Meet Sophie, expat mom from the U.K. living in Germany with her husband and 6-year old son. She shares more on her experience raising her child in Germany, how she decided on international school vs. German school system, process for applying for German citizenship and how she is navigating life abroad overall as a foreigner living in Germany.

Tell us about yourself: I was born and raised in England and spent my childhood in a little town called Newcastle Under Lyme. After living in the north whilst at university, I left there and headed south to London and then on to Oxfordshire. I spent 10 years there working for an Investment firm training people on the rules and regulations of the financial industry and also worked as a coach to help staff develop. My passion though is travel and I would have several trips planned or in the pipeline at all times! When I was growing up I traveled with my parents a lot, but my favorite of all our trips was our annual road trip to Germany and Austria. I fell in love with these countries and the culture at a young age!

I met my husband Paul whilst working in Oxfordshire and he became accustomed to my ways of constantly planning trips! He had never been to Germany before so we traveled here a lot together and he loved it too. At our December wedding we even had a German Christmas market-themed reception! 
Although still living in the UK, we spent a lot of time in Berlin and were starting to plan our next bigger adventure which would have been to move there. But before we made it to Berlin an opportunity arose for us to move to Frankfurt for an initial 6 months.

We weren’t sure about Frankfurt compared to Berlin, but we spent some time checking out neighborhoods like Bornheim and Sachsenhausen and decided it looked like a great place to live. Once we moved, we loved it here so much that after 2 weeks we already were focused on making it a long term move. That was over 10 years ago and we are still living here and loving it, even more so as we welcomed our son into the world 6 years ago.

Why Germany as the place to raise your child?

After living in Frankfurt for 4 years before our son arrived, we felt settled and at home here in Germany so the decision to raise a child here was a very natural one. We were reasonably comfortable with the language as I had studied German at school and then at a language school in Frankfurt and my husband had studied online and also had some in-person lessons.  Although our families are a bit further away, we had built a good network of friends and getting back to the UK is quite straightforward by various means of travel.

We were impressed with the healthcare system and the support I received from my Frauenarzt whilst pregnant and from my Hebamme after having my son was wonderful. It was also reassuring that most healthcare professionals we spoke to could talk to us in English as well if we were not sure about something. The parental leave opportunities worked really well for us too. My husband was able to take 2 months off from work and I had decided to take the full 3 years leave from the company I worked for. However, I was due to return around the time that Corona and the lockdowns were all starting so I made the decision not to return in the end. I was a stay at home Mum until the beginning of this year when I started working part time.

We feel that Frankfurt is a very child-friendly city. There are so many green spaces, nice parks and playgrounds and the countryside is very accessible. There are lots of groups for expectant parents, babies and kids and various school options too to suit a variety of needs.

How was the process for you and your family when applying for German citizenship?

We had decided early on into our time here that we would eventually apply for German citizenship. It became more important to us to have it, as although Paul and I are British, our son was born and raised here and we wanted it for him. Our timescales were impacted by Brexit as we needed to apply for citizenship before the UK left the EU as this enabled us to keep our British citizenship too.

Fortunately we met the requirements of how long we had been living in Germany and our process was surprisingly smooth and relatively quick – which we were definitely not expecting! First of all we had to fill in forms and gather documents and we had a meeting at the das Ordnungsamt (Public Order Office). We were very nervous and we were trying to make a good impression but our adviser was not at all impressed with the way we had stapled the documents together to try and make things clearer for him so we learned early on never to do that again!

He advised what steps we would need to take which included both of us passing German language exams and taking the Einbürgerungstest. This test has 33 questions from a possible 300 all about German history, culture, politics, lifestyle etc. and can be practiced online. Our German friends were all fascinated by this and thought that we would end up with much better scores than if they took it!

After passing the exams and completing the paperwork we were advised that our application was successful and we were invited to an appointment to receive our certificates just before the end of 2020.

