I will tell you the story of two jobless people. That’s me and my husband!
Yes both of us are jobless currently. We recently finished our masters in Germany and immediately after that we got married. Last couple of months during our master thesis, we absolutely had no time for job search. Sort of bad planning you can say! And finally we ended up being two married jobless Indians in Germany. First few days were really awesome as we had all the time in the world and we were newly married. What else you want!!
But within a couple of weeks we started feeling the pressure of having no income. Like lots of other couples we could not plan expensive dates in restaurant or even just a movie in a theater. Even if we wanted to buy flowers for each other, we had to think twice. As our parents are supporting us financially, every expense was based on Euro to Rupee conversion in our minds.
Out of stress, husband decided to take up an hourly paid job at Decathlon. He started travelling for nearly 3 hours daily for the job. And he was working for 8 hours there. We were little relieved that we could manage at least our rent and groceries on our own. But within few weeks he realized that due to hectic schedule he is lagging behind on job applications. So we collectively decided to stop thinking about money for now, asked him to quit the temporary job and focus on job applications.
This all happened within a span of 3 months and one fine day we decided that we will not let our lives become dull just because of lack of money and jobs. First major change we did was to wake up early. On the very first day itself we could see improvements in our mood, energy and concentrations. Despite the bad weather on the first day, we went cycling and we loved it. Next day the routine continued. We went cycling for 3 days and our lives felt much happier and more interesting.
On few weekends, we did a small hike on the hill behind our house and played some games with our German friends.
I always wanted to learn swimming and husband is a passionate swimmer. He showed me pictures of the local swimming pool and next day we bought season cards for it. We both have free time and are living in a city where they have amazing swimming pools with discounts for student. We stay 10 minutes away from the pool and my husband is an awesome coach. Not on earth was I going to miss this opportunity to learn swimming.
(Bud spencer bad, Schwäbisch Gmünd, source: stwgd.de)
One of the best thing we did in this period would be growing few vegetables on our own. We both are very conscious about our health and food. So, planting vegetables was the first thing we did in our free time. We planted tomatoes, basil, peas, coriander, salad, mint and last but not least Methi (fenugreek). We love methi and sadly we can’t buy that in Germany. When you don’t get it, you grow it! We grew methi in our balcony and had amazing methi matar malai.
So, this our life without jobs. It’s not perfect but we love it. My mom always says that one day this job search will end and you will get jobs. Then you will understand how important this free time was. You should not have regrets that you wasted such a beautiful period of life only in job applications.
You will crave for this free time later, live it!
Edit:
It’s been an year since I have written this answer. Later I got many comments from people who were curious about our progress.
So after leaving the minijob, my husband got to work in Nepali restaurant in the same town where we were living. He enjoyed that job a lot as he got to work in the kitchen and he loves cooking. He had to work only in the evening and he did his job applications during the day time. So it was a right decision for him to quit that hectic hourly paid job he was doing before.
Within two months after writing this answer he got the permanent job in his field. Other than Nepali restaurant owner, everyone was quite happy about this!!
We moved to new city for his job and few months after that I got a job in the same city.
So we both are working and living happy life in Germany. Our parents are proud of us!
We have already decided to pay our parents back all the money they gave us during our struggle. And we are already close to achieve that goal!!
Thank you all for lovely comments support. Also thanks to those who wrote hateful comments. That pushed us more to achieve our goals sooner!
Thanks for Reading
0 Comments