shake it up

Living in Berlin for these 8 years has made me feel more European than island-living ever can. Being on the mainland. The idea that you can hop in your car or catch a train to Czech, to Austria, to Switzerland, or keep on going and hit Italy or France. (Not that we did that much of this, having given birth to a child capable of the most spectacular car-pukes within minutes of leaving the house!).

The city has made us friends who don’t know where we’re from, whose parents don’t know ours, who don’t know who we snogged when we were 16. Wonderful, cool, strong, dynamic people we didn’t realise quite how much we would miss until it came time to say goodbye.

This place has been a wonderful teacher, a shit-hot host and is a life-long friend if ever there was one. But for the last two or three years, it began to no longer feel like home.

I guess as we transitioned from a foot loose couple to a family of nearly 5 our priorities shifted. Despite our best intentions, Breaking Bad replaced long late Friday night dinners at Les Valseuses and lazy brunches in Pasternak became kindersport and pizza.

It was hard to put our finger on it, but we felt stuck. Stagnant. We shouldn’t we said. We’re in one of the coolest cities in the world. We can cycle everywhere. The kids have practically free childcare. We’ve got a great apartment. A gorgeous park. But stuck we felt.

Despite the verdant parks and copious playgrounds, I longed for my own patch outside the back door. I wanted to dig and grow and let the kids run around the garden while I washed the dishes.

We wanted to slow things down, stop chasing our tail, not have to earn as much to live as well.

We missed our people, our language, the craic. For the first time in our lives we both started to miss home.

I missed the sea.

It was time to shake things up a little.