20 cultural difference you rather feel than can explain
Each country has its smell, taste and smaller habits that you can feel more than explain. When you are living abroad, and you are coming home for Christmas, this is a perfect opportunity to explore your own culture with new eyes. You will recognize differences you have not been aware before moving abroad. Here is my selection of 20 typical Germans things that caught my attention after living in the US.
Visiting home as the Expat
I will be flying to Europe tomorrow and living abroad for two years now my feeling about this holiday and coming „home“ has changed a bit. In this blog post, I want to share my view about this. If you are an expat yourself, you might resonate with this, if you are a friend of an Expat this might help you to understand your friend a bit better.
The Expatriation: A journey into the past for modern women?
Since I started my adventure of living abroad and even more after diving into the business behind expatriation, I am fascinated by the shift of gender roles after moving abroad. In this blog post, I want to elaborate a bit about my personal experience with the gender inequalities in expatriation and add some interesting resources I found.
The Impostor Syndrom: Why it is such a big deal for Expats/Expat Partners
I recently joined a webinar about the Impostor Syndrom amongst the Expat community by Monika Evje. It was really interesting and offered a lot of helpful information, so I did some further research and decided to share my learnings in a blog post.
The Expat Syndrom and its best medicine
Especially new Expats are struggling with the so-called Expat syndrome: We tend to see only the negative parts of the new culture we are living in and praise our own culture from back home. It is human and does not define your character. It’s more of a coping strategy of the human brain for an overload of uncertainty and new beginnings. However, this attitude won’t make you happy when living abroad.
News podcasts: Best podcasts to stay in touch with global developments
Here are my personal Top 5 news podcasts I follow on an almost daily basis. Some of them are more for a long drive on the weekend while others are just taking a couple of minutes – informing me about the top news before I had my first coffee of the day.
Going to the dentist: Germany vs. the US
In my mind, you have officially and to 100% moved abroad when you stopped going to the hairdresser and dentist on your yearly visits to your home country 🙂 In my case, it was heavy pain that forced me to say goodbye to the idea of going to my doctors during the next Christmas.
In this blog post, I want to share with you some of the things I realized are pretty different about this visit to the dentist. I would love to learn from your experience. Please comment below what happened to you and if you can resonate with the differences I realized.
Where are you coming from?
Recently, I discovered something amusing about the way Americans introduce themselves to me.
When talking with Americans, I often hear them saying „Oh, I am also German/Italian/Dutch…“
Read my latest Monday Thoughts.
The value of vacation around the globe
What does going on vacation mean to you? If you are coming from a different part of the world than me we most likely have different opinions on that topic. In this blog post, I will drill a bit deeper into the different value of vacation in different parts of the world.
Overcoming the cultural barrier
Cultural difference in the work environment and job application process is only one of the many obstacles Expat Partners face. However, it’s a great obstacle to overcome as you work on it straight away.
Too stupid to order ice cream in the US?
When you move abroad it is often the smaller things in daily life that remind you that you are living outside your known culture. One occasion this week has been ordering ice-cream. The bewildered faces of both, the ice-cream seller and me, would have been ready for stage 🙂 So why is ordering icecream so tricky in the US?
Holding hands, dogs and shopping tampons: The German in US column
The longer you live in a country the more you realize the smaller differences in culture. I picked 3 random smaller things from daily life that amused me over the last weeks. Let me know what you think and if you experienced similar moments!
3 differences in marketing and communication between the US and Europe
Since living in America I experience many differences in marketing to what I was used to from Europe. Technology is changing the way we communicate a lot and I want to share some recent, bewildering experiences I had here in the US.
How life abroad as an Expat Partner changed my life in a positive way
Becoming the Expat Partner is not only about dependency and change in a stressful way but also offers great and unique value. Learn more about how Expat life will change your life in a positive and sustainable way.
Where is home?
Being in three different countries over the last couple of days I got inspired by the question of „Where is home“. Here is my point of view on this topic and I would love to learn more about your opinion.
Going to the gynecologist in the US (compared to Germany)
When you are moving abroad it’s funny how many small things in daily life start to become a big event. For me visiting the gynecologist was one of these moments. In this article, I describe a little bit of my routine visit last week to give you some insights on how different our cultures are in these daily life situations. For my male readership: I know that’s TMI, but if you are curious keep on reading 🙂
Monday Thoughts: Should we stop comparing our cultures?
‘Expat Syndrome’ is a condition whereby many expatriates see mostly either the best of their own nationality and the worst of the locals, or see the opposite.“ My opinion on comparing cultures and what I learnt as a German in America.