Season 1, Episode 22. What is it like to be an Asian woman in Germany? This week, we hear one woman's perspective. April is from China, and she's lived in Canada, Austria, the United States, and now Germany. Through her time in North America, Europe, and Asia, April has been able to compare people's reactions to her across cultures. We discuss if/when it's acceptable to ask someone about their home country's politics, how to differentiate between a different cultural approach to getting to know ...
Nov 29, 2018•33 min•Season 1Ep. 23
Season 1, Episode 21. What do you call someone who moves to a new country because the person they're in a relationship with got a job offer abroad? A trailing spouse? Bitte nicht! They're an expat partner. This nuance is vitally important, says our guest, Katharina, of the Share the Love blog. When Katharina agreed to move from Munich to Chicago for her husband's job, she was excited to continue her thriving career in a new country. She was shocked and devastated to realize that getting a job wa...
Nov 22, 2018•36 min•Season 1Ep. 22
Season 1, Episode 20. It should be no surprise that our conversation with Friederike Schulte, the director of a German-American cultural institution, had us ping-ponging across the Atlantic. Pennsylvania Quakers! Stuttgart! Silicon Valley! Berlin in the '40s! The Midwest Goodbye! The trans-Atlantic dialogue doesn't hold back on geography. We chat over-assimilation, American heroism, and "that whole hanging out concept." (I'm still chuckling about that.) Plus, Friederike tells us what a German-Am...
Nov 15, 2018•36 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Season 1, Episode 19. Have you ever felt completely fatigued, your energy fully spent, not because of anything in your personal life but rather because of the world at large? Welcome to the feeling of Weltschmerz, one of those wonderfully untranslatable German words, which combines the words Welt, or world, with schmerz, or pain, to create: worldpain. Many of us, expat or not, have felt this over the last couple of years, and in honor of recent violent attacks in America & the US Midterm Ele...
Nov 08, 2018•37 min•Season 1Ep. 20
Season 1, Episode 18. Christin decided to take a break from her life in Germany to do a study abroad year in Charleston, South Carolina, in the hopes of improving her English. Little did she know, she'd meet the love of her life on her first day of classes, launching a whirlwind couple of years, including an engagement, a long-distance relationship, a wedding, and a permanent move to America. Now, she's settled into her life in US and runs the blog This German American Life . She joins host Nico...
Nov 01, 2018•36 min•Season 1Ep. 19
Season 1, Episode 17. It's hard enough to find a job in Germany, but the process of getting all the paperwork needed to finalize a job offer can be an unexpected headache and financial strain. Nicole shares her experience with what paperwork she needed to get a full-time job in her field in Germany. For a full list of resources, check out the blog post here . CONNECT theexpatcast.com Instagram @theexpatcast Twitter @theexpatcast...
Oct 25, 2018•38 min•Season 1Ep. 18
Season 1, Episode 16. Finding an apartment or house in Germany can feel impossible, and it can be incredibly confusing. Some homes are listed without kitchens. What Germany calls a 3-room house is called a 2-bedroom house in America. You might need a resume to apply for an apartment. What?! No fear! Shanon and Nicole break it all down. You can get a full list of resources they recommend here . Plus, Nicole shares how she ended up on House Hunters International! CONNECT theexpatcast.com Instagram...
Oct 18, 2018•37 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Season 1, Episode 15. Did you know that American citizens, no matter where they are in the world, are eligible to vote? With the upcoming November 6 election in the United States in mind, The Expat Cast sits down with Duncan, an American voting rights enthusiast in Freiburg, Germany. We learn how register to vote and how to vote from abroad . Starting at 22:20, Duncan talks about the non-profit Wahlkreis 100% , which advocates for non-EU citizens' right to vote in local elections in Germany. Dun...
Oct 11, 2018•36 min•Season 1Ep. 16
Season 1, Episode 14. Five years ago, Rebecca decided to cut alcohol out of her life. Just weeks after embarking on a sober life, she and her husband moved to Germany, a country famous for their beer and drinking culture. Rebecca shares her experience as one of pleasant surprise, what with Germany's lesser-known strong love for non-alcoholic drinks and with the European cafe culture. The harder part of the move was dealing with the resurgence of her depression. Rebecca talks us through her proce...
Oct 04, 2018•36 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Season 1, Episode 13. In the second half of our interview with Reggie, we dig deeper into how his background in rap and hip hop influenced his expectations for Germany. Why are there kids mindlessly dancing, backs to each other, to Usher in a Freiburg club, when Reggie knew from working with Usher that the whole point of his music was to bring people together? What's the point of going to a club if there's no chance that Destiny's Child might show up? And, in an Expat Cast first, Reggie helps us...
Sep 27, 2018•28 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Season 1, Episode 12. Reggie was enjoying an exciting career in the music industry when Napster came along. Quickly, the industry as he knew it fell apart. So Reggie moved abroad. With minimal research or planning, he flew into Frankfurt, Germany and let the adventure begin. Reggie shares his story with listeners, including how American foreign policy influenced his decision, and what hanging out with Jehovah's Witness groups taught him about the German people. CONNECT theexpatcast.com Instagram...
