I Asked Three Americans Why They Moved to Berlin
The United States of America is the greatest country on earth, the land of the free, home of the brave! The only place where you can get a massive discount on a mattress on a random Monday in February.
But if that’s all true, if the United States really is so star-spangled awesome sauce, then why are so many Americans leaving the U.S. for places like where I live in Berlin? While talking to three American transplants, I found out their reasons for moving to Berlin. And they range from the cost of a burst of appendix to meeting the right woman at a party.
Leaving America
Sofia Anderson is a political cartoonist. She met her German partner in Seattle and followed her to Berlin. But Sofia grew up in rural Washington, outside of Seattle, where Trump’s first election showed the strong divide in her town.
“I was in high school when Trump got elected, and that kind of just spurred the entire town pretty much,” she said. “Confederate flags got brought into the conversation. I had classmates who were getting sent home early because they had Confederate flags on the back of their trucks.”
Trump’s election was a turning point for Lawrence Rush as well, a composer and musical theater teacher who emigrated from the United States in 2021 after 27 years of living in New York City.
“I didn’t really start thinking about it seriously until a certain person became president,” he said. “When the feeling of the country really changed, it didn’t feel the same, even though it probably was the same. We just didn’t really know it. From the moment that day happened, it just felt like a different place, and it didn’t feel like a hospitable place for me.”
“I didn’t want to work 60 hours a day for the rest of my life,” Sofia said. “I wanted to be able to enjoy life. There were mass shootings happening. We had one school shooting where we were lucky enough that the shooter never got onto campus. But it was enough to be like, when I had a conversation with my, who’s now my fiance, we both agreed that we would not be moving back to the U.S. It would be me moving here. It was a very short conversation. It was not a debate or anything. There’s healthcare over here. There are much more opportunities.”
Andrew Bulkeley is a writer and stand-up comedian who’s left the U.S. a couple of times. First as a foreign exchange student, then as a financial reporter based in Frankfurt, and most recently after spending two years living in Portland. A return to Germany wasn’t necessarily in the cards.
Here’s what he had to say:
“We moved everything,” he said. “We paid movers to take everything over there. We bought a house. As a bi-national couple, it was always a goal of like, she wanted to live in America at some point, and I did too. It was important. I wanted to show the kids America.
We thought about it when they were little, but then when you look at daycare costs in America, there’s no way. And weirdly, we missed Berlin, and then there was the Christmas Market terrorist attack. And that kind of freaked us out. I don’t know why.
Then we realized we kind of missed Berlin. The funny thing was, my family was having a great time. The kids loved school. They loved American school way better than German school.
It is a much nicer atmosphere. My wife had a pretty good job. I couldn’t get a job. I was unhappy. And then you start to realize how provincial mid-sized cities are. Portland thinks they’ve invented everything.
And if you’ve been around the world, you realize that actually you’ve invented, you’re just borrowing. And it gets annoying after a while. So it was sort of that. We started to worry that the kids, they’d grown up here, and they were very international. And so their worlds were going to get much smaller than they would be here.
And so it was kind of all these things. And then the terrorist attack happened in Berlin, and we just thought, oh yeah, actually, we really missed Berlin. You feel like we’re not there to help this place that means so much to us. Like as if we would have done anything.”
American Dream
For many Americans, whether they move abroad or stay, there comes a moment where they realize that the story they’ve been told about the United States is just that. A story. And one filled with self-aggrandizing mythology that conveniently skips over the uncomfortable details. Like, you know, Native American ethnic cleansing and skips right to the cool stuff like, hey, we went to the moon, remember that? That was pretty cool, right!?
I was curious what it was like for these American transplants. When did they start turning a more critical eye to life in the United States?
“My idea of the U.S. was very narrowed,” said Sofia. “But even though my parents are still pessimistic towards everything else, they still don’t understand why I left. So they still somewhat think America is the best. And I think it’s also that, like, how you say it, the engraved-ness. That’s just like, you say the Pledge of Allegiance every day for how many years.”
