Family Moved to California, Couldn’t Find Work, and Returned to Berlin

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ruth Barry, 42, a baker and writer living in Berlin. It has been edited for length and clarity.

In 2014, I moved to Berlin, where I met my husband, another expat, at a party.

The city was exciting, and I ran a bakery in a trendy neighborhood. But a string of bad luck forced me to close it in 2021 and file for bankruptcy.

We decided to leave Berlin for the Bay Area, where my husband grew up and has most of his family. I wanted somewhere gentler, without the weight of traumatic memories.

I felt there’d never be any need to return

The process to get a green card took three years, during which time I gave birth to our first son in 2022, and felt even more isolated in the city.

No matter how well I speak German, I’d always felt like a foreigner. I grew up in the Scottish Highlands, in the middle of nowhere.

Since our plan was to move to the States, I stopped investing in making life better. I was ready to just turn the page on everything.

Moving to America

In November 2024, we finally moved to Sonoma, a sweet town an hour north of San Francisco. I kept waiting to feel we’d “arrived,” but it never came.

A huge missing puzzle piece was my husband’s job. Despite years of experience as a software engineer and endless applications, he got nothing back. It was demoralizing.

Our savings took an enormous hit. Our son’s kindergarten was $1,000 a month for just three hours a day, and groceries regularly hit $300 a week for basics. Going to the supermarket was terrifying and filled me with anxiety.

I remember going back to visit my parents in Scotland and feeling sick as I paid for a basket of shopping, knowing it would cost three times that in Sonoma.

Luckily, we had an electric car in California, so we didn’t have fuel costs. We were on a health insurance policy for low-income families, so we didn’t have to pay extra on top of care, although I worried about having a health crisis we couldn’t afford.

We saw my husband’s family often, but his father was dying, and we watched him fade beyond recognition. We felt absolutely powerless. My husband worried he had irreparably damaged his ability to support our family, and it became clear that we couldn’t thrive in the US at that moment.

We had to be serious about our options, especially as I was pregnant with our second child.

We moved back to Berlin in December 2025

It meant accepting that I could be miserable again or try to make it work. This time, things fell into place: My husband walked into a good job, which he started two weeks after our second son was born.

Giving birth in the same excellent hospital I’d used before felt so comfortable and reassuring. Accessing good public transport and not being wracked by daily financial anxiety has also been transformative.

Germany is a great example of a wealthy country that, broadly, looks after its residents. For example, our eldest, now nearly four, will attend a free bilingual nursery, and we receive support through parental leave and child benefit.

Berlin can be a rough, transient city, but reconnecting with my friends has been grounding. I’ve made some new ones, too, and I can see we will be able to build a more stable community as our children grow.

We plan to stay in Germany until we can apply for citizenship, which should be straightforward after our cumulative years here. After that, who knows?

This new setup is not without its challenges

The rental market is nightmarish. We pay €2,900 a month, or about $3,400, but I’m hoping we’ll find a rent-controlled flat for under €2,000.

I’m caring for the boys full-time right now, but I would love to bake for people again. While I don’t miss the hustle and expense of running a bakery, I’d like to build something that fits around my family and doesn’t involve mad 14-hour days.

Certainly, there’s a lot I miss about California: operating in my own language, the incredible food scene, the spectacular nature, and our family and friends. But we’ve come to realize that certain things are non-negotiable for our quality of life.