You can plan an emigration. Really plan it. You can spend months thinking about money, apartment, work, health insurance, car, taxes, language, and all the small and big things that come with building a new life in another country. Making lists, calculating, researching, trying not to make any mistakes.
And at some point you realize: it worked. You actually live in the new country. You have work, you understand how things work, you speak the language. Maybe not perfectly yet, but well enough to manage everyday life. You know people, you have contacts, maybe you've even found friends. You know where to shop, where to go to the doctor, and who to call when something doesn't work. Eventually, the new country doesn't feel like a foreign country anymore. It's become home.
And that's precisely when something can happen that you barely thought about during all the planning. Something happens in your old home. And suddenly you realize just how far away a thousand kilometers really is. Before emigrating, you say such things quite matter-of-factly: if something comes up, we can get there quickly. Just get in the car and drive. That's the theory, anyway. Reality looks a bit different.
Then we'll just drive over there!? If you work, you can't just drive to your old homeland for several days. You need time off, and this time off doesn't fall from the sky—it comes from your own vacation days. You could say that's what vacation is for. But a trip to your old homeland where problems need to be solved has about as much to do with vacation as a dentist appointment has to do with wellness.
Ten or twelve hours in a car, or train, or airplane. You arrive and you have appointments. You have to have conversations, gather documents, visit people, maybe resolve conflicts, maybe handle things that have been pending for months. You drive from A to B, try to pack as much as possible into the time you have, and the whole time you know the clock is ticking. Because at some point you have to go back. To work. To home. After a trip like that, you'd really need a vacation first.
And then the whole thing costs money too! You think about this surprisingly little beforehand. Gas, maybe tolls, maybe an overnight stay on the way. Or train tickets, or plane tickets. Plus food along the way and everything else that comes with a trip.
And something else comes into play. When you go back to your old homeland, you want to bring something with you. Not because anyone would expect it—quite the opposite. Probably everyone would say you shouldn't bring anything. But you want to anyway. You live in Denmark now and you're constantly discovering things where you think: That would be perfect for him. She would definitely be happy about that.
You want to bring the people you haven't seen in a long time a little piece of your new home. And even if you only spend ten or twelve euros per person, you don't have to be a math genius to see how quickly that adds up with family and friends.
Then come the really mundane questions. Do we have the money right now? Do we want to spend it on that at the moment? Does the trip really have to be now? And at the same time you know: yes, sometimes it does.
Some things can't be solved from a thousand kilometers away
That's the most important point for me. We live in a time where distance seems to barely matter anymore. WhatsApp, video calls, email, online banking, digital signatures, government portals.
You can manage an astonishing number of things in Germany from Denmark. But not everything.
There are situations where you eventually realize: I really should be there now.
Maybe it's about family, illness, a house, documents, old obligations, conflicts. Or things that have somehow worked for years and suddenly don't work at all anymore.
And then you discover that a weekend isn't enough. That even three days aren't enough. Some problems aren't resolved with a single appointment. You go there, deal with one thing, and discover three more in the process. You start clarifying one issue and realize there's a much bigger problem behind it, one that needs a long-term solution. And then? You can't exactly drive a thousand kilometers every other week.
Family makes it particularly difficult As long as everyone gets along, distance can sometimes be surprisingly easy to manage. You talk on the phone, you write, you visit each other, and when you see each other after a few months, you're happy.
But what happens when there are conflicts? When people don't talk to each other? When decisions need to be made? When you suddenly find yourself out of the loop because the people who live there naturally are much closer to what's happening?
Distance changes power dynamics. That sounds dramatic, but it's simply a fact. Whoever is on the spot can react quickly. They can drive over, ring the doorbell, pick up documents, have a face-to-face conversation. Whoever lives a thousand kilometers away can make a phone call or send an email. And that's just not the same.
We barely thought about this before emigrating Not because we were naive, but because you simply can't foresee every development in your future life. You can protect yourself against many things, but you can't plan how people will develop. You can't factor in family conflicts years in advance. You can't know who will get sick, who will need help, which matters will suddenly become important.
Maybe this realization is simply part of emigrating. You don't just leave a country, you create distance. This distance can be wonderful. It can mean freedom, a fresh start, peace, a completely new life.
But it also has a price, and I'm not just talking about the gas bill.
Would we not emigrate because of this? No. Absolutely not. Our life is here now. We've built it and it feels right.
But I would add one point to the things you should think about before emigrating: What actually happens when something occurs in your old homeland that can't be solved with a phone call? Not because you'd need to already have the perfect solution. Maybe there isn't one. But because it's good to know that this moment can come. That "we can get there quickly" is relative when you're over a thousand kilometers apart.
And that you sometimes suddenly find yourself standing between two worlds. Your own life has long since moved to the new country, work is here, everyday life is here, home is here. And yet where you once lived, there are people, memories, obligations, and sometimes problems that still reach you.
Maybe this is exactly one of those aspects of emigration that people talk about far too rarely. You can really think of almost everything. And yet at some point something happens that wasn't on any emigration checklist.
