14 May: A Sad Day in Deutschland

How ironic is it that on the very day that my blog has finally caught up with my journal, we find out that we might be leaving Germany?

It seems fitting that our first violent spring thunderstorm hit last night (on the 13^th no less), just hours before DaimlerChrysler announced that it has decided to sell Chrysler to a financial services company called Cerberus for the tidy sum of $7.4 billion. John told me about it when I got up this morning (he had an early meeting so he was up before me and read about it online) and I had a text message from Beth waiting for me when I got back from walking with Evelyne. Beth told me to watch the news this morning and, sure enough, they announced it on CNN at 9:30 am. Daimler held a press conference at noon but I completely forgot to watch it. Apparently Daimler wasn't planning to announce the sale until next week, but the Detroit Free Press got wind of it and ran a story about the Cerberus deal on Friday, so Daimler basically had to fess up.

Suffice it to say that I am pretty depressed. One glimmer of hope is that I read in one of the newspaper articles that it will take until fall to finalize the deal, so there is a slim chance that Mercedes will agree to keep John on board until then. Of course John’s “worst case scenario” is that he will literally be locked out of his building within days. I honestly don’t think that will happen, but they could very well send him packing before the deal is finalized. I’m just hoping that we can stretch our stay until August so that we can put in a full two years here as originally planned.

>I will be extremely disappointed if we have to return to Michigan earlier than planned. It is difficult to explain my feelings about this...I know in my heart that I do not want to live in Germany forever, but I am not quite ready to return to the "real world" in Michigan. There are still so many things that I want to do in Germany - more writing, more traveling, and spending more time with the wonderful friends that I have made here. I don't think I will ever be quite "ready" to leave, but after everything that John and I have invested - physically, mentally, and emotionally - in moving to and living in Germany, I want to see this experience through to its conclusion. For now, all we can do is wait and see what happens in the coming weeks.

The weather seems to be reading my mood - drippy and dreary. I am going to go cheer myself up now by baking a coffee cake for the book club, which is meeting at my house tomorrow morning.