My first seven months as an expat in Spain: An exciting journey of personal and professional development

Since moving to Spain seven months ago, my life has changed in many ways. As an #expat, I not only found a new home, but also gained a wealth of experience that drives my personal and professional growth. The time has passed by extremely fast and in this article I want to share my experiences and insights to give other potential expats a glimpse of life in #Spain and to help them with their own journey.

EASY DECISIONS - HARD LIFE. HARD DECISIONS - EASY LIFE

After a long ride from my hometown Essingen on the east Alb in #Germany to San Sebastián, in the North of Spain, I started working in January in our #Voith Paper location Tolosa (actually it is in Ibarra) and living in the beautiful and diverse city San Sebastián - called Donostia in Basque. My wife and our daugther were still in Germany, because she continued to work as a teacher there. And this decision was not easy for us, as I had never been apart for my wife and daughter for such a long period before.?

WORK LIKE HELL AND ADVERTISE

This was the start of life as a single (for three months). During that time I worked a lot of hours on different things: new #projects with business trips, my initiation of the #PaperTalk within Voith Paper , I talked a lot with different people to clarify expectations and targets and I needed to follow-up my never-ending inbox on the weekends - far away from 40 hours or a four-day working week.

"Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise." Arnold Schwarzenegger.

NEW EXPERIENCES

From 19th to 22nd of January, my best friend visited me already for the famous event "Tamborrada", which is very special and has a interesting tradition. At the beginning of March, I visited the local #paper exhibition #SPaper, which took place in Zaragoza. There I met the local Voith Tolosa #team as well as some of my German colleagues, including Anja Bergmann and Kirstin Winterfeldt and my #PaperIndustry friends Achim Kneifel and Wolf Heilmann for some interesting talks.

Downside: I "celebrated" my birthday in March more or less alone, even if I got a lot of messages, phone calls and FaceTimes, this was a "not-so-nice" experience.

But of course there were also very nice and new experiences like skiing together with Ignacio Benito , Antonio Leiva and Marcos Garcia de la Torre in the Spanish Pyrenees or visiting a football match of the local LALIGA club Real Sociedad in their stadium, which is very close to my new flat.

Another activity that I have learned to love is cooking together with colleagues, customers or friends in a so-called "Sociedad Gastronomica".

At end of March, I took a short break from all this busy weeks, and flew back for a few days skiing in Ischgl, Austria with friends.

Afterwards since I was in Germany, I took the opportunity to join a reference visit with a customer, to one of our latest #BlueLine OCC stock preparation lines at Palm Gruppe in Aalen-Neukochen, Germany - where actually my professional career and path started and where I always love to come back and meet friends.

Followed by this short working-interruption I continued and took some days off for a last and short wellness trip with my family to the beautiful Lake Achen in the mountains of Tyrol.

TOGETHER AS A FAMILY AGAIN

Finally, in middle of April my wife and daugther arrived here in Spain and life in San Sebastián started to get a lot nicer as we were able to enjoy all the pretty things around the city together. Also my business life has more and more settled since then and continued with office work and business trips to Schumacher Packaging Myszków in Poland for the on-site classroom training start, Saica Group El Burgo mill visit and exchange with the production managers or regularly follow-up at UNION INDUSTRIAL PAPELERA SA in La Pobla de Claramunt with Albert Irastorza Balaguer .

Meanwhile, for me, San Sebastián and the surroundings is one of the most attractive cities in #Europe to live or spend time. To be honest, it was not really on my radar before, but it will have a special place in our memories for sure.