Driving previous the mountains, creeks, and rivers close to her dwelling in southwestern Germany, Kate Raidt says the surroundings nonetheless catches her consideration. She jokes that she’s “probably the only soccer mom from America who loves away games.”
Raidt appears ahead to the drive from Ulm, the metropolis the place she lives, to Munich for her teenage son’s soccer commitments. “It’s really hard to be in a bad mood when you’re driving through all of this beauty,” she says.
“When you can look out and see the Swiss Alps or hear water running because of a creek or a river nearby, that is something that makes me so happy,” Raidt, initially from Atlanta, tells NCS Travel.
A yr and a half after relocating from the US to Germany along with her son Bodie, Raidt says the transfer has gone “way better than anybody could have imagined,” and that each are thriving.
Living shut to pure sights like the Danube River and the Bavarian Alps has reshaped her each day routine. She’s continually on the transfer — climbing, biking alongside the Danube, visiting thermal spas or going “castle hunting” along with her son.
“That’s probably the biggest landslide win for being over here,” she says, praising a way of life she feels is targeted much less on amount and extra on high quality.
”My bodily well being. My psychological well being… Having such simple, fast bodily exercise at my fingertips utterly saved me.”
The choice to relocate started along with her son’s alternatives. Bodie, a expert soccer participant, had been invited to check out for a number of German golf equipment and obtained presents.
Although Raidt had visited Germany usually — her daughter was born there throughout her marriage to a German native — she hadn’t deliberate to transfer again completely. But her son’s ambitions changed her considering.
She informed him they’d wait till his older sister Conley left for school. “I didn’t want him living alone with a host family, so I decided to go with him,” she says.
Just a few weeks after her daughter graduated in 2024, Raidt and Bodie left the US for Germany.
They began out in an Airbnb in Ulm, a historic metropolis primarily based between Munich and Stuttgart, the place Bodie joined a native staff. “I literally had two suitcases,” Raidt says. “We had no friends. No family. No nothing… So, it was just ready, set, go. Let’s make this happen.”
Raidt says she quickly realized she had a lot to study. One of her first challenges was schooling. Bodie holds twin nationality however wasn’t in a position to enroll in a German highschool as “he didn’t have enough foreign language experience.”
He ultimately joined a world faculty, which Raidt says was a turning level. She bonded rapidly with different expat mother and father.
“We’ve all left our home countries and come here,” she says. Their emotional help, Raidt provides, has helped her by way of troublesome instances.
As Raidt settled in, she gained a deeper appreciation for life in Germany outdoors her distant work for a US-based firm.
She loves the indisputable fact that “people constantly get together for coffee,” in distinction to the US, the place “everyone zips through the Starbucks drive-thru.”
“America only has one city out of the whole entire place that really has a defined culture, and that’s New Orleans,” she says. “So, Germany kind of reminds me of that.”
But there are downsides, she admits. She dislikes the quantity of cigarette smoking and finds some facets of each day life too inflexible, too “black and white.”
Bureaucracy has additionally been difficult to navigate due to the “constant stress of going to government offices and standing in line.”
“Getting a driver’s license in Germany is like passing the bar exam or getting a medical license,” she says.
Securing a household reunification visa, which permits members of the family to be a part of a relative who’s a authorized resident in Germany, was “long and challenging” and required her to join German medical insurance, which prices her round $1,300 a month.
She says some folks in Germany “simply hate immigrants,” and deal with her in another way due to her US accent.
Still, she says the general expertise with Germans has been constructive. She’s made “wonderful friends,” particularly amongst mother and father on her son’s soccer staff.
“None of them really speak any English,” says Raidt. “But it’s forced me to improve my German and kind of meet in the middle.”
Raidt had conversational German from her earlier visits, however she wanted to enhance her expertise to address fundamental occasions like dealing with rental contracts, medical doctors’ appointments and official paperwork. She now takes a four-hour each day language course as she goals to go the fluency examination she wants for citizenship.
“There’s days where I’m like, ‘This is going to literally send me to my grave,’” she says. “But at the same time, it gets me out of bed.”
For anybody contemplating a transfer overseas, Raidt advises selecting a place the place the place they communicate the language already.
“I learned very quickly that if you’re going to live somewhere your language better be better than conversational level,” she says. “Or it’s very hard.”
Raidt finds Germany costly, particularly utilities and notes that “everything’s a little bit smaller” now together with her automobile and her dwelling. But that shift, she says, has clarified what she wants
She felt the distinction sharply when she returned to the US for an prolonged keep in the spring. Sliding again into outdated habits — driving in every single place, sitting at a desk all day — left her “overwhelmed with emotions and stress.”
“Even though I still had the same stress in my life, it didn’t nearly affect me as much once I got back here,” she says. “I think it’s because I was constantly physically moving and getting so much more exercise. It just kept me so sane.”
Raidt has not too long ago revived a former ardour. She’s recording an album 20 years after turning her again on music.
“So at age 54 and no music in my life for 20 years, I’m bringing it back with a vengeance!” she says.
Raidt doesn’t miss a lot about Atlanta, she says, however does yearn for her “mom friends” and had cravings for US quick meals like Chick-fil-A.
She returns to the US as usually as she will to go to Conley, who performs faculty tennis in Nebraska. Meanwhile, Bodie appears to be thriving — a large reduction for Raidt.
“Even if I loved it here, if he was miserable, we’d have to get out of here,” she says. “Because this is all for him. So the biggest win-win is that he’s been doing really well… And it was a big kind of lifestyle upgrade for me.”
The pair presently dwell in a three-bedroom townhouse on the “mountain side” of Ulm, plan to keep in Germany for “at least two more years,” till Bodie graduates from highschool.
Raidt says that the sale of her dwelling in Atlanta felt like the closing of the closing chapter of her life in the US, and he or she doesn’t “have an interest in coming back.”
She’s unlikely to keep in Ulm as soon as her son leaves, however she’s open to staying in Europe.
“Maybe I go to Austria,” she says. “Maybe I go to Switzerland. Maybe I go to Spain… I don’t know. But I would love to keep exploring Europe. I would really love to stay over here.”