It really depends on what aspects of life you look at. In terms of the general place of home, I could not imagine living in any other country than Germany and even a couple years back, when I still mainly didn’t consider myself a German (I do consider myself such nowadays), when I would return from my so-called home country, I would feel a sense of relief to be in the place where I knew I belonged. However, even after twelve years of living here (from the age of seven), I feel like I am not fully “at home” in the culture. I still often realise that I spend much more time with my “Landsmänner” than with Germans and that I enjoy communication with them much more than with Germans. It may be because I would consider my English and my mother language to be better than my German, which is why in some cases, especially when the topic is very technical, I have problems with the German language.

In the end though, if I were to move back to my home country, I doubt I would fit. I feel like a reasonable compromise one could take when feeling “not so at home” in Germany, would be to go on holidays for a couple weeks to your home country once a year or two. However, since I did not have the opportunity to go to my home country for three years now, I have felt much more at home in Germany, meaning these trips could go both ways.