We were very proud and happy to receive these and when we came back out of the building some of our good friends surprised us by waiting outside with a big sign, German flags, pretzel necklaces, sekt, and flowers. It was a really special moment and one that we will always remember!

International schooling vs. German schooling, how did you make the decision which one was best for your family?

Our son recently started school and prior to this we thought long and hard about what type of school would be best for him.

When he was 2 years old he started off at a wonderful English speaking playgroup which he went to 3 mornings a week. For Kindergarten it was important to us that he was in a bilingual (German/English) environment so he went to an international kindergarten. He had 3 fantastic years there. It was a very nurturing environment with lovely teachers and he really benefited from learning in English and German.

Before starting school we looked at all of his available options. He could have stayed at the international school he was at, gone to a different one or started at our local German school. It was a really tough decision as there are so many options!

Our priorities were that our son continued to learn predominantly in German, for us to feel more part of the neighborhood where we live and for our son to make local friends. We did a lot of research and these priorities of ours were met by going down the path of German schooling.

We initially went to visit the school 18 months before our son started. This was a short meeting as it was during Corona times, but the teachers spent some time with our son and assessed his language skills. It was nice for us to meet some of the staff and see inside the school and we all had a positive experience there. After this our son was invited to a ‘Schnuppertag’ which was around 6 months before the start of school. All the kids that would be going to the school the following September were invited and they got to spend the morning there. This was a good introduction and was nice to give some idea of what to expect when school actually started!

We have had almost 3 months of school so far and up to this point it has been going really well. Our son is happy and it is great to see him become even more competent in German – he is now correcting us so that didn’t take long!

Any special activities or learning groups for kids in and around Frankfurt you recommend?

Yes and yes! Before giving birth I would recommend the Vorbereitungskurs at the Familiengesundheitszentrum! They offer these courses in German and English and they are usually for a couple of days over a weekend. We did an English speaking course about 6 weeks before my due date and got lots of useful information. The best thing for us though was meeting other expectant parents and forming a close bond with them. Even though this was nearly 7 years ago, we have stayed in touch with the people from our group and still meet up every few months. We have a group Christmas celebration and have been away together too. It’s so nice for the kids as they feel like they have lots of unofficial cousins and more siblings have arrived over the years too so the group has got bigger!

There are more options available to expectant parents since we had our son. In fact, one of the Mums we met on our Vorbereitungskurs has become an English language Childbirth Educator. Her business is called Mindful Mama and there are lots of great resources on her website.

A place that has been a big part of our lives for the last few years is Link n Learn. This is where kids of all ages can go to take classes and do activities. We started going to the Baby tunes class when it first opened in Frankfurt in 2018. The Mommy and me classes are so much fun and I have made lots of long-lasting friendships from joining them. As my son has grown older he has done other musical classes, science classes and Lego and Engineering classes. He even had his 5th birthday party at Link n Learn! It is a truly great place to meet and connect with our parents and kids and has such a warm and welcoming atmosphere, thanks to its owner Raehyun. We are so happy to have had it as a friendly place in our lives these last few years and are looking forward to what other fun activities the next few years will bring there! I cannot recommend it highly enough!

What advice do you have for fellow new expat parents?

If you are planning on staying long term then I would say to try and embrace the language and culture as much as possible. It is so worthwhile stepping out of your comfort zone and becoming more part of your local community. But there are also lots of great international opportunities to make the most of too!

If you want to learn German thenSpeakeasy Sprachschule in Frankfurt is a great place to study, and they also offer language camps in the Summer holidays for kids too.

I found so much useful information on the ExpatBabies Frankfurt Facebook group so I would definitely suggest joining this. It is a great resource and it is not just for parents with babies, there is lots of information that can help with kids of any age.

There are some great resources on The Eltern Hub website so do check this out! Thank you to Maria for creating such a useful source of information to support new parents living in Germany. It would have been great if this was available when our son was born!

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