- Stephanie Vollmer moved to Germany from South Korea about 18 months ago.
- Vollmer is from Sacramento, California, and said that she experienced culture shock in Germany.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Stephanie Vollmer, a 34-year-old freelance marketer from Sacramento, California, about her experience moving to Germany. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I was teaching English in South Korea when I met my now-husband in 2021. He works for the US military, and I'm a freelance marketer who also runs a travel blog. We're both originally from the US. In January 2022, my husband got restationed in Germany, at which point we decided that I would follow after he moved.
When the opportunity arose, I was excited to start calling Germany home — to travel to other European countries and experience the local culture. Unfortunately, I now completely regret my decision to move abroad to Germany. It's been one of the most difficult culture shocks I've experienced.
After 18 months, I still feel completely unwelcome in Germany
I feel seen and treated as an outsider. I'm half Korean and half white, and I'm unfortunately treated differently based on my looks. I also experience weekly microaggressions in the form of rude looks and comments about my shaky German — even though I still know enough to understand when I'm being talked about. And I feel almost no support from the country as an expat, especially in my access to resources for handling taxes and other residency matters.
Although many Americans have found remote work viable in other countries, my husband and I are already planning to head back to the United States by the end of this year or early 2024. I can't wait to feel welcome again in my home country and leave this experience behind.
I feel like I'm straddling two worlds, and I don't belong in either of them
Regarding the military, I'm here unaccompanied — or unauthorized to join the servicemember in this new location. Therefore, I don't have the same resources as military spouses who are accompanied. I've been on a visa the entire time I've been here.
We weren't married when I arrived in Germany, and only recently married two months ago. Since my husband is leaving Germany soon, it made no sense for me to be accompanied. It made things complicated.
I feel like a trespasser here, like I'm straddling two worlds. The first is the US-military community, which my husband belongs to, but I don't. The second is the German-resident community, which I'm reminded on a daily basis I also don't belong to.
We live in a small German town called Otterberg because of my husband's job
Also, we can't afford to live in a city like Berlin or Frankfurt, which have more young people and other expats.
Most people in our town are older Germans who don't seem to enjoy chatting about the weather with a beginner speaker like me. One time, when I was at a government office doing some paperwork for my first visa, the man behind the counter said that my German should be much better even though I had been there for only a month.
It's a comment I've gotten from many people. I'd heard Germans were blunt, but these kinds of interactions feel different. In the US and South Korea, I was used to people being friendly toward visitors trying to learn the language.
While I feel physically safer in Germany than in the US, which has seen a rise in anti-Asian violence over the past year, I feel distinctly less welcome. At times, I've even felt like a failure.
The benefits aren't worth the hassles and high costs of living
Germany is beautiful. When we go for a drive, I look forward to the rolling green countryside in our town. What stings is the price of admission. I mainly earn US dollars from my freelance marketing gigs, and the exchange rate to euros leaves us with less buying power.
It feels like a lose-lose situation. Gas is the equivalent of $7 to $9 per gallon in Germany, depending on what kind of car you drive. And public transit isn't very accessible in our rural town.
Also, learning German is incredibly expensive and time-consuming. Few people in my small town speak English, so I've taken it upon myself to take classes and learn the language. Each course in the sanctioned six-course program can cost upwards of $500 apiece and requires almost as much time as a full-time job. This high cost of time and money has prevented me from learning it as quickly as I'd hoped.
In other countries, such as South Korea, state-sponsored integration programs offer language classes for free.
Then there's the inconvenience of daily living
In-person shopping takes forever because there aren't big-box stores, and online purchases — excluding Amazon — take up to a week to arrive. Coming from the US and South Korea, where same-day or next-day delivery is more common, this has been an adjustment. And while food doesn't cost much more, certain products, such as electronics, cost considerably more than in the US. Taxes here are extremely high compared to Korea and the US.
Last but not least, I miss being closer to my family. When I lived in South Korea, I was much closer to my dad and my stepmom, who lived in the Philippines. I was also in a more forgiving time zone relative to my family in California. Here, the overlap window is quite inconvenient, and after all these months, I'm ready to be only one or two time zones away.
I'm excited to experience the comforts of home again
One aspect of living in Germany that's been nice is the healthcare. I spend next to nothing on insurance, and I can expense most of my visits and prescriptions so that they're essentially free. This is undeniably better than US healthcare, and I'll miss it. But coming from South Korea, where the care is even better than in Germany, I recognize it's the care, not Germany, that I'll miss.
I've heard it's nice to have kids in Germany, too, but my husband and I don't plan on having any children here because we're planning to move back to the US by early next year. I miss the comforts of being surrounded by people like me — English-speaking working professionals from diverse backgrounds— and the foods from those mixed communities.
Germany offers cuisines from other cultures, but it's nothing like the Asian or Mexican dishes I grew up with. These familiarities are hard to replicate abroad, and I'm grateful my time in Germany has reminded me of what I value most. The experience was worth it in that regard, but it's just not the home for me.
June 15, 2023: This story was updated to clarify that Stephanie Vollmer moved to Germany before marrying her husband, who works with the military, and is currently living in the country unaccompanied.
Correction: June 13, 2023 — An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of the person who moved to Germany. Her name is Stephanie Vollmer, not Bollmer.