Well, this article has been a long time coming… Originally this post was going to be about moving my homelab overseas and what that process looked like, yet my homelab is still stuck in the US. Still, I figured I should write something.
Most of my homelab had to stay in the US. Between our German apartment having atrocious upload speed, the increased price of electricity here, and the recent RAM and HDD price increases, I am not able to justify building a new server and hosting it in my apartment. Thankfully a friend of mine in the US offered to let me co-locate in his basement, for which I am extremely grateful.
Anyway, on September 17th, 2024, my wife, my dog, and myself got on a plane in Minneapolis, and within 24 hours we found ourselves in Frankfurt, with the intent to stay.
A few months earlier, in July, my wife got accepted into the University of Mainz as a Master’s student. We were extremely excited, as we had been seeking an opportunity to move overseas for over a year at that point. We immediately started making preparations. We quickly resigned from our jobs, started planning what to pack, and started selling anything that we could not bring and/or was not valuable enough to store.
The following 2 months were a flurry of activity. I searched and soon found a job within Germany through a college connection; we filled out paperwork; got our dog health-certified to enter Germany; we made plans with some friends we already had in the Frankfurt area; we filled out paperwork; we continued packing, both for moving and for storage in my parents attic; we moved out of our apartment; and did I mention the paperwork?
Upon arrival, we stayed in a hotel for our first week. Thankfully, we were able to find a pre-furnished studio apartment before the week was up. My wife started her studies, and once I got my Blue Card fully figured out (a process that could only start once we were in the country, apparently?), I started work.
Initially, the studio apartment was nice enough, but only barely big enough for my wife, our dog, and I. We started looking for a more permanent apartment within a month, but were unable to find anything until May 2025. Since June 2025, we have been living in an apartment in Wiesbaden, which has been very nice for my family.
We have been slowly, but surely, building a life here. We are both actively (although slowly) learning the language; my work has been steady; my wife’s studies have been going well; we have made new friends; and I’ve been able to continue my hobbies.
I brought over a few single board computers, with which I have set up home assistant and an adblocker, but other than that, all my ‘heavier’ services remain physically in the US.
I also was not able to bring over my 3d printer initially. However, I decided to use that as a reason to upgrade, and bought myself a Voron Trident kit for Christmas that I have been steadily working on. Its almost finished, too!
We are closing in on 2 years living here, and while there have been ups and downs, not all of which I have written here, we are happy here, and we hope to stay.