Season 1, Episode 12. Reggie was enjoying an exciting career in the music industry when Napster came along. Quickly, the industry as he knew it fell apart. So Reggie moved abroad.

With minimal research or planning, he flew into Frankfurt, Germany and let the adventure begin. Reggie shares his story with listeners, including how American foreign policy influenced his decision, and what hanging out with Jehovah's Witness groups taught him about the German people. 

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Season 1, Episode 11. Anne Thompsen Lord, a mother of four, and her oldest son, Thompsen, sit down with The Expat Cast to share their experience with their family's year abroad. Anne and her husband Errol wanted to spend a year abroad so that their kids could have the gift of a second language, so when Errol's job as a professor of philosophy brought them the opportunity to live in Freiburg, Germany, they leapt on it.

They packed up their things, rounded up their 10-year-old, 7-year-old, and 5-year-old twins and dove into the adventure. Anne and Thom share their perspectives on life in Germany as a mom and as a kid.

RESOURCES

• Anne's blog about her life in Freiburg

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Season 1, Episode 10. Ashley, from Teaching English Abroad, is back on the show, this time with a special guest: her baby boy! Ashley is eight months pregnant when she sits down to tell The Expat Cast all about what it's like to be pregnant as an expat in Germany. Maternity leave, midwives, and Mutterpass - we touch on it all.

We also learn that it's fruitless to search for a baby shower card in Germany, where people might envision infants raining down on you in a tub, and we examine how apartment living can force anyone to be a minimalist, even in preparation for big things like starting a family.

RESOURCES

• Achtung Baby: An American Mom on the German Art of Raising Self-Reliant Children by Sara Zaske

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Season 1, Episode 9. Bahar got a taste for the relaxed German lifestyle on a short visit to a village that left her hungry for more. She'd studied English language and literature in Istanbul, so when she heard of an English-language Masters in British and North American Studies in Freiburg, it was a no-brainer to apply.

Bahar talks us through her experience getting a student visa in Germany as a Turkish citizen, including what bank account she needed and how a 2017 law introducing fees for international students impacted her program. Now approaching the end of her program, Bahar reflects on her experience throughout the program, discusses her research interest on immigrant identity, and shares her ideas about what she'll do after graduation.

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Season 1, Episode 8. Part of the adventure of moving abroad is assimilating into the culture. But how do you assimilate without giving up too much of your own self identity? How much of who you are is tied to where you're from or where you live now?

We sit down with friend of the show Jenny to talk about our own personal journeys to adapt to life in Germany while maintaining our sense of self. We chat clothing choices, minimalism, eating habits, vacation planning, and more. On the way, Nicole learns the term #nopoo, Jenny commends Americans on their great fork skills (though she concedes that we've got room for improvement in the knife department), Nicole admits to developing self-righteous recycling tendencies, and Jenny laments the lack of road trip culture in Germany compared to California.

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