Sep 20, 2018•31 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Season 1, Episode 11. Anne Thompsen Lord, a mother of four, and her oldest son, Thompsen, sit down with The Expat Cast to share their experience with their family's year abroad. Anne and her husband Errol wanted to spend a year abroad so that their kids could have the gift of a second language, so when Errol's job as a professor of philosophy brought them the opportunity to live in Freiburg, Germany, they leapt on it. They packed up their things, rounded up their 10-year-old, 7-year-old, and 5-y...
Sep 13, 2018•36 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Season 1, Episode 10. Ashley, from Teaching English Abroad , is back on the show, this time with a special guest: her baby boy! Ashley is eight months pregnant when she sits down to tell The Expat Cast all about what it's like to be pregnant as an expat in Germany. Maternity leave, midwives, and Mutterpass - we touch on it all. We also learn that it's fruitless to search for a baby shower card in Germany, where people might envision infants raining down on you in a tub, and we examine how apartm...
Sep 06, 2018•36 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Season 1, Episode 9. Bahar got a taste for the relaxed German lifestyle on a short visit to a village that left her hungry for more. She'd studied English language and literature in Istanbul, so when she heard of an English-language Masters in British and North American Studies in Freiburg, it was a no-brainer to apply. Bahar talks us through her experience getting a student visa in Germany as a Turkish citizen, including what bank account she needed and how a 2017 law introducing fees for inter...
Aug 30, 2018•31 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Season 1, Episode 8. Part of the adventure of moving abroad is assimilating into the culture. But how do you assimilate without giving up too much of your own self identity? How much of who you are is tied to where you're from or where you live now? We sit down with friend of the show Jenny to talk about our own personal journeys to adapt to life in Germany while maintaining our sense of self. We chat clothing choices, minimalism, eating habits, vacation planning, and more. On the way, Nicole le...
Aug 23, 2018•35 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Season 1, Episode 7. Instead of heading to college straight after high school, 19-year-old Izzy decided to take a gap year and head to Germany with the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange ( CBYX ), specifically the Vocational Youth Exchange. CBYX is a nearly fully-funded year-long program that brings American teens to Germany for a year of immersion into German culture and language. While staying with host families, teens work a variety of internships in fields that interest them so that they can ...
Aug 16, 2018•36 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Season 1, Episode 6. In part 2 of a 2-part series, The Expat Cast sits down with wife-and-husband duo, Danielle Tirado Green and Alex Green Tirado. The couple moved to Germany just months after marrying. For Danielle , the move was inspired by her love for post-war French cinema. Her desire to complement her close relationship with French language and culture with knowledge of German language and culture led her to seek out work teaching English abroad in western Germany. Over the year the newly...
Aug 09, 2018•34 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Season 1, Episode 5. In part 1 of a 2-part series, The Expat Cast sits down with wife-and-husband duo, Danielle Tirado Green and Alex Green Tirado. The couple moved to Germany just months after marrying. For Alex, Germany was country of residence number 5. When Danielle said she wanted to move to Europe after graduating, it was an easy thing for Alex's nomadic heart to say yes to. Their adventure kicked off with job hunting woes, language barriers, and, in Alex's case, a broken foot. Alex talks ...
Aug 02, 2018•33 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Season 1, Episode 4. Fulbright Scholar Dane tells us all about his experience in the English Teaching Assistant program. Dane originally heard of Freiburg through friends in college who studied abroad via Academic Year Freiburg, and then again when he was living in Madison, Wisconsin, Freiburg's US sister city. When he applied to Fulbright, he hoped to be placed in the state of Baden-Württemburg, specifically in Freiburg. As luck would have it, his application was accepted and he was off to the ...
Jul 26, 2018•35 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Season 1, Episode 3. We sit down with Ashley Matthäus, who moved to Germany without knowing German and without teaching experience. She was able to start her career as an English as a Foreign Language teacher at language schools that don't require previous experience, then work her way up to the higher paying language schools before becoming the head of the adult language courses at one of the schools. Ashley shares tips, tricks, and lessons learned along the way, and she also shares how she bec...
Jul 08, 2018•36 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Season 1, Episode 2. American expat Jenny came to Germany on a language course, or Sprachkurs, visa. She stayed a full calendar year and took A1, A2, and B1 German courses at the local Volkshochschule, literally, the people's college, similar to American community college. What does one need to get this visa? Jenny talks us through all the details of what you need to get a language course visa, and she and host Nicole discuss the experience of learning German as a first second language for Engli...
Jul 08, 2018•38 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Season 1, Episode 1. What in the world is The Expat Cast, and who are the people behind it? Get introduced to the show, the host, Nicole, and the producer, Gordon, in this inaugural episode. Nicole is an American expat living in Germany since 2017, and Gordon is a dual citizen of America and Germany who grew up biculturally, switching back and forth between the two. How do these experiences compare, and what's up next for them and this podcast? CONNECT theexpatcast.com Instagram @theexpatcast Tw...
Jul 08, 2018•33 min•Season 1Ep. 4
