We actually began preparing a while ago, shortly before our wedding.

You see, I’m in a lucky minority that has dual citizenship (American and German), and I’ve never taken advantage of my EU citizenship. At first I thought marriage would be the end of my daydreams to just pack everything up and head over seas. My hopes of a vagabond, carefree lifestyle would come to an end… until I realized that getting married wouldn’t tie me down, but rather, it would free the woman I love from needing a visa to work and live in an E.U. country. And so our discussions began as our marriage loomed on the horizon.

We’ve realized that we have a window between getting married and having children, where world travel and expat living is in a somewhat simplified state. We imagine that traveling with very young children could complicate things, whereas my being able to share the benefits of my E.U. citizenship helps to simplify. As just a couple and not spouses, she would need to get visas that I don’t need. However, getting a piece of paper declaring us legally joined (one that we would have gotten regardless of the advantages), now opens my doors to her.

And so we found ourselves discussing the relative merits that different E.U. countries could offer to us.

In this blog we will share with you our journeys as we go through them, of what we learn about the process of becoming an expat, even if only temporarily. (Our plan at the moment is to spend one year abroad, but we are not placing any hard limits on that time frame. We are leaving ourselves open to the possibilities.) We’ve already learned a bit, just n the few months we’ve been preparing our move. We hope our experiences will help smooth out your own path, without taking away any of the adventure. It shouldn’t help just the married couple with an E.U. citizenship, but anyone making a move to Europe, and even more specifically Spain, from the U.S. Wish us luck.

Cheers,

Galen and Mattie