The city was exciting, and I ran a bakery in a trendy neighborhood. But a string of bad luck forced me to close it in 2021 and file for bankruptcy.<\/p>\n
We decided to leave Berlin<\/a> for the Bay Area, where my husband grew up and has most of his family. I wanted somewhere gentler, without the weight of traumatic memories.<\/p>\n I felt there’d never be any need to return<\/p>\n The process to get a green card<\/a> took three years, during which time I gave birth to our first son in 2022, and felt even more isolated in the city.<\/p>\n No matter how well I speak German, I’d always felt like a foreigner. I grew up in the Scottish Highlands, in the middle of nowhere.<\/p>\n Since our plan was to move to the States, I stopped investing in making life better. I was ready to just turn the page on everything.<\/p>\n She ran a bakery in Berlin.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jessica Jungbauer<\/p>\n Moving to America<\/p>\n In November 2024, we finally moved to Sonoma<\/a>, a sweet town an hour north of San Francisco. I kept waiting to feel we’d “arrived,” but it never came.<\/p>\n A huge missing puzzle piece was my husband’s job. Despite years of experience as a software engineer and endless applications, he got nothing back. It was demoralizing.<\/p>\n Our savings took an enormous hit. Our son’s kindergarten was $1,000 a month for just three hours a day, and groceries regularly hit $300 a week for basics. Going to the supermarket was terrifying and filled me with anxiety.<\/p>\n I remember going back to visit my parents in Scotland and feeling sick as I paid for a basket of shopping, knowing it would cost three times that in Sonoma.<\/p>\n Luckily, we had an electric car in California, so we didn’t have fuel costs. We were on a health insurance policy for low-income families<\/a>, so we didn’t have to pay extra on top of care, although I worried about having a health crisis we couldn’t afford.<\/p>\n We saw my husband’s family often, but his father was dying, and we watched him fade beyond recognition. We felt absolutely powerless. My husband worried he had irreparably damaged his ability to support our family, and it became clear that we couldn’t thrive in the US<\/a> at that moment.<\/p>\n We had to be serious about our options, especially as I was pregnant with our second child.<\/p>\n When the couple was expecting their second child, they moved back to Berlin.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ruth Barry<\/p>\n We moved back to Berlin in December 2025<\/p>\n It meant accepting that I could be miserable again or try to make it work. This time, things fell into place: My husband walked into a good job, which he started two weeks after our second son was born.<\/p>\n Giving birth in the same<\/a> excellent hospital I’d used before felt so comfortable and reassuring. Accessing good public transport and not being wracked by daily financial anxiety has also been transformative.<\/p>\n Germany is a great example of a wealthy country that, broadly, looks after its residents. For example, our eldest, now nearly four, will attend a free bilingual nursery, and we receive support through parental leave and child benefit.<\/a><\/p>\n Berlin can be a rough<\/a>, transient city, but reconnecting with my friends has been grounding. I’ve made some new ones, too, and I can see we will be able to build a more stable community as our children grow.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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