farewell, my lovely

hello again, and sorry about the long silence!

two days after my last post T and I received an email we had been waiting for quite a while,
and since then everything has been a bit of a blur.
we will be moving back to Germany at the beginning of January!

T was offered a job in Stuttgart starting this January, and although we are now leaving NY a little earlier than we thought,
it seemed like the perfect chance to move back to our home country, which we were planning to do some time in the next year anyways.

While NY as a city is amazing I was often tired of the long distances and the crowds
(especially in Manhattan and during rush hour), of too many people that seem to be constantly on the edge.
On weekends I loved the city, but during the week I felt it was taking so much of my energy.
I also often felt a bit isolated from my family and friends over here,
like I was in a good place, but on the wrong continent!

I am looking forward to living in Germany again(we've been abroad for five years now),
having all our belongings in one place for the first time, being closer to our families and many of our friends,
and the general feeling of having arrived in a place where we will be staying for a while.
I'm not a good nomad, it takes me a a long time to really feel at home in a new place,
but this next time we have no plans to move on, at least for now.

I am a little sad that we don't have much time to say farewell to the city, but maybe it's better that way,
at least we will make sure we come visit again soon.

We have booked our moving company for January 3rd, said goodbye to a lot of friends and colleagues already,
and are flying to California for a week tomorrow morning, to make sure we see a little more of this country
before we leave.

Thank you for listening! I wish you happy holidays and a great new year,
some time to relax with your favorite people, and to do your favorite things.
Thank you for visiting this place these past 12 months, and thank you for all your comments.
I'm often not very good at responding, but I read every single one of them, and they make me very happy.

The two pictures above show some of the things that I will miss very much:
the view from our apartment, with the sun rising between the buildings and shining into ours,
and our Saturday mornings, having breakfast while listening to Wait Wait don't tell me and Jonathan Schwartz on WNYC
followed by a walk around the neighborhood to take T's shirts to the dry cleaner.

Love,
Christine