Quiet please! We're moving.

Quiet please! But I find this sign too loud!

Waiting books

Vertiginous reading

Imparting knowledge

Low profile

Background reading

These photos were taken at the University of Bielefeld Library in Germany. We moved to Bielefeld, a small town in the North of Germany, over four years ago because my partner got a job at the university. Academic contracts tend to be limited so a great deal of flexibility is called on the family. Having moved once from Berlin to Bielefeld, now that my partner's contract is up we are facing the challenge of relocation again.

In academia, you are expected to move around at the drop of a hat, indeed it is a requirement of a good CV in today's academic market. This is not something that goes together with having a stable family life. As a trailing spouse of an academic you may have to make sacrifices in your career, or build your career around a highly mobile lifestyle. For children, it means sacrificing long term friendships, and a familiarity brought about by putting down roots . Sometimes families in these situation face very hard decisions. Should the family be temporarily separated, while the academic partner takes up 1 year contracts abroad which have no guarantee of extension? Or should the family move and ride the course of uncertainty together. There is no way of knowing quite when a permanent contract or a professorship will finally arrive. Should the child's environmental/cultural stability take precedence over daily contact with the academic parent?

"Pendeln" in Germany is not uncommon, and describes the act travelling  back and forth from your family home to your place of work, usually over long distances. I know of an academic family in Germany where one partner is an professor and works during the week in Berlin and the other partner, also a professor, is based in Munich with the children. This involves "Pendeln" every weekend, a journey of around 6 hours each way by train. As Germany is a more federal country than the UK, i.e. centres of industries, media, banks are more evenly distributed amongst its cities, it means that people here are more used to the idea of "Pendeln". In Frankfurt, for example, there is the banking industry, in Hamburg the media industry. Everyone wants to live in Berlin, but there are not so many jobs available there. I know of many other examples of people living this lifestyle of "Pendeln".

Of course these are personal decisions and also depend on the individual child. Financially though, these short term contracts, like the one we have just been offered, are not automatically offered relocation support from the universities. These, rather, are awarded to Professorial or longer term posts, which doesn't mean that there isn't a spouse and children to consider and all the costs involved as in any other major move.

At the moment, I am negotiating this situation our family is facing step by step. We still haven't reached a decision. I found a moment of peace in the university library, despite the very loud "Quiet Please" sign. There are 2.2 million books in this library but I am afraid none of them can help with the decisions academic families like us are facing at the moment.

I am indebted to The Trailing Spouses Art group that Piia Rossi founded here in Bielefeld a few years ago. These meetings continue to inspire me in dealing with the ongoing challenges of being a trailing spouse in questions such as identity, language and career,  but in a supportive and creative environment.

Here you can see on youtube a Pechakucha presentation of the Trailing Spouses Art group by Piia and myself in English and German.

Hotel Spaß*

When you feel the fast moving tempo of today’s world is leaving you behind there is nothing like overhearing a conversation of under 14 year olds to make you realise that, yes, the world has left you behind and you will never catch up:

 “..and each day lasts 3 seconds”

“but you can change the time to how you like”

“I put an arcade and a gym in at the same time once, and they all went to the gym. They didn’t go and visit half -half. They’re crazy.”

“Yeah, they stay in the laundry room for two years sometimes. Mad.”

“And when they go into the computer room they just bang their hands up and down, bang bang on the keyboards.”

“But it’s crazy, you open something up, say an arcade, and they all go in.”

“Are they complaining now, this minute?”

“No, they’re happy now”

“But then they say, “I want a gym, I want a gym, I want a gym! You go and build a gym and they don’t even use it!”

“Yeah, they are really stupid like that.”

“How long does two years last?”

“About 10 minutes.”

“Look at that maid. We fired her and she keeps on cleaning up. Thank you very much for doing that. Look at her - she’s still cleaning.”

“But, you know, when you open something up, they all just go straight in, it is crazy the way they do that.”

 “And have you seen the disco? In the disco they stick their hands up in the air like this.”

“……………… and they keep on doing it for years and years, right?”

“But there is only one in there right now”

“Yeah but he’s been there for ages-“

“I’ve built 49 floors now.”

“Expand, expand, click on expand!”

 “Damn,  I just built a floor over a lift, room, room, room.”

“Knock it down then”

“ I can’t because that will cost even more money”

“ But you know what. You open something up and they all just go straight in. It’s really crazy they all just go straight in.”

“You’ve said that four times now”

*Spaß, pronounced "shpahss" means “fun” in German and Hotel Spaß is an online game that you can play on Spielaffe.de.**  The English original is called Theme Hotel. It is a “construction and management simulation game in which your goal is to build a five-star hotel”, which is just about the very definition of ‘fun’ isn’t it? Don’t tell me you didn’t know about that game already?! What planet are you living on anyway?

**Spielaffe translates rather inelegantly as “game-ape”, and is a German platform for free computer games “for all the family***”, with plenty of ads of course.

***Warning: Don’t try playing this game on your computer at home in front of your kids. It will only end in humiliation and shame as you fail to get even one of the five stars in the game. My advice, leave it to the kids but enjoy the game's Muzak.**** 

**** The term Muzak is so like 1934! Now its called Mood Music. You didn’t know that? Really. Where have you been for the last 4 years? In Bielefeld, a smallish and often overlooked***** town in northern Germany? Oh no, sorry that’s me.

 *****I think the makers of this game may have made a few oversights. Why not up the “fun” stakes by introducing a few eccentric millionaires into the mix. In this case your guest wouldn’t just be griping about not having a gym. He might be more concerned that his peas be arranged in a certain order. Or perhaps the ghost of a recently deceased guest of the Ritz that threatens to scare your guests away? Or a few room-wrecking rock stars hurling furniture out of the window? And last, but not least, what about a mass walkout by staff because of the frequent on the spot sackings?