Moving Experience

MOVING EXPERIENCES

I once travelled around Japan with a British friend who was living there. Each new Japanese problem – why was it impossible to find any address in Tokyo? – made me want to gohome. But my friend would look up from the Japanese grammar book that he carried everywhere, try to understand the Japanese reasoning and then interpret it in the most generous way possible. He treatedthe whole country as a friend he had yet to make. I now see that he was the perfect expatriate. Many years later, he is still happy in Tokyo.
About 200 million people, or 3 per cent of the world’spopulation, already live outside their home countries, and relocation continues to rise. Each country presents its own oddities. In Germany, childcare is hard to come by. In the Netherlands, it’s hardto arrange for cooked dinners to be delivered. In the US, without an American credit history, you might not get a credit card, and without a credit card, you will no exist. To survive, you shouldemigrate with more official documents than you could possibly need and hire a relocation agent, especially if your company is paying. These people can do everything from putting your new apartment in theirnames to sitting with you at your rented kitchen table as you burst into tears.
“you will do things wrong; it’s normal,” says Soledad Aguirre of Statim Relocation in Madrid.
“In our interculturaltraining programmes, there’s a classic curve at two or three months, when the excitement has died down and people find themselves in this hole,” adds Cathie Estevez of Swift Relocation Service inMunich. “The difficulties of life in a new country have become a reality and they feel they’ve made a bad mistake. But after seven or eight months, people tend to start feeling at home again. Knowing thatthis will come and that it happens to a lot of people should help you get through it.
“The language is fundamental,” says Martine Ruiz, Manager of MRI Relocation in Lyons, France. Otherwise even...