Wrapping up
It’s been almost 9 months that I’m already back to US, but life has been busy, so I never had a chance to update and wrap up this blog. In this post, I’ll quickly go over how my move back to US went, and in subsequent posts I’ll write about my last few trips before leaving.
Moving back to US was quite different than moving to Switzerland: I had no spare time to get adapted to the new place and had to keep working. When you do an international transfer at Google, you cannot transfer your vacation days, and you have to maintain consecutive employment. This means that you have at most a weekend to unpack and get ready to roll. This was much more exhausting compared to moving to Zurich, when I came a week earlier, and had time to acclimatize. But the good thing was that since I already lived in US, I had a bank account, a social security number, and a US drivers license. And I understood how US healthcare works! I still had to figure out retirement plans (terms like 401k, Roth, IRA, etc.), but that took me “only” half a day.
I must say that I was incredibly lucky to be able to move to US. My project at Google was suddenly moved to US, and my options were either to find a new team in Zurich office, or to move to US with the project. I wanted to move to US anyway — so my next move was obvious to me!
Once I agreed to move, Google took care of everything. There was a legal team to take care of my visas, and I had a moving company which came to my hope, professionally packed my stuff, and shipped it via air. I highlighted professionally, because it meant everything was wrapped in multiple layers of paper, and accumulated to 25 boxes in total. I had no idea I owned so much stuff!
The flight to US was very smooth, since I managed to score a business class flight with Turkish Airlines. Back then they had a laptop ban, so business class flights were very cheap. Flying business class on a long flight makes a huge difference — full flat seat means you can get a decent sleep, and therefore adjusting to new time zone becomes easier. When I landed, I was not tired at all!
As soon as I landed in Bay Area, I immediately started looking for apartments. I wanted to live in San Francisco, which meant that I was probably going to have a roommate. Relocation agents don’t help with roommates, since they cannot vouch for them, so I was on my own. But in US it’s much easier, compared to Zurich. Usually people want to know where you work, and they may ask a soft copy of your credit score, which is easily obtainable on websites like CreditKarma and Mint for free. Besides Craigslist, Google’s internal mailing list for housing was also a very helpful resource. Eventually I found a room through Google’s internal mailing list, and now have two great roommates!
I traveled very little in the first 6 months after moving to US. I was either busy, or had stuff to do locally, and the only travel I had from May until October was my trip to Salt Lake City in August. But I’m starting to pick up more with traveling, and went to Chicago and East Coast, and have plans to travel to Miami and Dallas soon! I miss being able to hop European countries for weekends, but US offers a lot to explore too!
