Putting down roots, expat style

For the most part, our coming move is risk-free: we're staying in the same building, after all. I don't have to find new favorite places, new playgrounds, new routes to the train station, new good Small Boy walks; we're just going a few meters down the street. The one change the move will bring will be, of course, the actual apartment. We're going from a single floor layout to a two-floor unit, a change that will have its advantages (I won't hear R giving Small Boy breakfast anymore) and drawbacks (Small Boy is perfectly confident on stairs but it's been really nice not to have to worry about them in my daily life). We'll have the same number of rooms, but each room is a smidge smaller. We don't really need that extra smidge of space but I've grown used to the psychological openness of our spacious main room and I hope I won't miss it too much. You see, I couldn't agree more with what Mausi wrote here: "I think it's so important, especially as an expat, to have a peaceful oasis to come home to after a hard day of dealing with the natives." Especially if you are a non-employed expat, I think your home and environment is crucial to your well-being.

That's why I'm so pleased to have found a place with a little outdoor space in this neighborhood. I'm happy in this neighborhood, and so is R, and I'm not ready to leave here even if we are pretty much paying our maximum allowable rent. A more frugal couple would consider a different neighborhood, but moving to this neighborhood after four years in Small Village changed my life and I'm not ready to move on. The changes, taken one at a time, have been small but taken together they're far more than the sum of their parts. I didn't suddenly find a job - in fact I was employed (in the city, of course) when we lived in Small Village - but I feel closer to opportunities if I wanted them (and closer to child-care that would allow me to take advantage of them). I don't suddenly have more friends than I did two years ago - or, rather, I'm fairly certain I would have met most of these people anyway because I met them through pre-existing networks - but I have far more acquaintances and far more casual interactions with people than I used to. I think the few new opportunities that have come up, like writing for a local English-language magazine, could have been exploited anyway because they are language- and not place-dependent; I e-mail my contributions to the editor anyway. It's not as if moving to the city has solved all my problems. It's simply that I feel like I belong here in the city more than I ever belonged in Small Village.

I've grown terribly fond of this city; we're a good fit. Bern isn't for everyone - it's rather staid and slow to change even by Swiss standards and doesn't have much of a local "scene." Almost all of the exciting concerts or interesting art exhibits go to Zurich, the international organizations are located in Geneva, the bio-tech research firms (and the money they bring) to Basel. If you're a Manhattan kind of person, Bern would probably slowly bore you to death; if you think living in the national capital would be like living in Washington, DC, you'd be disappointed. But I'm happy here. It's a good fit. There's something about the city that has captured my heart. That makes me smile. That makes me feel, like Christina wrote here, grateful to have found this place.