Julian’s job in Germany made him sick and he fell into a depression. Eventually he and his girlfriend Annika decided to emigrate to Brittany. “That saved my life,” says Julian today.
We meet them in large numbers when we travel: people who have decided to live abroad. On the beach of Thailand, men waiting for death in open shirts, bellies and with closed faces.
Who hoped the end would be more bearable in paradise. The surfers on the beaches of Portugal, walking through the simple life with sandy feet. We meet them in the USA, where they run restaurants and talk about everything that is better here in round German.
Emigrants are, at least felt, people who are in the last third of their lives. Those who have already experienced something in order to be able to finish and start anew.
Drawing a line under what they call life. The lure of simplicity abroad in view, money in the account, sometimes more, sometimes less knowledge about the country, which is now supposed to be the nest of a new existence.
Now save articles for later in “Pocket”.
To the warm, to the cheap, to the simple. The motivations can often be summed up in this way. Julian and Annika are not like that. They have moved into the cool, the expensive, the complicated. In Brittany, at the beginning of her life.
Without a job, with some money and a house bought. If you want to make emigration difficult, do it like Julian and Annika. “We were doing well financially,” says Julian. And Annika nods. This is how he describes the time in Germany.
Both not even thirty, finished their studies, found a job, both work, bring money home and with it their dreams. All around them: children are born, houses are built, life is initially directed into fixed, immovable paths.
But something is wrong. Julian works a lot, shift after shift. Well-paid work that may be monotonous, but is useless. Annika is happy in her job as a nurse. She has always liked being there for people.
“But Julian has changed,” she says. And this time he nods. The work made him sick. The pressure, the stress, the tasks, the perspective of living a life like many others. Do not wait for death when you are old, but now. That made Julian unhappy.
“I developed a real burnout,” he says. And that means depression. In this generation, burnout is a distinction. It proves: You are hardworking, beyond your own possibilities.
You give up yourself and your soul for work until a gray veil covers your mind. The reasons for that burnout are often what people want. uniformity and monotony.
“I became more and more angry until the panic attacks came,” he says. “And that was enough.” Julian wants to change his life and takes his girlfriend with him. She lets herself be carried away, also so that he is fine again.
Thilo Mischke was born in Berlin in 1981. He works as a journalist, author and TV presenter. He has received numerous awards for his journalistic work, for example he won a Bavarian television award in 2020 and was named “Journalist of the Year” in the “National Reportage” category.
“At first we didn’t want to emigrate at all, it wasn’t really a plan, but at some point I had the idea: I want a farm.” They search in Germany, everything is far too expensive and the feeling remains: life would not change. Then France.
Why? Both of them don’t know, maybe also because the farms in Brittany weren’t that expensive. They have no relation to the culture. Julian and Annika are people fleeing the consuming clutches of capitalism, like many in their genre ration.
“We then simply wanted to leave, bought the farm without looking at it first. And now we live here,” he says.
They learn French, integrate into the village community, get used to the smell of poop fertilizer in the morning and Julian admits, at some point after they make plans how to make money here: “I’m happy again.”
They can live on little, don’t need a lot of money and they are on their own. They’ve stopped the rat race and instead of going in circles, they’re going straight ahead, not knowing what’s coming.
“It saved my life,” says Julian. Julian and Annika did not emigrate to wait for death, but to rediscover life.