“I thought the Constitution was as important as the Bible,” said Andrew. “And that’s when I started to become a teenager. That’s when I started being surprised that cops were violating people’s rights, that politicians were violating people’s rights. I thought the Constitution was gold. I thought that was the gold standard. You didn’t mess with that. Like, we’ve been able to take all the mistakes everybody else made and come up with this new document that was a better way to govern. And that, you know, the founding fathers, those are, you know, they’re apostles, basically. These were these geniuses.
So I believed that. And then it was when I started in high school, you sometimes had some, like, left-leaning teachers that started to show you the holes in that. And then just looking at the way things were developing, I realized, I don’t know, it isn’t what I thought. But I still had that in me. I still have it in me today. It’s just like something that’s born in you. You can’t get it out.
But even back in high school, I was mad that America did not do more to combat poverty. It was pretty clear to me that the biggest problem in America is poverty. And we have this weird thing that we think people who are poor are weak. And that really, really bothered me. It still bothers me.”
Choosing Berlin
For the first time in recorded history, more Americans moved to Europe last year than Europeans to the United States. Berlin has been and remains one of the most popular landing points for Americans moving to Europe. But how they arrive varies from person to person.
“I looked into Berlin specifically,” said Lawrence. “I’d never been to Berlin. actually, but I’d been to Germany several times. But I knew the most people in Berlin of any city in Europe. So I thought, all right, let me see how this goes. And the more I looked into it, it became more and more possible. And I thought, if I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it. So I did it.
“The very original thing was in middle school, we had to select a language,” said Andrew. “And I just thought everybody takes French and Spanish. Nobody takes German. I’m going to take German to be cool.”
Andrew’s German language skills, solidified during his time as an exchange student, came in handy when it came to finding a job with Bloomberg in Frankfurt.
“Weirdly, back then, nobody wanted to come to Berlin,” he said. “I came to Berlin once and thought this was the best place I’d ever seen.”
“I fell in love with the city,” said Sofia. “It’s the public transportation. Even though I grew up in a city that was very international, it just feels, it feels kind of like a crossroads between countries.”
“What I do like is life is just much calmer here,” said Lawrence. “And it’s funny when I go to the little towns that I teach in and the teachers say, ‘So how do you like Berlin?’ And I say, ‘Oh, it’s like living in the country for me from New York!’
I loved it. When I came here, it was like, when can I come back? I just really vibed with the culture, the food. I love food. I like architecture and nature, the different languages. It was just all so interesting to me.”
“I love not having a car,” said Sofia. “I can’t tell you how many times I’m like, ‘I don’t have a car. I’m not expecting a bill in the mail to pay the car.’ The gas alone, oh my God, I pay the 50 euro ticket. And it honestly, I’m like, I will pay 50 euros any day to save me from the stress. I’ll pay 50 euros a day to not have a car.”
Becoming the Immigrant
The United States is the land of immigrants, a melting pot of cultures from around the world. Modern Americans, at least those who don’t descend from Native Americans, enslaved peoples, or indentured servants — which is a massive caveat, I grant you — are the result of immigrants. Until recently, an American immigrant was kind of an anomaly. But as more Americans move abroad, more are realizing that they are immigrants.
“In my head, I say I’m American,” said Andrew. “But I’m also really German at some level. My life is here, a lot of things are here.”
“That was probably the huge biggest cultural shock,” said Sofia.
”It was being the immigrant.”
“It doesn’t always dawn on me that I’m an immigrant,” said Lawrence. “I am. And when people talk about immigrants, they’re not usually talking about people from the U.S. here. So my brain doesn’t go there automatically, but it’s true, I mean, this is not my country, this is not where I’m from, and this is not where my family is from.”
When I recorded these interviews, Germany was in the final stages of legalizing dual citizenship for non-EU citizens, like myself and Andrew. So I asked him if getting that sweet, sweet, maroon German passport would make him feel even more like a German.
“It would make feel more German, yeah,” he said. “It’s weird, these little symbolic things like that have more of an effect on your psyche than you think. I think for years I didn’t realize that.”
Sibling Defensiveness
With the videos I make on this channel, I get a lot of the same hyperbolic comments. “
The US is a third world country.”
“You couldn’t pay me to live in the US.”
“Amerika is the worst country you can life.”
You get the point.
