We’re turning our lives upside down

In Germany, we lived in a small, cozy end-of-terrace house in the picturesque town of Schwäbisch Hall. We’d made it really nice over the past few years—until we moved to India. In summer, you could sit under the cherry tree in our little garden and let your soul dangle in the breeze. But now that we live in New Delhi—and likely will for the next few years—we’ve decided to sell the house.

I’ve always dreamed of a tiny cottage at the edge of the woods with chickens clucking in the backyard. In fact, buying the house back then disillusioned me a bit, precisely because it didn’t quite match that dream. So now, selling it strangely gives me a sense of freedom. Suddenly, anything feels possible again, and my woodland cottage dream seems a little less far-fetched.

I imagine my future house like this.

Of course, selling a house from abroad isn’t exactly straightforward. That’s why we decided to hire a real estate agent. Our first conversation with him was promising. But I have to admit—our expectations might be a bit high, given how spoiled we were by our agent here in India. Indian agents are basically on call 24/7. They update you on every little development in a dedicated WhatsApp group and bend over backwards to solve any issue, far beyond just showing flats.

Communication with our German agent? Let’s just say it’s… passable. He insists on emailing only my husband. Naturally, we set up a WhatsApp group inspired by our experience in India. The employee in charge of scheduling viewings promptly left the group, explaining that it was her private phone and she needed to be able to switch off. I mean—it’s not like you can mute or archive groups or anything, right?

So now she communicates directly with potential buyers, and the agent relays the information to our daughter, who’s currently still living in the house and needs to be in the loop about viewings. At some point, my husband gets the message, and if I’m lucky, he passes it on to me. I had imagined we’d be kept in the loop daily about new inquiries and viewings, but apparently that’s wishful thinking in Germany.

Our agent still doesn’t quite get the purpose of the WhatsApp group and prefers to send voice messages directly to my husband. That drives me nuts. I’m incredibly curious and was genuinely excited about the whole selling process. Now I constantly feel like the last one to know anything. My husband tries his best to keep me updated, bless him. But still—I miss Tony. That was our Indian agent, the one who helped us find our second apartment here in New Delhi. Honestly, every German real estate agent could learn a thing or two from his customer service skills. Maybe Tony should offer workshops for his German colleagues as a side hustle. It would revolutionize the market! Not that he has the time—he’s too busy WhatsApping all his clients in India.

TDespite all the German sluggishness, we’ve actually found buyers, and we’re now waiting for the final contract signing to seal the deal.

This summer, we’ll return to our house one last time and face everything we’ve accumulated over the years and decades. I want to use the process of clearing out the house to also declutter my life—to let go of all the ballast we tend to gather over time. Because unlike in India, this time I’ll have to pack every box myself.

Not having a home in Germany anymore is a strange thought. A little sad, perhaps. But also—freeing.