Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

I hope you sang the title while you were reading it, because I certainly did while writing it 😉

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while. But 1) it wasn’t entirely my news to tell and 2) it wasn’t actually official until just before Christmas. Obviously I couldn’t say anything on here until things were 100% definite and all my real-life people knew! However, now contracts have been signed, bosses have been spoken to and family/friends have been informed, which means I can also blog about it without any risk of someone who should have been told by official means stumbling across my news via my blog (unlikely, but possible).

At the end of last year, Jan was offered a job in Basel (he wasn’t even applying for jobs at the time… he had worked on a project with them once and when a position opened up they called him). After paying a visit to the company, negotiating a few things (such as a few days off during the probation period as he will still have students to supervise here) and working out whether the pay really is as good as it sounds (Switzerland being an expensive country), the decision was finally made that Jan would take the job and the contract was signed and sent off just before Christmas. (Phew, complicated sentence there. Sorry!) (Also sorry for the overuse of brackets).

Basel town hall

Although Basel is close enough to Karlsruhe for a day trip, it is definitely not close enough to commute! So some time around March/April we shall be moving to the Basel area. Jan starts on 1st April, so he’ll go first, probably in March, then I’ll join him at the end of April. Whether the move will actually take us to Switzerland or whether we’ll stay on the German side of the border is yet to be decided, but either way it will be an adventure! While I will miss my friends and some other things, having lived in Karlsruhe for longer than I’ve spent in one place ever in my entire life, it feels like a good time to move on and try something new. In the meantime, the next few months will be dedicated to trying out all the places in Karlsruhe I never got round to visiting, and also making sure to check out all the old haunts at least once more. There are a lot of places I need to day farewell to!

Our next step will be to meet with an adviser who specialises in cross-border employment. He will hopefully help us with the decision on where to live, then we’ll be flat hunting, packing and dealng with bureaucracy for the next few months (and then more bureaucracy after we move!). As for what I’ll be doing when we get there… well, I should be able to telecommute. My (new!*) boss likes the idea and has said he sees no reason why it shouldn’t be possible. All we need to do is work out details. So keep your fingers crossed that works out!

*Just to make things extra complicated, my company was sold at the end of last year so I now have 2 new bosses! I only spoke with one of them as the other wasn’t there that day. Oh, and when I wrote the e-mail asking for the meeting my female boss assumed I was pregnant! (I’m not, before you ask.) Male boss correctly guessed I was quitting because he remembered that my boyfriend was due to finish his PhD soon. This probably says something interesting about the differences between men and women.