‘It was hard for our son’: This U.S. couple says moving to Germany was a tough adjustment for their young family

Geoffrey and Sarah, from the U.S., moved to Breisach, Germany with their son in 2023. (Courtesy Geoffrey via CNN Newsource)

They’ve lived in various destinations, including San Francisco and Ireland, over the years but Geoffrey and Sarah say they’ve never felt as at home as they do in Germany.

The couple, who relocated to Breisach, located along the temperate Rhine Valley, in 2023, loves exploring the riverbanks, parks and forests in the charming town, known as the gateway to the Black Forest, with their six-year-old son.

After two and a half years in Breisach, which is built on a hilltop, Geoffrey and Sarah — who have chosen to withhold their surnames for personal reasons — say they’ve been welcomed with open arms and now feel like a part of the local community.

“It didn’t have anything to do with us,” says Geoffrey. “It had to do with the people here that really opened up their hearts to us.”

While they are happily settled in Germany today, the couple says moving there was never part of their plan.

Geoffrey and Sarah, who’ve been married since 2005, were content with their lives in Colorado and had no intention of leaving the U.S. until around a decade ago.

Big decision

Geoffrey says he became depressed after the 2016 U.S. presidential election and began to look at his life there differently. Around a year later, he was let go from his job as a software test engineer.

“That sort of pushed me over a ledge,” Geoffrey told CNN Travel. “I wanted some emotional distance from what was happening around me, and that meant geographical distance.”

As Sarah had been able to obtain Irish citizenship by descent through her grandmother, Ireland was high on the list of contenders as a potential new home for their family, and they began looking into opportunities there, as well as in the U.S.

When Geoffrey was offered a job in Dublin, they felt that this was the right time to make a change.

“If I’d found one in the U.S., we probably would have stayed,” Geoffrey reflects today.

Leaving the U.S. wasn’t an easy decision for Geoffrey and Sarah, who say they had a strong support network in Colorado. They had just completed major work on the house they truly believed would be their forever home.

Instead of selling, they decided to rent out the three-bedroom property to keep it as a safety net. That proved simple, but finding a rental to move into in Dublin, since they couldn’t afford to buy a home in the Irish capital, was trickier.

So they got “creative.” Inspired by friends who’d been living on a boat for years, they bought a houseboat based in the Netherlands and had it moved to Malahide, a coastal town just north of Dublin with a marina.

The vessel arrived two days before they did, in June 2018.

“It could have gone horribly wrong, but it all worked out,” says Geoffrey.

They brought everything they needed, along with their two dogs, with them on the plane. The most expensive part of the relocation was buying the houseboat, which cost around 64,000 euros (roughly US$74,800). Renting space at the marina cost around 435 euros (around $508) a month.

“Given that that was our full-time housing, it wasn’t too bad,” says Sarah.

Ireland adventure

Geoffrey and Sarah spent about five years living in Ireland, staying on the boat for a year and a half before moving into a small house in the heart of Dublin.

“When we were expecting our child, we decided that living on a boat in the Irish Sea was maybe not the best place to have an infant running around,” explains Geoffrey.

After a few years they began to get itchy feet once again, says Sarah, adding that Ireland started to feel a bit “insular” over time, and she was ready to move on.

“I like having a few more opportunities and options, so we were excited,” she adds.

So why Germany? Both had studied German previously, and lived in the country briefly, so German - (and English) speaking countries were at the top of their wish list this time round.

“We’re old, and it’s hard to learn a new language at a later age,” says Sarah, adding that they were eager for their son to be bilingual and had been speaking German to him at home.

They also considered returning to the U.S., but ultimately decided against it.

In 2022, the family of three traveled over to Germany to visit Freiburg im Breisgau, an area where Sarah had previously studied, and found themselves instantly drawn to the nearby town of Breisach, close to the French border.

“We kind of fell in love with the area,” Geoffrey says. “And said, ‘Okay, that’s it. Now, let’s start looking for housing.’”

Once they’d found a suitable home — a two-bedroom apartment — and gone through the buying process, the couple and their son relocated about a year after their first visit.

