Buckle up, this is going to be quite a ride.

Wilkommen in Deutschland On January 23rd 2022 I landed in Köln Airport, met Delie, took the S19 train towards Ehrenfeld and after a brisk walk reached what will be my new apartment, in a new city, in a new country.
The first week was tough. As it turns out, my A2 German level was pretty much useless in any daily activity. There were a lot of small things I needed to get used to, one of them being the ever cloudy weather. Nonetheless, I was happy to start this new adventure. I would walk in one direction until I would hit a landmark. Take the subway and see if I could reach X or Y without looking at the map. A lot of drawing was done in this first week. Everything was new.
To be honest, everything is still new after almost one year of living here. Sometimes I look around me and think "Hey, I actually live here". I have to pinch myself to convince me I'm not a tourist, I'm an actual resident. I live in the same city as those beautiful buildings, that great buzzying street, that river bank where you can see the sunset over Dreikönigsstrasse.

Job 1 The job I secured while in Italy was amazing. I've got to work on what's basically a visual programming engine that's used by hundreds of people, with an Haskell backend and a Purescript frontend. The first few weeks were very hard. I felt so behind. It took me forever to get used to the Monad stack in the backend and would easily clock 12 hours a day just to stay afloat. I really wanted this, and I was ready to give my everything.
As much as this sentiment might feel sad now, it was a sight of relief for me. Could it be that I was cured of burn out? Could it be that the passion for programming came back? Right now I can say: yes. I was extremely happy and extremely motivated in that team.
The things I liked the most were the team spirit and the fact that I could take an half hour break in the middle of the day to salvage some TooGoodToGo without anyone batting an eye. But alas, all good things come to an end.

Apartment 2 Around the end of February we moved to another apartment in Nippes. This is where I currently live. It's a very nice apartment with a great view of the neighbours backyards. It's located near a main road but far enough to be quiet. It took us quite a lot of time to furnish it properly but I'm happy with the result. There's a small park nearby where I jog in the early morning, during the day it's unfortunately overcrowded.

Social life I'm an expat in Germany's fourth largest city. Most of my human interactions involved Delie's friends. I decided to start looking for my own clique. After a while I found a Go club that meets not too far from here. I started going almost every Tuesday night and take part in extra-Tuesday activities. The people there speak German exclusively and are very tolerant with my speaking proficiency. I must say this has been the best German course so far. This summer I even took part in the Kölner Turnier where I played fierce opponents and was able to defend my GOR points.
Another social activity I'd like to try is figure drawing. Unfortunately I haven't yet found the courage to show up there. At first I blamed my poor German, but from IG videos I've seen that some instructors speak English exclusively. Either way, since leaving Italy I've yet to find a good drawing course that would keep me on track. I've visited some squats and went to open Ateliers, but I must admit I'm more shy than I imagined.
Lately I registered for a Cinema club where people meet and speak English, I've yet to take part as the times are a little uncomfortable.

Job 2 At the end of June I received an unfortunate message, the company failed a round of investment and needed to shrink. I was therefore let go. Being unemployed has been my greatest nightmare since I learned the concept. Being unemployed in a foreign country was terrifying. I rolled up my sleeves and in the span of 2 weeks I applied for about 25 jobs around Germany. One week I had 3 interviews a day, sometimes in 3 different languages (yes, one company wanted to test my Portuguese!). Eventually I've realized that I had plenty of choices, even through a chrunch market, and instead of begging for a job, I should think about what I wanted to be in the future.
I decided to pick a solid company, with a solid and proven business model, over some fancy startups. The loss of Job1 shocked me and I needed something stable while other things around me settled. This turned out to be a great choice. Granted, I don't work with fancy technology, I don't get to take part in architectural decisions, there's no adrenaline, but that's exactly what I need right now. Thanks for having me, Job2!

