keep accruing knowledge and experience. So don't go comparing yourself to someone when it's an apples-to-oranges comparison. 😉
@@John_Weiss I am 53 too 😀
I've been recently assigned to a new office at work and I have discovered exactly that: my new bosses appreciate things I kind of take for granted (because, of course, I can do them). They have also been nice enough to openly acknowledge them and praise me for them. When I struggle with other things, they say "don't worry, you'll learn in time".
So yes, a reasonably positive attitude, devoid of arrogance, is probably the best way to go.
Hummm... maybe you should do a Q&A video one of these days. I'm sure your audience would be able to throw you some really nice questions.
An age old question finally answered
love it :DD
There are also audience older than you ... I moved from Franconia to Berlin and married a girl not far from Herrenberg .... so greetings from Berlin
Gutes Videos 👍🏻
0:50 the accent thing is super funny, always reminds me of a story one of my old German teachers would tell about an exchange student from China who spent a year in Munich and then went to the Ruhrgebiet, people could barely understand them because the student's Bavarian accent was so thick lmao.
However, I think it's difficult to acquire a strong Bavarian accent in Munich. This city is just too big and too international for that.
BTW, the same is true about acquiring a Swabian accent in Stuttgart and its surroundings.
Same part here, but no so a long yourney, but going from a big city into a small "cow" town in the Vogelsberg (where people speaking a strange language far away from german my dialect), sounds in a special way, the same. Just love 💘
Today is the 14th anniversary of my arriving in Brazil from Spain. It's been pretty good so far!
Was it hard for you to leave Berlin? I assume you had to leave many friendships behind when you left for Aschaffenburg
2:14 When you said that, I was so surprized it made me forget Swedish for a moment, baffledly asking "Wiebittewas?!?" at the monitor XD
Hi, nice to learn about your whereabouts. We are of the same age, so we can feel old together. 🤓
Hi Andrew, I have moved from Tokyo to Melbourne. Please tell me more of your story in the future!
You must also have an interesting story! Melbourne is pretty small, as far as regional capitals go in developed nations, and definitely in comparison to Tokyo
This was my question and now I have the answer. You read my mind. Glad you found The One..... may you both have MANY healthy, happy years together ( and no cuckoo clocks 🤣 )
"Extreme north-west corner of Bavaria" - I right away knew what you meant - nice region by the way. Greetings from Middle Frankonia to Lower Frankonia!
Woah, you're in Aschaffenburg. I had no idea! I wonder if UA-cam recommended me to you because that's the nearest city to me. 🤔
Wunderbar, und viele Glueckwuensche an Dich.
Glastonbury! I visited the very peculiar place a month ago. I think it’s great there!
Such a surprise that you used to live in Herrenberg. I grew up in Holzgerlingen, only a fe kilometers from there. You might wanna visit the new Schönbuchturm if you wanna visit Herrenberg again. It's quite the sight. Viele Grüße aus Tübingen.
Wanna? tsk
so how did you get to germany? by boat? with the train? a breif swim? the aeroplane? we need information!
Hi Andrew, thank you. What exactly do/did you do for a living? Aside from UA-cam, of course.
There's a saying relating to Glasto... "normal for Glastonbury". It also has it's own timezone... Glastonbury Maybe Time (GMT). 😂
I studied German (anbd Russian) in High School and University and had an interest in visiting there, but the real reason was that we met two lovely forestry students from Göttingen while hiking in the Grand Canyon in 1987. They invited me and my buddy to come visit and we could not say no. We came over, my buddy left after five months but I stuck around.
I found a job with a company who was expanding into Russia and they sent me there in 1992-93 and yeah, it was effing crazy. Massive inflation and rotting infrastructure. For that, I had a fully furnished two-room apartment in Tushino for $100 US per month.
That's kind of the expected story. Coming here for some reason, fall in love, and stay. Now I just learned what "some reason" was. Maybe in the next personal story video, you tell us something about your occupation. What das a linguist live from ?
So when's the Rewboss biopic coming out?
Myself being German almost stayed for good in the Liverpool area working in the medical field for fluffy house pets - that was back in the ninenties. But life flushed me back into the most northern capital of Italy at the river Isar 😂. So I retained beautiful memeories of the old days inn Britain back in the ninenties 😊
Aaaahhhhh ... Herrenberg !!! My hometown
Aaaawww that's wonderful! Can we see more of your wife in a video sometime?
More? I don't think she has ever made an appearance... but then again I missed the first 6/7 years of the channel.
Das Leben erzählt die besten Geschichten.
My mother was born and grew up in Aschaffenburg where she met my father, a soldier in the American army (my father is also a naturalized American whose family is German). Anyway, I visited the area in 1974 at the age of 15. What I remember is my mom and her family lived in an area called Schweinheim, and endless point of teasing my Mom endured from my father (and others). I didn't see any pigs in the area, but apparently there were farms there at one point. Do you live near Schweinheim?