The family was embraced by locals — with neighbors inviting Sarah for coffee and cake almost immediately,

But while the couple assumed that their son, aged three at the time, was young enough to adapt to their new life easily, this turned out to be far from the case.

“While we were enjoying the warm welcome, and everything about it, our son had difficulty,” says Sarah. “He was just not happy.”

Tough adjustment

She says it took around five months for him to adjust to life in Breisach, and his behavior became disruptive at times.

“We didn’t expect that a three-year-old would have such a hard time moving,” Sarah admits, noting that was extremely hard on the entire family.

Thankfully, things became easier and their son went on to join a Forest Kindergarten, a nature-based approach to early education where kids spend the majority of their time outdoors, and is now thriving.

“They take trips out to the forest to climb trees and forage for berries,” says Sarah, adding that the facility seems like something straight out of J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.”

Two and a half years after moving to Breisach, the entire family feels settled and are confident they made the right choice. Geoffrey now works remotely for a U.S.-based company.

One of the things they appreciate most about life in Breisach is the fact that it’s so community focused.

“I feel like in the U.S., there’s often an undercurrent of consumerism across many things that you do…,” explains Sarah, adding that most activities can feel like you’re simply paying for a service. “Here it feels like you’re more likely to co-create things.

“We’re constantly having experiences where the community is integrated in whatever we’re doing,” she says.

For instance, the town’s local cinema is run by a group of volunteers, including Geoffrey, while Sarah has become a member of the local choir.

As for cultural differences, Geoffrey admits he still sometimes has trouble with the directness of Germans and has to remind himself not to be offended at times.

“There’s no beating around the bush,” he says. “There’s no, ‘Oh, would you mind terribly?’”

They both admit to having some anxiety when it comes to the German education system, which they’ve found to be very different from the U.S.

“The whole school system here is a mystery to me,” says Geoffrey. Sarah adds that she sometimes worries about communicating clearly with their son’s teachers as she’s not as fluent in the language as her husband.

‘We feel satisfied’

On the plus side, they feel that adults have more tolerance for children in public spaces in Germany, and are more likely to interact with children to intervene in situations where a child’s behavior may be impacting others around them.

“In the States, you might get a glare from somebody,” says Sarah. “But here they’ll just take it upon themselves to go and try to make a connection with your child, which I think is a nice approach.”

When it comes to the cost of living, the couple finds Germany to be reasonably priced and are often shocked by restaurant and food costs in the U.S. when they return for visits.

“It just seems so unaffordable,” says Sarah, noting that Breisach may be cheaper than Germany’s bigger cities. “Especially going out to restaurants, there’s a lot lower of a bar.”

Meanwhile, Geoffrey jokes that after living in Dublin, considered one of the most expensive cities in Europe, it sometimes felt as though they were being given things for free in Breisach.

While they miss family and friends back in the U.S., they’ve had many visitors since leaving.

Geoffrey says the family have discussed potentially splitting their time between either the U.K., Ireland or the U.S. once their son has finished school.

“Obviously everything can change, but I’m not feeling homesick for the U.S. at all,” says Geoffrey. Sarah says she is more open to returning than he is.

When their son begins school in September, where he’ll experience sitting in a classroom for the first time, the youngster’s walk to school will take him up an ancient stone stairway that dates back to Roman times, says Geoffrey.

“We think that’s pretty cool,” he adds. “We like the history here. You don’t get that in the U.S.”

Looking back on their move, the couple says they’d advise other families who might be thinking of relocating to a different country to try not to completely commit to a permanent move until they’re sure that it’s the right fit.

“We didn’t sell our house, and we kept a lot of our things in the States,” says Geoffrey, explaining that they finally sold their home in Colorado last year. “Go try it out for a while. Make sure that you like it. Have a plan B.”

Both say that they are pleasantly surprised by how at home they feel in Breisach, as they were concerned that the town, which has a population of around 16,000, would feel too “small” for them.

“We are people who have moved around a lot, and we feel satisfied,” says Sarah. “We feel very content and like we’d enjoy staying for a while.”

By Tamara Hardingham-Gill, CNN