Girlfriend 1 A week after I started at Job2, and a week after we celebrated our 8th year together, Delie decided to break up with me. We've always had our problems and differences which we were hoping being in Germany would fix. Germany was the big cloud looming over us when in Italy, I've always thought that when this issue would be solved, everything else would fall into place. I was wrong.
The first two weeks were harsh, overall I felt so stupid. I moved from Italy to Germany thinking that my life would improve consistently. I moved and thought I would go and live a great life. In the span of a few months I lost everything that had any value to me.
I felt like a broken glass. The thought of running away from here and going back to Italy passed my mind a few times, and it still does, but I know that it won't improve the situation. I would feel even more of a failure. Like I wrote last year: I don’t know if my life will improve there, but I’m sure it won’t if I stay here.
After about a month and change, I created a profile on OkCupid and went back into the dating game. I had forgotten how horrible the dating game was, and at 35 years old, it's basically hell.

Intermezzo - books of the year Let's break this depressing monologue with our yearly discussion about words on paper. This year I had decided to only read books in German and set myself the goal of reading 24 books. Surprisingly this goal was not achieved. Just finding a book that would be at my reading level proved difficult, finishing said book was a whole other challenge.
The best read of the year was probably Uzumaki by Junji Ito. I bought the fancy edition at a local manga store and devoured it in a day. Up there with Uzumaki is Unterwerfung or Submission by Houellebecq. After watching the Netflix show I got really curious and started reading the book. Surprisingly the German translation is not too hard, I miss maybe one or two words per page. This sounds like a lot, but it's really not.

Girlfriend 2 I like to think of myself as an honest person, I like to lay my cards on the table and let the other person choose if they want to keep playing. My cards however were not ideal: 35 years old expat, just ended an 8 years relationship, still living with his ex. Let's just say I wasn't the most popular guy on the app.
Luck had it however that I started chatting with a girl who, for whatever reason, didn't read my profile before talking to me. After about 10 days of daily conversations we finally met. Our first date was going great, until she decided to read my profile and thus stated "I don't want to see you again". She's my girlfriend now.
It wasn't easy. She lives in Aachen with two other girls, I lived in Köln with my ex. We had to plan our weekends carefully and make the most of them. Now Delie moved out to another apartment which means a bit more freedom on my side. Our relationship is fresh and we're still getting to know each other. She's Kurdish and only live in Germany since 2 years. Sometimes we hit choking points just to find they're culturally biased. There's a lot of small things we take for granted, which the other person doesn't.
Her name is Pelin and so far I can say she's amazing.

Health Around the end of November I went into surgery. I don't want to go into details but it's the most frequent surgical operation performed in the world, or at least I think so. The idea of being in a German hospital for two days both terrified and excited me. My health has always been horrible, so I knew this would have happened at some point. I wanted to face my fear.
The operation went well and I had a great roomie who helped me a lot with German and daily operations (I was basically bed ridden). What I didn't anticipate was the post-op situation. I had high fever for two weeks which my family doctor decided not to treat. After two weeks my throat doubled its size and my ears started hurting. I could barely swallow, let alone eat or speak. I went to the doctor who finally gave me some antibiotics. I was sent to a specialist who was annoyed at first and scared after she saw into my mouth, suggesting I go to the ER if the situation didn't improve on the next day.
Luckily the situation improved fast and significantly. I'm still hindered in my mobility and have trouble using the stairs, what's worse is that I cannot lift any weight over 5kg for the next 2 months. It's always fun to explain to the delivery guys.

Faith This summer, a little before the breakup, I started attending Mass regularly. When I cannot attend mass because I'm with Pelin, I still go in and get 20 minutes or so of praying. I feel very happy I finally decided to embrace this part of me. I even had communion for the first time in more than 20 years.

What do I expect for 2023? There's a lot of things I could add to my summary of 2022, for example all the museums I've visited or the great spots I found to paint and draw from life. My trips to Hamburg, Bonn, Düsseldorf, Maastricht, and Drachenfeld. My going back into therapy. This post is however long enough.
2022 was a year of big changes that basically uprooted all areas of my life. I wish 2023 will be a calm year where I can assess and grow. I don't have great plans. I want to ride my bicycle in the summer nights of Cologne. I want to improve my German and stop feeling anxious when I have to face new situations where I don't know all the words. I want to spend time with my girlfriend and maybe travel with her somewhere. I want to learn how to breath and enjoy life.