It's a sweet story.
GenX born '78. My son is doing an exchange in Germany from America. I think he'll wanna stay
Yay, i went to glastonbury once.
Вы учили русский в университете, неожиданно! :)
Учил... 30 лет назад. Я практичеси всё забыл.
учитывая текущие политические события, я думаю, что русский язык станет неважным языком. людям лучше учить украинский
That is funny. I am British. I've got both passports since 2020 and Scottish roots. At least on my Mom's site. But I am born in Herrenberg, Germany in 1972. My dad is German. He used to be a soldier and was based in Nagold back then. No joke. I did visit this particular town in 2016 for the first time. And also live in Germany since 2010.
"...which makes me feel incredibly old"
Tröste dich, vielleicht stimmt ja auch was mit deinem Gefühl nicht!? 😜
I look up your Videos infrequently , but one thing keep me coming back all the time is the views of somebody from abroad and the way you present it. Absolutely correct and stunningly refreshening. British Humor at work i say. By the way , wish you a good NEW Year ,stay healthy and go on as only you can do. Greets by some swabian who has the good fortune to get around on this globe pretty regularly.
And what has been your profession in germany?
What do you do for a living now?
Interesting video. Didn't know you had spent some time in the Black Country. 👏
Wolverhampton isn't usually considered a part of the Black Country. It's generally thought of as the area around Dudley and Walsall.
kudos for pronouncing Nevsky totally correct)
actually, remembering 93, you would be just fine, reasonably safe and with enough of money, with steadily improving economical situation. But of course right now it would be rather unpleasant to say the least. And for sure Berlin is such a fantastic city, one of the very few which can really compete with the atmosphere of Saint Petersburg, so it was a choice between diamonds and gold, whatever you chose you won.
As a side note, a know a lady from London who spent a few years in ru from the year 95 studying, and it was in Voronezh. while it's by far not half as good as the northern capital, she told me that this was just the best time of her life.
Hopefully, to make you feel a bit younger, I was 46 years old when you graduated from university.
I tried to play the fast forward part at slow motion but still couldn't understand anything.
If it's any consolation I was also born in 1970. Good vintage.
My mom also wanted (and did) to study in Russia, but her parents refused to pay for it , so she got a scholarship and ended up staying there and it was chaos, this was the mid 90’s
(I'm curious)
Can you tell us why you chose to learn German in school?
As the consequence of that initial decision led you eventually to live in a small village in Bavaria.
If you mean "school" in the American sense of "university", he already said so -- because he already spoke the langauge. If you mean it in the British sense of primary and secondary education, probably because most British schools at the time taught French from about age 12 and, if you wanted to learn a second foreign language, it would almost always be German.
At least for us older people (70+) it was clear from the beginning that you have landed in Aschaffenburg because of a woman. 🙂 Even if on winding paths ....
Imagine how curious people are about me, a California kid living in Switzerland, about how that happened.
Achja... Für die Liebe. Die schönstest Grunde für alle Dinge :)
it's always love story eventually
Glastonbury! The one with the festival!
Yep, that's my main reference of Glastonbury as well.
Now, tell us what you do for a living, please.
Did you lived in West Berlin or in East-Berlin?
Does not matter much after 1989
I thought it had something to do with MI6
Mist. Ich hätte das Video erst zuende gucken sollen, bevor ich mit Audiosoftware den Gibberbabber-Teil langsamer rechne, um herauszufinden was du sagst...
1:18 a German expression I know for it is: "Da habt Ihr nicht mal als Quark im Schaufenster gestanden."
‘Da hast Du nicht mal als Magerquark hinter der Theke gelegen”
"Da wart ihr alle noch in Abrahams Wurstkessel!"
So since this this tiny little village is certainly not Aschaffenburg, what is it? I'm originally from Schöllkrippen ...
Mein Tip ist momentan Kleinkahl?
"welcome" to Germany *haha* 🙂 Great story. I would say "more, please", but who has a second life to tell?
Without seeing the video, I assume: Love.
Well yes, but actually no.
Herrenberg!? Now way. Can't belief that (as a Herrenberger ;D)
I'm from New England.
Think about it, your Parents doing that meant that you met that fine woman in Bavaria you get to see every day and presumably do other things as well like make scrambled eggs.
Very interesting. You are a lot happier than if you had settled almost anywhere else in the world. You won life's lottery !
For a video 3 days old, the potato this was filmed on must have grown extraordinarily big leaves already
Watch till end!
So you gave up the opportunity to become an oligarch for life as a small-towner in Krautland? Do you sometimes lie awake at night thinking about your megayacht?
So the sped-up part about Glastonbury was just gibberish? What the hell man?! :D :D
I feel that, so often we men will die where our wives were born.