And although I criticize United States pretty voraciously on this channel, I’ll admit I get a little defensive when people bash the country and the entirety of its 340 million populace based solely on what they know of the United States as a glorified reality television show they see on the news.
So I was wondering if any of my fellow Americans felt a similar kind of sibling defensiveness despite having left the U.S. themselves.
“I do get defensive,” said Sofia. “I’m trying to think of what I would get defensive about, but I do feel like almost frustrated when people insult the U.S., even though I’m like, that’s valid, but you’re not from there. I feel like I can only make fun of the U.S. because I am from there and I have experienced it for how many years.”
“Some of the stuff is true, you know, that they’re hearing,” said Lawrence. “But what I do tell them, and it’s true, the U.S.. is a beautiful country. That aspect of it, to me, is enough to tell people you should experience it and go. So I’ll, I defend it in a way, you know? It’s like, yeah, you’re right. There’s a lot of, a lot of problems, but it is a beautiful country.”
“Part of the reason we moved back, honestly, you think people are opening their front door and dodging bullets, and I thought, I kind of want to see what’s really going on, because when I go there on vacation, it doesn’t feel like that, and I thought I want to see what it’s really like,” said Andrew. “I want to be there, I don’t want to have to look through the CNN lens or the German media lens. I want to go back and see."
“That’s a really good point, it’s like the sibling thing,” said Sofia. “Yeah, the U.S. is not great, but I feel like we support one another, and I feel like we’re very good at activism. There’s a lot of bad to the good, but there’s always somewhat of a balance. We just sometimes look at the bad parts more so, and again, they’re better for television, the bad parts.”
“But I still do think America’s done a lot, right,” said Andrew. “And there’s an hour a day where I think, why do I live here and not in Portland? People online act like, oh, I moved to Berlin, it was some big ideological decision, I weighed the politics. You know what? I moved to Berlin, I met this woman, I fell in love with her, we had kids, and then we thought about it a little bit, but then when you have small children, you can’t move back to America.
Where are you gonna find a job that’s gonna pay you enough to pay for daycare, when you’re living in a country that hands you daycare for free?”
Should More Americans Move to Berlin?
Although I always say that the grass has been greener for me in Europe with how I like to live, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. I’ve touched on some of the challenges in previous videos that tend to get brushed over in Under the Tuscan Sun-esque romanticized notions of moving to Europe.
But in the end, the consensus seems to be it’s worth it.
“Any American should come to Berlin,” said Sofia. “I think it’s a huge 180 compared to the U.S. If you’re coming from Tennessee, oh my gosh, or Oklahoma or anything. I think Seattle, growing up in Seattle, I had more of an art scene and I kind of like dig that about Berlin, because it has such a huge art scene. And I kind of felt at home at times with it, but at the same time, if you’re gonna come to Europe, I think Berlin should be on the number one list, just because it’s so easy to commute, it’s so easy to travel. There are so many Americans in Berlin, even if you’re not trying to find them, like you said, you’ll eventually find one accidentally. But otherwise, it’s just a good atmosphere and everybody’s welcoming, even though they’re German and it might be a little bit cold or we don’t really have the service industry here.”
“I’ll say I came from New York and it was like, ‘Wow, why’d you come here?’” said Lawrence. “Visiting New York is very different than living in New York. When I tell them in more detail the things that were going on there, they’re like, okay, they get it.”
Since recording these interviews, Lawrence shared that he’s seriously considering a move back to the United States. But that’s part of the immigrant experience. People do go back.
But for Andrew and Sofia, they’re definitely here for the long haul.
“We will never move back to the U.S., that’s for sure,” said Sofia. “I could see us visiting at times, but there have been incidents where [my fiance] has come to the U.S. and we thought her appendix burst. And we called the hospitals and they were gonna charge her $30,000 for the surgery because the travel insurance, the U.S. doesn’t take it. And we called Germany and they were like, what are we gonna do? And they wanted to put her back on a plane to bring her back here to get treated by at least European doctors. They didn’t want her to be treated in the U.S. With that, yeah, we probably will definitely stay in Berlin.”
Now the natural question I always get is why and how I left the United States. For me, my reasoning is similar to Lawrence, Sophia and Andrew. If you wanna know how I left, read this post.